UK -- Cowboys and Cowgirls to Perform for Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A group of cowboys and cowgirls from California will take part in celebrations in May to mark Britain's Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, performing a 6-minute wild west show at Windsor Castle.

Reports the Visalia Times-Delta:

Queen Elizabeth II will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee — 60 years of reign — with a 90-minute show focusing on equestrianism throughout the world. And representing North America is a group of cowboys and cowgirls who will look to impress the queen with an entertaining, yet authentic look at the American West. "The queen was specific, she wants real cowboys at her party," said Clay Maier, who is organizing the North America portion of the show. "We've been working on this for two years to get it right. We want to be authentic."

The article says that to "ensure authenticity" the group performing May 13 will include 12 Native Americans, five cowboys, four Texas longhorn cattle, four trick ropers, an Abbot-Downing Concord stagecoach and four pinto horses.

The performance will hark back to Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show's command performance before Queen Victoria  on May 11,  1887, during celebrations that year marking Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West, including his full crew of 97 American Indians, 180 horses, 18 buffalo, and, of course, Chief Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, was the central attraction in London's American Exhibition in Earl's Court. Two days after its opening, Queen Victoria visited the exhibition for a private showing of the Wild West.

That the event did not take place in Windsor Castle, requiring Her Majesty to travel to see it, was remarkable. Cody thusly explained in a press release: This show "was altogether too big a thing to take to Windsor Castle, and as in the case of Mahomet and the mountains, as the Wild West Show could not go to the Queen it became absolutely necessary for the Queen to go to the Wild West Show if she desired to see it, and it was evident that she did."

As Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes put it in their 2005 book Buffalo Bill in Bologna: the Americanization of the World, 1869-1922, it was the first time since her husband Prince Albert had died 25 years earlier that Victoria had appeared at a public event.

Her attendance at the Wild West show was news everywhere in the English-speaking world, and the fact that she made her apperance in the context of the celebrations that marked the Jubilee Year of her reign only added more weight to the occasion. And what an occasion it was. When the show began and a rider entered the arena carrying the American flag, Queen Victoria stood and bowed. The rest of the audience followed suit, while British soldiers and officers saluted. As Cody described the moment:

"All present were constratined to feel that here was an outward and visible sign of the extinction of that mutual prejudice, amounting sometimes almost to race hatred, that had severed two nations from the times of Wahsington and George the Third to the present day. We felt that the hatchet was buried at last and the Wild West had been at the funeral."

Imaginary Wild West: Creator of the Bonanza Ponderosa Map has Died

Robert Temple Ayres, the artist who painted the original Ponderosa map featured on the TV show Bonanza, has died. The Autry Center blog reports that he passed away on February 25 in Los Angeles at the age of 98.

As for his painting of the Ponderosa map that opens the credits to Bonanza, the NBC series that ran from September 1959 to February 1973, for years it was one of the most recognized maps in the world. Audiences saw it briefly appear every week before it burst into flames and dissolved into a shot of the members of the Cartwright family on horseback, as the twangy theme played. It was donated by the family of David Dortort, the show’s producer, and has been hanging in the Autry’s Imagination Gallery since May 201Even though Ayers worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Elvis Presley at the peak of his fame, the artist never took the Hollywood hoopla seriously. He didn’t know the map had survived the series until shortly before he came to see it with his family in July. As a family member led him to it in his wheelchair, he exclaimed his surprise. “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Ayres said.”I had no idea where that had gone.”

Italy -- A Western Film Festival in Orvieto!

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I can't believe it -- found out that there is going to be a western movie festival this May in Orvieto, the beautiful hill town in central Italy near which I have a house and spend a good chunk of the year.

Western Festival Orvieto will take place May 11, 12 and 13. The program of films to be shown is not yet online, but there is a guest list that includes big names such as Bud Spencer and Franco Nero.

Karl May -- 60th Anniversary of the Karl May Movies!

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This year does not only mark the 100th anniversary of Karl May's death -- it also marks the 50th anniversary of the first Karl May movies, starring Pierre Brice as Winnetou and Lex Barker as Old Shatterhand.

The first movie in the series was Der Schatz im Silbersee -- The Treasure of Silver Lake -- which came out in 1962. It was shot on various locations in Croatia and starred Herbert Lom as the villainous Cornell Brinkley as well as Brice and Barker.

Here's the trailer in English:

Various events are taking place to celebrate the half-century and there is a web site devoted to the anniversary. Events include a Golden Jubilee celebration in Croatia June 5-9, with Pierre Brice in attendance.

Fashion: (Very) Imaginary Wild West

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

From Nudie to Ralph Lauren (and beyond) the fashion industry has long looked to an imaginary vision of the West, cowboys, the Frontier, Native Americans and all that for inspiration. The Autry Museum some years ago chronicled this love affair in a major exhibit, How the West Was Worn, which also resulted in a book by my friend Holly George Warren.

The latest (very) imaginary take comes now from the LA-based designer Jeremy Scott, whose Spring-Summer 2012 menswear line, called Urban Cowboy Couture, "updates an American classic" goes way beyond Rhinestone Cowboy glitz with a collection that features everything from rubber cowboy boots to crotchless fringed plastic pinto pants.....

Imaginary Wild West meets Modernity.... off geographic topic but interesting

The New York Times runs a piece today about historic Tombstone Arizona's battle to deal with the mountains of trash produced by the 200,000 tourists who visit each year to experience the world of Wyatt Earp, etc

It is fair to say that well before the Earp brothers shot three cowboys in a lot behind the O.K. Corral, this city had a trash problem. Mule and horse droppings were everywhere. The stench of leather being tanned, charcoal burning and ore being dug out of the earth burned the nostrils. Garbage piled high in the muddy streets.

The article notes that Tombstone issued an ordinance in 1881 -- Ordinance 6 -- that created a Board of Health and stipulated how to dispose of animal carcasses, rotting food and dead bodies. This ordinance was enacted before the much better known Ordinance 9 -- the one, also issued in 1881, that banned carrying guns in the city.

And still, more than 130 years later, the city continues to wrestle with its refuse.

Happy Karl May Year!

Poster for one of the exhibits

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Happy Karl May Year! The German adventure writer who gave us Winnetou and Old Shatterhand was born 1842 and in died in 1912 and many events are scheduled to mark the 170th and 100th anniversaries.


A web site has been set up to keep track of events and news. There is a long series of exhibits, festivals, symposia, conferences, lectures and other events programmed throughout the year, mainly in Germany but also in other countries. Some of the exhibits kicked off already in later 2011.

With any luck, I'll be able to get to some of these and report here.