Description:

Cody William


William "Buffalo Bill" Cody: Signed Studio Photo Portrait with Charming Inscription

 

Outstanding 7.25" x 9.25" studio photo portrait of Cody in Western costume, holding hat and rifle, inscribed and signed by him in the lower left corner: "To My Little Tallented [sic] friend Ruth Graham From W. F. Cody 'Buffalo Bill' 1910". Gessford of N.Y. credit. Affixed to the original mount. Superb in all respects!

 

Buffalo Bill grew up on the frontier and loved his way of life. As he got older, some of his titles he earned included buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout and guide, and showman, as well as Pony Express Rider, Indian fighter, and even author. Whatever Cody’s titles, he was destined for fame. His track of fame began as with his reputation as a master buffalo hunter. While hunting buffalo for pay to feed railroad workers, he shot and killed 11 out of 12 buffalo, earning him his nickname and show name “Buffalo Bill.”  At the turn of the twentieth century, William F. Cody was known as ‘the greatest showman on the face of the earth’”. Cody had full domination of the Wild West show business.

 

In 1883, Cody created what would become Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a grand performance that propelled him to fortune and worldwide fame. The Wild West was staged, in one form or another, for thirty years, playing to enthusiastic crowds throughout the United States and Europe. In Europe, Cody was called “Nature’s Nobleman” because he was someone who had grown up on the frontier yet represented all of those best aspects of civilization.

Despite his characterization as a figure from the past, Buffalo Bill always looked to the future. As a businessman, he invested in projects that he hoped might bring economic growth to the West. With his earnings, he invested in an Arizona mine, hotels in Sheridan and Cody, Wyoming, stock breeding, ranching, coal and oil development, film making, town building, tourism, and publishing. In 1899, he established his own newspaper, the Cody Enterprise, which is still the main source of news for the town of Cody today. Taking advantage of his celebrity status, Cody was an early advocate of women’s suffrage and the fair treatment of American Indians.

By the turn of the twentieth century, William F. Cody was arguably the most famous American in the world. No one symbolized the West for Americans and Europeans better than Buffalo Bill. Every American president from Ulysses S. Grant to Woodrow Wilson consulted him on matters affecting the American West. He counted among his friends such artists and writers as Frederic Remington and Mark Twain. He was honored by royalty, praised by military leaders, and feted by business tycoons. Cody was America’s ideal man: a courtly, chivalrous, self-made fellow who could shoot a gun and charm a crowd. Yet as Annie Oakley put it, “He was the simplest of men, as comfortable with cowboys as with kings.”


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