Distinctly Montana Magazine

58 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 6 1876 Within months of the battle itself, Buffalo Bill begins performing "The Red Right Hand, or The First Scalp for Custer," which told the story of the battle as well as the tale, possibly apocryphal, of Buffalo Bill scalping Yellow Hair (sometimes Yellow Hand) as an act of ven- geance for the death of Custer. The reenactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn remains a mainstay of his show for decades. 1884- 1896 Cassilly Adams paints a 9.5 by 16.5 feet scene of the battle to be toured around the country. Though that venture did not find success, the painting is later bought by Anheuser-Busch, who mass-produced it and distributed it to thousands of bars. In Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, protagonist Robert Jordan remem- bers "his grandfather...felt resentment that any one should speak against that figure in the buckskin shirt, the yellow curls blowing, that stood on the hill holding a service revolver as the Sioux closed in around him in the old Anheuser-Busch lithograph that hung on the poolroom wall in Red Lodge." 1909 The first film adaptation of the event is made, entitled On the Little Big Horn, or Custer's Last Stand. 1912 Another film, Custer's Last Fight, directed by and star- ring Francis Ford (the brother of legendary Western di- rector John Ford) as Custer and William Eagle Shirt as Sitting Bull. It ran for two reels, or a scant 30 minutes. 1926 The 50th anniversary of the battle brings two new si- lent films: General Custer at the Little Big Horn and The Flaming Frontier. The latter cost $400,000 and pre- miered in New York City. Eighty-five-year-old Briga- dier General Edward Godfrey attends, while Custer's widow, Elizabeth, declines. 1941 Just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the highly fictionalized and romanticized They Died With Their Boots On, starring Errol Flynn as a swashbuck- ling Custer and Olivia de Havilland as his wife. Antho- ny Quinn, of all people, plays a decidedly Latin Crazy Horse. The film is a big hit, and serves as the cine- matographic hagiography of Custer par excellence, not to mention a powerful recruitment tool. The Lile Bighorn in the

• Cover