The Plainsman Comes To Birney

It was the summer of 1936 when Hollywood disrupted the usual tranquility of Montana's lower Tongue River. Paramount Pictures was filming an epic western, "The Plainsman," and legendary director Cecil B. DeMille wanted to include authentic landscapes and action scenes for the film. To that end, the production chose to film some of its most essential segments along the Tongue River in southeastern Montana, near Birney.

DeMille's desire for authenticity in the background elements of the film was somewhat ironic, given that the classic's script was anything but authentic. "The Plainsman" liberally borrows a hodgepodge of historical figures and ignores timelines to an astonishing degree. At the same time, the production hired hundreds of Cheyenne warriors in authentic dress and utilized the last functional horseback cavalry troop in its battle scenes.

The Plainsman is a story about Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill Cody. At the film's beginning, a group of greedy gun manufacturers are dismayed that ending the civil war will hurt their business prospects. They concoct a scheme to sell repeating rifles to Native Americans in the West and employ a shady character to make the deliveries. Hickok and Cody discover the plot and spend most of the film dealing with the consequences. The presence of these rifles, the film implies, results in Custer's destruction at the Little Big Horn.

Two large scenes and several small ones were filmed near the confluence of O'Dell Creek and the Tongue River, a few miles north of Birney. One scene is a dramatic Native American charge against US Cavalry troops defensively positioned on a sandbar island in a river. This section was loosely based on the historical events of the Beecher Island fight, which occurred on the Colorado-Kansas border in 1868. A native attack on an ammunition train was also filmed at the location. Finally, a dramatic recreation of Custer's Last Stand using several hundred Cheyenne in authentic war regalia was filmed on a nearby plain on the reservation.

It was a large production for such a remote area and required extraordinary efforts. Much of the film crew was housed at the Quarter Circle U Dude ranch in Birney. Others were housed at a camp set up at Crazy Head Springs. Alice Salveson Fjell recalled being specially called in to help with the cooking and cleaning for the Birney ranch, working from 5:30 in the morning to 10:00 at night. At the time, the Birney Store housed the community's only telephone line. The film production arranged a separate telephone line for its exclusive use set up at the back of the store to ensure timely communications with Hollywood. The film's "rushes" were flown to the studio each day they filmed. It was estimated that over $150,000 (in 1936 dollars) was spent in the Birney/Sheridan area alone.

The film featured a star-studded cast. The leads were Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok and Jean Arthur as Calamity Jane. Interestingly, Cooper was a Montanan, born in Helena. He spent his early years as a cowboy on a Montana ranch before moving to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, none of the film's big-name stars actually made it out to the Tongue River set. DeMille was on location only once or twice to oversee overall operations briefly. Most of the filming occurred under the second unit director, Art Rosson. Local newspapers quoted Rossun during location scouting: "We saw scenes that positively beggar description for artistic beauty in our trip today. We also found a lot of mosquitos. I never saw them so thick."

As mentioned, the dramatic fight scene on the island was loosely based on the Battle of Beecher Island. In the movie, Buffalo Bill Cody leads a US Army ammunition train through hostile territory when they are attacked by a large group of Cheyennes led by Yellow Hand, who learned of the train's location from Calamity Jane. Yellow Hand had captured Calamity and Wild Bill, with Jane revealing the train's position to prevent Hickok's torture and death. The soldiers retreat to an island where they set up defensive positions. They held off the Cheyenne for several days before being rescued by cavalry troops under the command of George Custer. Yellow Hand dies in the battle. While not explicitly stated, this battle is implied to take place a few months before Custer's Last Stand.

The actual Battle of Beecher Island occurred in 1868 and did not involve an ammunition train. In a sandbar along the Arickaree River (a tributary of the Republican River), Major George Forsyth and fifty frontiersmen were attacked by a much larger force of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe. Among the Native Americans was the Cheyenne war leader Roman Nose. Roman Nose had gained a reputation for invulnerability due to his strong medicine. That medicine was supposedly compromised, and Roman Nose was killed at the Battle of Beecher Island. None of the film's characters (Cody, Hickok, Calamity Jane, or Custer) were involved in the battle. The Yellow Hand character is based on Roman Nose only to the extent that he dies at the engagement. The actual Yellow Hand was killed (and scalped) by Buffalo Bill Cody in July 1876 (after the Little Big Horn) at the Battle of Warbonnett Creek.

The film features several scenes of the US Cavalry in action. For these, the production used the last regular mounted cavalry unit in the US military, the 115th Cavalry of the Wyoming National Guard. These scenes were shot at Pole Mountain near Laramie. An incident from this filming resulted in bad public relations as headlines blared, "Head of Wyoming's Guard is 'out' $1,000 as check stopped."

Lieut. Col. R.L. Esmay, adjutant general of the Wyoming national guard, was badly worried today that he might have contributed $1,000 of his personal funds, quite involuntarily, towards the making of the Paramount picture, "The Plainsman." Members of the Wyoming national guard encamped at Pole Mountain, 20 miles west of here (Cheyenne, WY) last week, were promised $1,000 for participating in some sequences of the picture.

Colonel Esmay said Eugene Hornbostel, a business manager of the Paramount on location, gave him a check in payment for the services of the men in helping depict an attack by General Custer's old seventh cavalry against Indians. Colonel Esmay deposited the check in his personal account and drew checks against it to pay the men participating. Now Colonel Esmay has been informed payment on the film company's check was stopped because some of the costume equipment used in the picture was not returned. Esmay said he was not informed any equipment was missing until three days after the guardsmen broke camp to return to their home situations.

Research has produced no evidence on a resolution to the Commander's $1,000 stopped check.

The film's finale shows Wild Bill and Calamity Jane hiding from Custer's wrath for Calamity's betrayal outside Deadwood. Buffalo Bill tracks down Hickok, and they capture a young Cheyenne warrior (played by a very young Anthony Quinn) fresh from the Custer Last Stand. Quinn's character cannot speak English, and in one of the film's most embarrassing moments, he fakes a native language using absolute gibberish to tell Cody and Hickok of the great battle (which is then shown in flashback). Ironically, Custer's death removes the pressure on Hickok and Calamity, allowing them to walk the streets of Deadwood openly. While on those streets, Hickok finds more boxes of repeating rifles meant for the hostiles that just killed Custer. Hickok kills the main villain and captures the crew transporting the guns. He sends Cody to bring the cavalry and makes the momentous choice to pass the time by playing poker in a nearby saloon with his hostages. The film ends with Hickok shot in the back by Jack McCall (an accomplice of the main villain) and dying in Calamity Jane's arms, declaring his love for her as he does so. The Deadman's Hand is prominently displayed.

There is no evidence that Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were lovers. Contemporaries of the two stated categorically that the two were friends but that Hickok only tolerated her antics. The real Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary) was a tobacco-chewing, alcoholic ex-prostitute who claimed a relationship with Wild Bill in her later years. When she died in 1903, her request to be buried next to Wild Bill was granted to play a posthumous joke on the famous gunslinger, who supposedly had "absolutely no use" for Calamity.

The Plainsman was a huge commercial and critical success. It is a film full of contradictions, with careful attention and considerable resources paid to make authentic and thrilling action scenes. The paradox comes with pairing this authenticity with a laughably ahistorical narrative. It was a film of its time, presenting the (now controversial) theme of manifest destiny free of consequences. White actors portray any Native American with a speaking part. While effective, Arthur's portrayal of Calamity Jane is the standard damsel-in-distress trope. In the film, she wears pants, uses a bullwhip, and can drive a stage, but these are merely tomboy accents to a beautiful blond bombshell who only wants to settle down with the man she loves. The script's narrative, it must be said, is coherent and compelling. It wouldn't be nearly so frustrating if the same script used fictional names and places.