The Plainsman

The film tells the West after the Civil War through three well-known names: Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill Cody. Fighting grows in the region as rifles taken from the army are sold to the native tribes. Hickok tries to find the gunrunner, Calamity Jane both helps him and lands him in trouble, and Cody has just married and wants a quiet life. Cecil B. DeMille uses these three not as they were but as legend; its relation to history is free and nobody hid that. Gary Cooper plays Hickok and Jean Arthur plays Calamity Jane. The portrayal of native people follows the conventions of the period: the tribal characters are not a side that speaks but stand there as a threat. That is the most troubling thing about the film today. Against that, DeMille's crowd sequences and Cooper's bearing made it one of the works that established the genre.