ATDTDA (1): Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (part 2)

[Tim Strzechowski]

continuing from Larson's The Devil in the White City:

Late in the program Cody himself demonstrated some fancy marksmanship, dashing around the arena on horseback while firing his Winchester at glass balls hurled into the air by his assistants.  The climax of the show was the "Attack on a Settler's Cabin," during which Indians who once had slaughtered soldiers and civilians alike staged a mock attack on a cabin full of white settlers, only to be vanquished yet again by Buffalo Bill and a company of cowboys firing blanks.  As the season advanced, Cody replaced the attack with the even more dramatic "Battle of the Little Big Horn . . . . showing with historical accuracy the scene of Custer's Last Charge."

The fair was hard on Colonel Cody's marriage.  The show always kept him away from his home in North Platte, Nebraska, but his absence wasn't the main problem.  Bill liked women, and women liked Bill.  One day his wife, Louisa -- "Lulu" -- traveled to Chicago for a surprise conjugal visit.  She found that Bill's wife already had arrived.  At the hotel's front desk a clerk told her she would now be escorted up to "Mr. and Mrs. Cody's suite" (p. 223).

[...]

Tim:  Sorry for skipping around here, but we should keep this in mind:

As construction of the buildings at last got under way, anticipation outside the park began to increase.  Colonel William Cody -- Buffalo Bill -- sought a concession for his Wild West show, newly returned from a hugely successful tour of Europe, but the fair's Committee on Ways and Means turned him down on grounds of "incongruity."  Undeterred, Cody secured rights to a large parcel of land adjacent to the park (p. 133).

Tim:  Okay, now back to our program, already in progress:

[...]

As the fair fought for attendance, Buffalo Bill's Wild West drew crowds by the tens of thousands.  If Cody had gotten the fair concession he had asked for, these crowds first would have had to pay admission to Jackson Park and would have boosted the fair's attendance and revenue to a welcome degree.  Cody was also able to hold performances on Sundays and, being outside the fairgrounds, did not have to contribute half his revenue to the Exposition Company.  Over the six months of the fair an average of twelve thousand people would attend each of Cody's 318 performances, for a total attendance of nearly four million. [...]
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