Distinctly Montana Magazine

92 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 4 Which makes the ending of this film especially poignant when Stoddard, who has always vowed to never carry a gun, ends up shooting the town menace, played with his usual menacing-ness by Lee Marvin. But did Stoddard really shoot him? That's where we get the fabulous twist in this beautifully crafted film. And it brings a mor- al and ethical complexity to the film that was often missing in the white hat/black era of filmmaking. When writing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Johnson said, "I asked myself, what if one of these big bold gunmen who are having the traditional walkdown is not fearless, and what if he can't even shoot. Then what have you got?" Johnson spent several years working for the Montana Histori- cal Society, interviewing Montanans about their histories, focus- ing as much on Native Americans as non-Natives. She wrote two novels that featured Native characters, Buffalo Woman and All the Buffalo Returning. And A Man Called Horse is a story about a British aristocrat who is adopted by a tribe when he finds himself stranded in the middle of the plains. So she embraced the entirety of the Western experience, with- out romanticizing this place, as so many outsiders have done when they write about the West. Johnson once said, "I think the people who headed West were a different kind of people. Somebody said in a long poem that the cowards never started and the weaklings fell by the way. That doesn't mean that everyone who went West was noble, brave, courageous, and admirable because some of them were utter skunks, but they were strong, and I like strong people." Dorothy Johnson died in 1984, at the age of 78, and the New York Times obituary included this gem: Miss Johnson, the author of ''The Hanging Tree,'' ''Bloody Boze- man,'' ''A Man Called Horse'' and many other books, short stories and magazine articles, had specified that the inscription on her grave marker be ''PAID.'' It turns out that Johnson's husband was an incurable gam- bler, but that thanks to her writing, she was able to cover all of his debts. Just one more example of the fact that when Dorothy Johnson was writing about the struggles of living out West, she knew what she was talking about. roundhouse-sports.com roundhouse-sports.com 4 0 6 - 5 8 7 - 1 2 5 8 4 0 6 - 5 8 7 - 1 2 5 8 1 4 2 2 W e s t M a i n , B o z e m a n 1 4 2 2 W e s t M a i n , B o z e m a n B E S T S K I S H O P B E S T S K I S H O P I N I N M O N T A N A M O N T A N A V O T E F O R U S ! V O T E F O R U S ! of B E S T M O N TA N A A S V O T E D B Y R E A D E R S O F 2023 W I N N E R !

• Cover