14 - Chapter 14. Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney Ryley Cooper.

14 - Chapter 14. Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney Ryley Cooper.  
Annie Oakley was without a doubt the greatest markswomen who ever lived. She was christened Phoebe Ann Mosey but was called Annie from childhood. Oakley was the stage name that she assumed when she first started to perform with Frank Butler. From obscure and impoverished beginnings, she made herself into the best known woman of her time, propelled by an indomitable spirit and an uncanny shooting ability. We learn of her enduring marriage to Frank Butler and their first meeting — a shooting match in which the seemingly delicate young girl defeated the professional marksman; her association with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and its triumphal tour through Europe and America; the train crash that nearly took her life and her years as an actress and teacher. Yet with all her many successes she preserved her warmth, dedication and integrity. Her story remains to this day one of the grandest to have come out of the Old West.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter fourteen of Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney
Wiley Cooper. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Barry Eads, Chapter fourteen. It was not as
the hard riding, swift moving performer of the arena that
Annie Oakley made her return to the shooting world. The

(00:21):
injuries which she had sustained and the consequent operations had
aged her to an extent almost unbelievable. However, she was determined.
It was as though the accident had been a challenge
to her. The retirement to which she had looked forward
while with the Buffalo Bill show now seemed irksome, and
forced by sheer strength of will and outdoor exercise, the

(00:44):
woman rehabilitated herself to an extent where she again could
ride with something of her old skill, while her shooting,
under even heavier practice than formerly even improved. Then the
stage beckoned, and Annie Oakley exceeded to the temptation. It
was an unfortunate venture. The play was The Western Girl,

(01:06):
and in the slang of today it would be called
just one of those things. Miss Oakley's scrap books are
not filled to overflowing with information concerning the Opus. There
is however, a program which gives some light as to
the quality of the production and what it counted upon
to lure audiences. Annie Oakley in The Western Girl synopsis quote,

(01:29):
Act one, Billage Street in Fiddletown. The dead soldier the
half Breed has power. Lieutenant Hawley seeks revenge. Jim Barry
and his blind daughter come to town. The half Breed
attempts murder and is stopped by Nance Berry. The sure
shot Micki mc gain has domestic troubles. The German scientist

(01:51):
helps the poor hen pecked irishman. The half breed makes
love to the blind girl and ties her on his horse.
The father interferes. We are partners in a gamble for money,
but we are enemies when you gamble on the damnation
of my daughter's soul. The half breed calls for the
Mexican girl the gleam of a stiletto. The father is helpless.

(02:12):
The half Breed makes a dash for liberty. The Western
Girl proves the best rider and carries away the prize.
End quote. Please remember that this is only the first act,
and as one can easily guess from the things she does,
Nance Berry is the Western Girl as played by Annie Oakley.
So far in one act she has saved two lives,

(02:34):
which was running a high average even for the days
when melodrama possessed more of interest than it does today.
But to continue quote Act two, interior of the Mexican
music Hall. The Mexican Girl dances for the boys. The
half breed shakes hands with Jim Barry. Mickey McCain is

(02:55):
hunted down by his cyclone wife and is made to
dance a two step home. Lieutenant Hawley fears trouble with
the bandits and rides to Silver Creek for reinforcements. The
Mexican Girl bids him good bye with a curse. The
German gets into a heap of trouble with the road
agents and plays a Yankee trick. The Western Girl seeks

(03:15):
to help Lieutenant Hawley, but is held prisoner. The Mexican
Girl and the half breed prove dangerous enemies. The Chinaman
brings the washing, The Lame Fiddler plays a smart trick.
The Western Girl fires a shot for liberty. Thus the
plot thickened in a work of art of which Annie
Oakley said nothing in her notes, and saved but few

(03:38):
reminders in her scrap books. To one who had performed
before queens and kings. Perhaps this effort, once she had
found herself embroiled in its cast of characters, which, to
judge from the Chinese, Mexican, Irish, German, Indian, and other components,
perhaps formed one of the originals. For the League of
Nations was something better forgotten than cherished. But from a

(04:01):
standpoint of humor, the Western Girl was almost unforgettable to wit.
The third and fourth acts quote Act three, Block House Canyon.
In the evening, Jim Barry, the King of Bandits, intends
to reform. Lieutenant Hawley is made captive the arrival of
the Silverwood coach. The hold up. The German has his

(04:23):
baggage examined, and the men marvel at the contents. The
Irish lady is made to dance. The German again plays
a Yankee trick. The quarrel among the men for a
little Mountain girl. Jim Barry plays a game of cards
for his daughter's honor. I have lost my own soul.
The Western Girl shoots at the heart of the one
she loves. Holly escapes, but is held to account by

(04:47):
the Mexican girl. The bridge across the cliff has fallen.
Nance Berry throws a lariat and the day is won
for the Western Girl. Act four, The Eagle's Nest in
the mountains. The Western Girl shoots game. The two sisters
are in love with one soldier. The father makes an
awful mistake. The blind girl makes her life's sacrifice. The

(05:10):
Irish lady has many tears and the German lends sympathy.
The Bandits demand the presence of their captain. The refusal,
the gun at the heart of the blind girl, the
timely arrival of nance Berry. Horses are galloping down the mountain.
The Eagle's nest will be destroyed, but the U. S.
Cavalry and Lieutenant Hawley make a charge. The family is

(05:32):
safe and the Eagle's nest again a happy home. Love
Love is a flower, Evidently the flower withered considerably. By
April of nineteen o three, Annie Oakley was away from
the mechanations of Mexicans and Banditi, German, Chinese and Irish
comedians down in Dark County, Ohio, on a visit to

(05:55):
her childhood haunts, where clear air could aid one in
ridding the lungs of the acrid smoke of bandits guns
and the dusty charge of cavalry. Following this, she went
back to the giving of exhibitions before gun clubs, and
the shooting of matches, wrecks, operations, and even the experiences
of being a Western girl had not impaired her aim.

(06:17):
Soon sportsmen's magazines were carrying the stories that Annie Oakley
was shooting with even better precision than she had known
in the days when her white hair was chestnut colored,
and she was a favorite star of the Buffalo Bill
Wild West. But one morning she awoke in her home
in Nutley, New Jersey, to learn how swiftly one may

(06:37):
pass from public view, how completely even those who are
supposed to know better can forget. It was perhaps the
most grueling experience which Annie Oakley ever went through, for
this carried more than physical torture. It was mental. Out
of Chicago, the wires of a press association had borne
the following story quote, Annie Oakley asks court for mercy,

(07:01):
famous woman crackshot, whom Edward the Seventh applauded steals to
secure cocaine. Annie Oakley, daughter in law of Buffalo Bill,
and the most famous rifle shot in all the world,
lies to day in a cell at the Harrison Street
Station under a bridewell sentence for stealing the trousers of
a negro in order to get money with which to

(07:23):
buy cocaine. The woman for whose spectacular markmanship King Edward
himself had once led the applause in the court yard
of Buckingham Palace. When arrested Saturday on the complaint of
Charles Curtis, a Negro, she was living at one forty
Sherman Street. She gave the name of Elizabeth Cody, but
it occurred to no one to connect her with Colonel

(07:45):
Cody's famous daughter in law. To day, however, when brought
before Justice Cavalley, she admitted her guilt. I plead guilty,
your honor, but I hope you will have pity upon me,
she begged. An uncontrollable appetite for drugs has brought me here.
I began the use of it years ago to steady
me under the strain of the life I was leading,

(08:06):
and now it has lost me everything. Please give me
a chance to pull myself together. The striking beauty of
the woman whom the crowds at the World's Fair admired
is now entirely gone. Although she is but twenty eight
years old. She looks almost forty hers. In fact, is
one of the extreme cases which have come up in

(08:26):
the Harrison Street Police Court. To day. She will be
taken to the Bridewell to serve out a sentence of
forty five dollars and costs a good stay in the bridewell.
Will do you good? Said the court. The prisoner's husband,
Sam Cody, died in England. Their son Vivian, is now
with Colonel Cody at the latter's ranch on the North Platte.

(08:48):
The mother left Buffalo Bill two years ago and has
since been drifting around the country with stray shows. Never
perhaps was there a more deliberate slaughtering of the goodness
name of a good woman. Nor was this all Reporters
who professed to have seen the Buffalo Bill Show and
to have known Annie Oakley, interviewed the woman, Elizabeth Cody,

(09:10):
daughter in law of Buffalo Bill, in her cell and
straightway went to their offices that they might write dilated
accounts of the downfall of Little Sureshot. They told of
her craving for cocaine, of her depths of despair, of
the horror of her condition as a drug addict, and
the real Annie Oakley read all this in her home

(09:31):
at Nutley, New Jersey, with feelings impossible for her to describe.
All this is being told here for more reasons than
because of the part that it played in the life
of Annie Oakley. For this story was more than a
mere individual affair. It played its part in newspaper history
and did much to make news gathering agencies the more

(09:52):
efficient human machines which they are today, and changed the
aspects of a number of newspapers tremendously towards what makes
news and what should be considered before that news may
be given to the public. This was during a time
of transition when yellow journalism was at its height, having
come into existence during the Spanish American War and thrived

(10:15):
upon the looseness of reports and so called reports from
the various seats of conflict. Rumors were often printed as facts,
and too little thought was oftentimes given to the fundamentals
behind the news of the day and the effect that
it might have upon those who prospered or suffered by it.
A woman, a drug addict, so it seems, had been

(10:37):
arrested on the complaint of a negro at whose home
she had been given shelter. She had stolen from him,
and during the arraignment, according to the sifting of facts,
a policeman noticed the name of Cody and made some
joking remark about it, asking the woman if she were
any relation to the renowned Buffalo Bill. She had answered
in the affirmative. Then he had said, I suppose you're

(11:00):
the woman who used to do all the shooting in
the show. The drug addict professed that she was the woman,
and from that start the story of Annie Oakley's downfall
had grown a mass of fabrications, of loose reporting, looser editing,
and in fact, a general violation of all the rules
by which reporters are supposed to give their gleanings to

(11:22):
the public. Annie Oakley's action was swift. The fighting instinct
of little Missy went to its highest pitch. Within a
short time, more than fifty newspapers faced suits for libel
in one of the greatest concerted actions ever brought. In
all but two of the cases, Annie Oakley was successful,
winning the suits and damages ranging from five hundred dollars

(11:45):
to as high as twenty seven thousand, five hundred dollars,
the last being against the main offender, which had run
follow up stories adding insult to injury, and that Annie
Oakley was fighting mad, may be gauged from her remarks
to one of the juries which returned a verdict against her,
if her note books are correct, for within them is

(12:06):
a type written copy of a speech by which Annie
Oakley vented her feelings. Quote, gentlemen of the jury, you
have measured the honor in which you hold the wives
and daughters of your city by the verdict just rendered
to the defendants. I would say, if the gentleman who
fought for this state during the Civil War conducted their

(12:26):
defense with as much cowardice as the defense has been
conducted against one lone little woman in this suit, I
don't wonder that they were defeated. I will withdraw from
the court room immediately, so as to give one or
all of you, gentlemen, who are such gallant defenders of
women's honor, a chance to further your cowardice by shooting

(12:46):
me in the back, if you so choose. End. It
has been said that these suits made newspaper history. They
did more. They gave to newspapers a greater concern for
investigation and the lack of trustfulness which had been held
before in the word of someone else. Today, in the
average newspaper office, such a fabrication would be almost impossible,

(13:11):
largely because of lessons taught years ago by the fighting
spirit of a woman whose name, inadvertently and innocently, in
a number of cases where the facts were not at
hand to prove or disprove, the alleged facts of the
dispatch had been badly trampled in the dust. Today, for instance,
largely as a result of Annie Oakley's action and the

(13:32):
necessity which it proved for careful checking of all accounts
having to do with prominent persons. The reporter does not
rush immediately to his office and write his story when
someone gives him a tip. Instead, he checks up on
the information at the source, then, having armed himself with
the alleged facts, goes to what is known as the

(13:53):
morgue for comparisons. Every newspaper is today equipped with a
morgue of greater or less degree. In it are files
of the newspaper since its inception, photographs of well known persons,
their complete life history, their anecdotes, and in fact every
possible fact connected with them. A visit to the morgue

(14:15):
and a comparison would have shown in the case of
the Annie Oakley story, first that Annie Oakley's name was
not Cody but Missus Frank E. Butler, That her home
was in Nutley, New Jersey, and that she had appeared
in a professional role as late as a few weeks before.
That she had not been in Chicago since nineteen o two.

(14:36):
That she had not been injured in Cincinnati, as was
claimed by the drug addict, but that she had been
ill for two years as the result of a railroad
wreck in North Carolina. That Buffalo Bill's only son, kit
Carson Cody died when a baby in Rochester, New York.
That the woman who gave her age as twenty eight
could not be the real Annie Oakley, since the date

(14:58):
of birth of the genuine Little sure Shot was eighteen sixty,
fifteen years before the birth of the impostor. That Annie
Oakley for pictures are kept up to date nowadays, and
the impostor resembled each other in no particular, And that
in the case of the slightest doubt, there must always
be the interrogation on the part of the paper as

(15:20):
to whether the person in question is or is not
an impostor. It is no insult to a police character
to infer that this character may be taking the name
of a famous person in an effort to elicit sympathy.
But it certainly is hard on a widely known person
to announce that he or she is an habitue of
police courts. These safeguards have come to pass to day.

(15:43):
The comparison might be made of the lack of protection
of human life which existed upon railroads of a quarter
of a century ago and those which conform to the
United States safety appliances in use today. Accidents made the
railroads better. Annie the Oakley accident made newspapers, many of
which were suffering innocently from yellow journalism, better, not only

(16:07):
for the readers, but for themselves and those concerning whom
they published news. It is interesting, incidentally, to note from
the reports of the various trials, that Annie Oakley did
not embroil herself in a fight with the newspapers of America. Instead,
she was aided by numerous dailies, some of which were
those which had fallen an innocent victim to the story,

(16:30):
and did their best to show their sincerity of amends
by doing everything in their power to make such an
occurrence impossible. In the future, and that at least one
of the offending papers not only forgave her anger but
condoned it. Is exhibited in an old scrap book found
in the effects of the Marxwoman. The letter accompanied a

(16:50):
piece of extremely favorable publicity and read, Hoboken, New Jersey,
Dear missus Butler, although you dug into us for three
thousand iron men at a time when three thousand was
a large sum with us, you see, we still love
you yours very truly, The Hudson Observer, end of Chapter fourteen,