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Oklahoma Western Biographies #7
The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (Volume 7)
With a widowed mother and six siblings, Annie Oakley first became a trapper, hunter, and sharpshooter simply to put food on the table. Yet her genius with the gun eventually led to her stardom in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The archetypal western woman, Annie Oakley urged women to take up shooting to procure food, protect themselves, and enjoy healthy exercise, yet she was also the proper Victorian lady, demurely dressed and skeptical about the value of women’s suffrage. Glenda Riley presents the first interpretive biography of the complex woman who was Annie Oakley.
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1994
About the author
Glenda Riley
48 books8 followersLibrary of Congress Authorities pub. info. gives additional name: Shauna Reilly (lives in Indiana; pseudonym of Glenda Riley)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 18, 2015
It kills me to say that this is the single best biography about Annie Oakley. The facts are all there, and this is one of the most complete, accurate accounts of Oakley's life and career. Riley does some work toward dispelling old myths (such as her age).
Unfortunately, the book is strangled by problems.
1) Riley is obsessed with finding Oakley's dark side. This is a theme she beats on, again and again, nit-picking statements and stories to find the slightest sin. She can't accept that Oakley was an exemplary human who lived an exemplary life. The light is too bright--and Riley must find a shadow.
In her conclusion, Riley presents a laundry list of Oakley's worst sins. I think that, simply by summarizing them, you'll see how absurd this is.
A) Oakley donated a bunch of stuff to an orphanage. She found out that the caretakers were using it for themselves (and investigated to prove they were). So she snuck into the orphanage, stole it all back, and gave it to another, more deserving orphanage.
B) She put her niece through medical school. With one of her tuition payments, she sent a note giving make-up instructions.
C) If you were one of her favorite people, she would come to stay with you without warning, and treated your house as her own.
D) Her agent lied about her age, and she didn't explicitly correct it for years.
It's hard to imagine counting these as a "dark side." She sounds like a great deal of fun--not a woman carefully hiding evil.
2)Riley regularly cites Annie Oakley's "descendant." If Oakley had no children, then. . .
3) Riley is obsessed with finding moments for Oakley to be tempted, and imagines that Oakley's like of virtue was dull and spirit-crushing. There is NO documentary evidence to support this. If this happened once or twice, it may have been forgivable, but this resoundingly shoddy work is strung along through the whole of the book.
4) Riley has moments where she jumps off into baseless speculation. It's well known that Oakley and her husband, Butler, had no children. But why? Could they even conceive? Did they use contraceptives? Was it a sexless marriage? Had the abuses she suffered in her childhood ruined her reproductive organs? Or, laughably, was Oakley such an active woman that her reproductive organs shut down? Multiple pages are spent on this unsubstantiated drivel. No answer can be attempted; we simply lack any evidence to hazard a guess. Though most of Riley's theories seem about as likely as theories about Jack the Ripper's identity.
5) The final chapter, a discussion of Annie Oakley in pop culture, is horrendous. It makes a laundry list of historical blunders, and poo-poos and mocks whatever the author dislikes. I agree, most of those films and books are trash--but the tone is off-putting in what should be scholarly.
The problems with this book are so overwhelming that I can't even celebrate it for what it does well. Hopefully someone comes along to write a true, masterful biography of Annie Oakley.
Until then, despite everything, this one is the very best.
Unfortunately, the book is strangled by problems.
1) Riley is obsessed with finding Oakley's dark side. This is a theme she beats on, again and again, nit-picking statements and stories to find the slightest sin. She can't accept that Oakley was an exemplary human who lived an exemplary life. The light is too bright--and Riley must find a shadow.
In her conclusion, Riley presents a laundry list of Oakley's worst sins. I think that, simply by summarizing them, you'll see how absurd this is.
A) Oakley donated a bunch of stuff to an orphanage. She found out that the caretakers were using it for themselves (and investigated to prove they were). So she snuck into the orphanage, stole it all back, and gave it to another, more deserving orphanage.
B) She put her niece through medical school. With one of her tuition payments, she sent a note giving make-up instructions.
C) If you were one of her favorite people, she would come to stay with you without warning, and treated your house as her own.
D) Her agent lied about her age, and she didn't explicitly correct it for years.
It's hard to imagine counting these as a "dark side." She sounds like a great deal of fun--not a woman carefully hiding evil.
2)Riley regularly cites Annie Oakley's "descendant." If Oakley had no children, then. . .
3) Riley is obsessed with finding moments for Oakley to be tempted, and imagines that Oakley's like of virtue was dull and spirit-crushing. There is NO documentary evidence to support this. If this happened once or twice, it may have been forgivable, but this resoundingly shoddy work is strung along through the whole of the book.
4) Riley has moments where she jumps off into baseless speculation. It's well known that Oakley and her husband, Butler, had no children. But why? Could they even conceive? Did they use contraceptives? Was it a sexless marriage? Had the abuses she suffered in her childhood ruined her reproductive organs? Or, laughably, was Oakley such an active woman that her reproductive organs shut down? Multiple pages are spent on this unsubstantiated drivel. No answer can be attempted; we simply lack any evidence to hazard a guess. Though most of Riley's theories seem about as likely as theories about Jack the Ripper's identity.
5) The final chapter, a discussion of Annie Oakley in pop culture, is horrendous. It makes a laundry list of historical blunders, and poo-poos and mocks whatever the author dislikes. I agree, most of those films and books are trash--but the tone is off-putting in what should be scholarly.
The problems with this book are so overwhelming that I can't even celebrate it for what it does well. Hopefully someone comes along to write a true, masterful biography of Annie Oakley.
Until then, despite everything, this one is the very best.
January 16, 2023
Used in research for my undergrad thesis, contains an extensive bibliography, a quick enjoyable read
February 13, 2023
Informative but I was not a huge fan of the writing style.
August 17, 2011
For the most part this was a well written biography of the Sharpshooter Annie Oakley. My problem with it was that the author decided that her "legacy" was more important than her life. She covered the actual biography but then spent a lot of time talking about her influence on women in the late 1880's until her death in 1926.
I picked up the book because I was listening to some of the songs from Annie, Get Your Gun and started wondering how much of the musical was factual and how much was fiction. Seems it was pretty much a blending with lots of fictionalization of Annie "submitting" to Frank Butler but the shooting and the time spent with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show was pretty accurate. Annie and Frank were already married before Cody entered their lives, and stayed married for over 50 years, dying within weeks of each other in 1926.
Frank realized early on that he was a good shooter and could keep pace with Annie, but that she was much more of an attraction and show person than he was, so most of their marriage he managed Annie, shooting with her at exhibitions and the like but she was the "star" of the family. They never had children other than their various dogs, so depended on each other for support all through Annie's career and multiple "retirements".
My problem with the influence on women was that it was happening when lots of women were very vocal about Womens rights and Annie really didn't spend a lot of her time on the topic. She was passionate about teaching women how to shoot and thus be able to take care of themselves and wanted to promote the healthful benefits of walking, riding or cycling but for the most part she avoided actual politics. I thought the author was stretching some to contribute a change from 1880 to 1920 to Annie. Certainly she was a role model but not a driving force.
I picked up the book because I was listening to some of the songs from Annie, Get Your Gun and started wondering how much of the musical was factual and how much was fiction. Seems it was pretty much a blending with lots of fictionalization of Annie "submitting" to Frank Butler but the shooting and the time spent with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show was pretty accurate. Annie and Frank were already married before Cody entered their lives, and stayed married for over 50 years, dying within weeks of each other in 1926.
Frank realized early on that he was a good shooter and could keep pace with Annie, but that she was much more of an attraction and show person than he was, so most of their marriage he managed Annie, shooting with her at exhibitions and the like but she was the "star" of the family. They never had children other than their various dogs, so depended on each other for support all through Annie's career and multiple "retirements".
My problem with the influence on women was that it was happening when lots of women were very vocal about Womens rights and Annie really didn't spend a lot of her time on the topic. She was passionate about teaching women how to shoot and thus be able to take care of themselves and wanted to promote the healthful benefits of walking, riding or cycling but for the most part she avoided actual politics. I thought the author was stretching some to contribute a change from 1880 to 1920 to Annie. Certainly she was a role model but not a driving force.
January 21, 2009
More of a skim than a read. (I admit I'm a skimmer.) This approach sets a lot of the biographical facts straight and tries to place Oakley in her moment in American/Women's history. The full bio comes in the front, so if you don't want to read any of the academics after that, you can stop.
The best did-you-know story is how Oakley took on Wm Randolph Hearst after his syndicate printed a story involving her and some cocaine that wasn't true. Unable to sue the syndicate, she took on each paper that ran the story. It took years. This is not a spoiler, really.
The best did-you-know story is how Oakley took on Wm Randolph Hearst after his syndicate printed a story involving her and some cocaine that wasn't true. Unable to sue the syndicate, she took on each paper that ran the story. It took years. This is not a spoiler, really.
February 13, 2013
A disappointment. For such a fascinating character, Riley manages to make Oakley seem boring. It's hard to believe that there is nothing to discovered about Oakley, but Riley takes 200+ pages to do just that.
Read
January 8, 2012Enjoying it so far. Story from her childhood in Ohio to her days in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
January 8, 2015
I don't know just why I'm reading all these eclectic biographies - Truman, Bing Crosby, Annie Oakley. What is that? What should I read next?
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April 14, 2016Interesting history here but the writing is lacking and repetitive. This could have been shorter and just as good.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews