Episode #73
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST — AND WHY WE'RE STILL LIVING THE STORY
Cowboys, cameras, Buffalo Bill, John Wayne—and the remarkable power of stories to create the West we think we remember. There is the American West that actually happened. And then there is the American West that lives in our heads. Sometimes the two even recognize each other. That delightful and occasionally troublesome territory between history and imagination is where Stuart Rosebrook takes listeners in this edition of Arizona Roundup, produced at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona. His guest is Dr. Andrew Patrick Nelson, chief curator of the Western Spirit Museum in Scottsdale and a scholar whose career has been devoted in significant part to understanding the Western on film and the larger popular culture that grew around it. What begins as a conversation about Western movies becomes something considerably larger: an exploration of how human beings use stories, pictures, places, heroes and myths to understand where they came from—and perhaps where they are going. And naturally, John Wayne shows up. It would be difficult to have this particular conversation without him. A Canadian Cowboy—Eventually Nelson's journey to the West did not begin quite the way Hollywood might have scripted it. He grew up in Calgary, Alberta—home of the Calgary Stampede—but the popular culture surrounding his childhood in the 1980s contained considerably more Star Wars than Stagecoach. He loved movies. So when the inevitable teenage question arrived—"What are you going to do with your life?"—Nelson essentially answered: Movies. Fortunately, universities apparently allow that answer. His interest took him from undergraduate study at the University of Toronto to a master's degree at Carleton University, where he wrote about John Wayne, and eventually to doctoral study at the University of Exeter in England. Along the trail, something happened. He discovered the Western. Not simply cowboys riding horses and bad guys waiting outside the saloon, but the Western as one of cinema's great artistic traditions. John Ford. Howard Hawks. Anthony Mann. Sergio Leone. Budd Boetticher. And, of course, Wayne. Nelson describes one particularly important encounter with Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. He saw a European LaserDisc version during a supplementary college screening at a time when finding rare films required considerably more effort than typing a title into a streaming service. More than two hours later, the lights came on. Most of the other students had apparently departed. Nelson was still there. Something had happened. He had discovered what this supposedly familiar genre could actually do. Sometimes vocation arrives with trumpets. Sometimes it arrives on a Friday afternoon when everybody else has left the auditorium. Before Hollywood, There Was Buffalo Bill Rosebrook then takes the conversation farther back. Before John Ford. Before television Westerns. Before Hollywood had really discovered Hollywood. There was William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Cody understood something extraordinarily modern: history could become an experience. His Wild West performances transformed stories of the frontier into spectacle and carried those stories not merely across America but around the world. And Cody was willing to experiment with new media. Performers associated with his show—including Annie Oakley and American Indian performers—appeared in some of the earliest motion pictures made at Thomas Edison's facility. Here the program reaches one of its most interesting ideas. Buffalo Bill was not merely preserving Western history. He was helping create the popular imagination of the West. He became a bridge between what happened and the stories later generations told about what happened. That bridge continued through dime novels, newspapers and magazines, paintings, traveling shows, rodeos, silent movies, Hollywood Westerns, radio, television and eventually today's streaming productions. The technology kept changing. The story kept riding. When History Meets the Movie Business Then Rosebrook and Nelson wander into one of the most enjoyable arguments surrounding Western films: "But that's not the way it really happened!" Wrong gun. Wrong saddle. Wrong hat. Wrong mountain. And occasionally the wrong state entirely. Nelson knows the complaints. As someone who has appeared in Western historical documentaries, he has received his share of correspondence from viewers who noticed that a particular firearm, blanket or saddle did not belong where the filmmakers put it. And sometimes the critics are right. But movies aren't museums. Rosebrook points to True Grit. The story belongs largely to Arkansas and Indian Territory, yet Henry Hathaway's film gave audiences the magnificent mountains of Colorado. Why? Because directors paint with landscapes. Monument Valley can become Texas, Oklahoma or New Mexico because filmmakers are sometimes seeking something larger than geography. They are looking for a visual language that says: The West. Nelson describes the Western as an extraordinarily expressive canvas. The physical West is real, but the imagined West possesses its own geography. That doesn't mean accuracy doesn't matter. It means entertainment and history perform different jobs. And perhaps the best popular culture accomplishes something else entirely: It makes us curious enough to go looking for the truth. A great Western may not be a history lesson. But it might make somebody pick up a history book. That would be a pretty good second act. John Ford, John Ford and John Ford No serious conversation about Western cinema travels very far without encountering John Ford. For Nelson, two films were particularly important. The first was Stagecoach. Even watching it many decades after its release, Nelson recognized a remarkably sophisticated piece of filmmaking: composition, character relationships, movement, storytelling and visual language working together. The famous story about Orson Welles fits perfectly here. Asked how a young filmmaker could prepare himself to make something like Citizen Kane, Welles reportedly pointed toward repeated study of Stagecoach. Then there is The Searchers. That experience was different. Nelson admits that on first viewing he didn't entirely understand its towering reputation. But the film unsettled him. Questions remained. And those questions kept bringing him back. That may be another lesson hidden inside this Arizona Roundup conversation: Great art doesn't always explain itself on the first meeting. Sometimes it bothers us first. Then it follows us home. From John Ford to George Lucas The trail eventually leads somewhere that might surprise people who think they don't like Westerns. Star Wars. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg belonged to a generation of filmmakers deeply influenced by the great Western directors. Nelson is careful here. He doesn't simply declare Star Wars a Western. In fact, he argues against stretching the definition of the genre so far that the term eventually means almost nothing. But influence is another matter. Consider the basic pattern: a young man loses his family and joins a mysterious older figure on a mission involving a kidnapped young woman. Anybody who knows The Searchers might begin hearing some familiar hoofbeats somewhere behind the Millennium Falcon. The Western did not have to remain a Western to influence what came next. And that is how artistic traditions survive. The Museum as a Great Meeting Place The conversation then turns from movies to museums—and to why institutions devoted to Western history and culture matter so much right now. At Western Spirit Museum, Nelson sees an opportunity to bring together forms of Western art that are too often separated. Painting goes into one gallery. Sculpture goes somewhere else. Film becomes another department. Native American jewelry and pottery are categorized separately. Popular culture occupies another shelf. But that isn't how people actually experienced the West. Someone attending Buffalo Bill's Wild West might also read a dime novel. Someone watching a John Ford movie might also read a Western novel, listen to Western music, see illustrations in magazines or watch a television Western. The Western has always been multimedia. Nelson therefore describes a museum as a place where those separated pieces can be reunited. People may arrive because they recognize John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Wonderful. Once they're through the door, perhaps they'll discover Maynard Dixon. Or Navajo jewelry. Or Hopi pottery. Or an Arizona artist they've never encountered before. The familiar becomes the invitation to discover the unfamiliar. And That Brings Us Back to Sharlot Hall That idea is particularly appropriate for Arizona Roundup, because the program itself originates from the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. The museum does something extraordinarily important. It gives stories a place to live. Movies can inspire us. Books can teach us. Podcasts can start conversations. But museums allow us to stand in the presence of objects, art, buildings, documents and landscapes connected with the people who actually lived the stories. Sharlot Hall herself understood the importance of preserving Arizona's history before pieces of that history disappeared. That mission remains vital. In a digital culture where almost anything can be copied, altered, recreated or generated instantly, authentic places and authentic artifacts may actually become more valuable rather than less. The Sharlot Hall Museum is therefore not simply preserving yesterday. It is helping future generations understand Arizona—and the larger American West—through the lives, cultures, creativity and experiences of the people who made it. Arizona Roundup extends that museum mission beyond the museum grounds. It takes the conversation to listeners wherever they happen to be. And sometimes it gives them a very good reason to come to Prescott and see the story for themselves. THINGS TO REMEMBER The West is both place and idea. There is a historical West, but there is also an imagined West created through art, literature, movies, music and popular culture. Stories are powerful historical gateways. A movie doesn't need to function as a documentary to awaken curiosity about the past. The Western has always been multimedia. Buffalo Bill understood spectacle. Hollywood understood movies. Radio and television extended the mythology. Today's streaming platforms continue the tradition. Great art rewards a second look. Sometimes the work we don't immediately understand becomes the work that teaches us the most. Museums connect the pieces. They can put paintings, sculpture, artifacts, popular culture and historical evidence back into conversation with one another. THINGS WORTH SHARING Tell someone who thinks Westerns are "just cowboy movies" that some of America's greatest filmmakers learned their craft from them. Tell a young Star Wars fan that somewhere behind Luke Skywalker may be the shadow of John Ford. Tell someone who loves John Wayne or Clint Eastwood that those familiar figures can become the doorway to discovering artists, historians, Native American traditions, ranching culture and the complicated history of the West itself. And tell people that history is not merely something that happened. It is something each generation must decide to remember. THINGS TO TAKE NOTICE OF—AND TAKE ACTION ON 1. Pay attention to the stories shaping your imagination. Whether in business, leadership, family life or culture, we make decisions partly through the stories we believe. Ask yourself: Who created the picture of the world that I am carrying around in my head? That is a surprisingly powerful question. 2. Let curiosity take you one step farther. When a movie, podcast, painting or story fascinates you, don't stop there. Follow the trail. Read the book. Find the historian. Visit the place. Go to the museum. 3. In business, remember Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill Cody understood something entrepreneurs still sometimes forget: People don't merely want information. They want an experience. The best businesses don't simply describe what they believe. They create experiences that allow customers to see it, feel it and remember it. 4. Preserve the stories entrusted to you. Every family, organization, community and business has stories worth keeping. Record them. Write them down. Interview the people who remember. Save the photographs. Identify the people in them before nobody remembers who they are. History has an unfortunate habit of disappearing while everyone assumes somebody else is saving it. 5. Support the people and institutions doing the preserving. Visit the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona. Bring children and grandchildren. Attend programs. Explore exhibitions. Become involved. Support the museum's work. And continue listening to Arizona Roundup, because programs like this remind us that history doesn't have to sit silently behind glass. It can talk. It can argue. It can entertain. It can make us laugh. And occasionally it can send us home determined to discover what really happened. THE TRAIL CONTINUES Perhaps that is ultimately what Stuart Rosebrook and Andrew Patrick Nelson give us in this fascinating conversation. The American West survives not because everyone agrees about what it was. Quite the opposite. It survives because people keep talking about it, arguing about it, painting it, filming it, writing about it, preserving it and rediscovering it. Buffalo Bill carried the story under the Big Top. John Ford put it on the big screen. Generations of artists, writers, filmmakers, historians, ranchers and Native peoples have added their own stories, perspectives and corrections. Museums preserve the evidence. And now podcasts carry the conversation around the world. So perhaps the appropriate ending isn't: "And they rode off into the sunset." It's: "We'll be right back after the break." Because the story of the West isn't finished. And at the Sharlot Hall Museum, they're making sure we don't forget the chapters that came before. Arizona Roundup with Stuart Rosebrook From the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona—where the history of the West becomes a conversation for today.
