AHC's Gunslingers returns for 2nd Season

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2015

Last year I reviewed a couple of episodes of the AHC original docuseries, "Gunslingers".  Now, I see the American Heroes Channel's series returns for a 2nd season in July:

"The 19^th-century territory west of the Mississippi was a rough place, swarming with outcasts, murderers, thieves, gamblers and bounty hunters. Throughout this lawless landscape, a few brave men protected the innocent from the endless torment of gun-wielding outlaws. On Sunday, July 19 at 10/9c, American Heroes Channel (AHC) tips its cowboy hat once again to true stories of infamous icons, gun-toting gangs, and fabled conflicts of the Wild West with the second season of its top original series GUNSLINGERS. Each episode profiles a legendary character of the Old West from the unique P.O.V. of the icon himself, exposing their often little-known adventures, and how their fearless pursuit of freedom and profit still resonates in America today. “Behind every great hero is a villain and in the Wild West, where outlaw pursuits and vigilante justice paved the way for modern-day law and order, GUNSLINGERS toed the line between good and evil,” said Kevin Bennett, EVP and General Manager of American Heroes Channel. “Cinematic reenactments, slick special effects, and insightful commentary paint history with a stroke of contemporary attitude, making viewers forget they’re watching a small-screen docuseries, not a big Hollywood Western.” From bank-robbing outlaw Butch Cassidy and hard-nosed enforcer Seth Bullock, to infamous Dodge City sheriff Bat Masterson and lone-ranger Bass Reeves, the unforgivable Wild West kicks into high gear with each episode of GUNSLINGERS. Stories of bravery, survival, and good versus evil offer viewers a thrilling, heart-pounding ride alongside an infamous lawman or outlaw as he navigates his way through a series of pivotal showdowns in a volatile place and time with death lurking around every corner. Juxtaposed with vivid reenactments, expert commentary is layered throughout each episode to ensure the authenticity and historical accuracy of each story. Expert contributors include David Milch, the creator of Deadwood and Bob Boze Bell, the executive editor of True West Magazine.
GUNSLINGERS featured in the first half of the six-part series includes:
 Butch Cassidy – The Perfect CriminalPremieres Sunday, July 19 at 10/9cUntil the day that he died – whenever that was – nobody ever outsmarted Butch Cassidy. He always got away. Cassidy was an outlaw who lived more by his wits than by his gun. It was he and his pal Sundance Kid who first organized crime, masterminding one of the most remarkable crime sprees in American history and making them the most hunted men in America during the early 20^th century.
 

Deadwood Sheriff  and one time
Rough Rider and friend of Teddy Roosevelt,
Seth Bullock.  Image courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons.

Seth Bullock – Sheriff of DeadwoodPremieres Sunday, July 26 at 10/9cIn Deadwood, South Dakota, a mining camp swirling with violence and vice, Seth Bullock is the only stabilizing force standing in the way of utter chaos. Arriving in town at its apex of lawlessness – the very day after Wild Bill Hickok was shot – Bullock is quickly drafted to bring hard justice to the hopeless town. Bullock has his hands full as the mining town is full of prospectors, prostitutes, sharpshooters and outlaws.·         Featured commentator: David Milch, the creator of Deadwood·         Calamity Jane is played by Deadwood actress Robin Weigert Bat Masterson – Defender of DodgePremieres Sunday, Aug. 2 at 10/9cThis well-dressed gunfighter was a gambler, a hunter, an Indian fighter, a scout – but above all else, Bat Masterson was a lawman. As Sheriff of Ford County, Kansas, Bat Masterson kept the peace on the volatile Frontier and earned his fame taming Dodge City – the wildest town in the Old West. He survived the deadliest of shoot-outs on which his legend rests, and lived to tell his tale.

There's been quite a few programs done on Butch Cassidy over the years but I'd never seen anything on Seth Bullock before I watched the HBO miniseries "Deadwood".  In that series, Bullock is played by one of my favorite actors, Timothy Olyphant. (His performances as Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens on the FX series "Justified" kept me riveted for all six seasons of that series, too!)

As a child I grew up watching Gene Barry as Bat Masterson in the late 50s, although the TV series was based on the legend with little of the truth behind this lawman turned journalist.  I have found the AHC docuseries, with its reenactments by professional actors, far more engrossing than the old "talking head" type documentaries and should be especially interesting to American history enthusiasts and even Deadwood fans.

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Acorn TV to feature "World War One: The People's Story"

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2015

Today I received an email about the upcoming release of "World War One: The People's Story".  The documentary aired in the UK last August and will now be released on DVD on April 14, 2015. It will also be available on Acorn TV, the British streaming service available on Roku devices, iPads and iPhones, smart Samsung TVs or through your web browser on your computer.

Through original diaries, letters, and memoirs, this unforgettable documentary tells how the lives of regular British men and women were transformed by the Great War. A reservist leaves for the front determined to write to his mother every few days. A newlywed says goodbye to his pregnant wife. A young woman fears that when her fiancé sails for France, her hopes of marriage will disappear. For parents and children, soldiers and factory workers alike, life and love go on but never again as they did before. Few could imagine the horrors ahead: hundreds of thousands would never return, and those who did would carry wounds—physical, emotional, psychological—that would change their lives forever.

Along with historical footage, an outstanding cast of actors reenact first-hand accounts uncovered from attics, archives, and libraries across Britain. Narrated by Olivia Colman, this four-part series re-creates the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, told in their own words.

The DVD includes a 12-page viewer’s guide with a map of the western front; an overview of WWI; and articles on trench warfare, the suffragist movement, and the WWI poets.

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American Heroes Channel steps up production quality and research with "Gunslingers" premiering July 20

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2014

A week ago I received an invitation to review a new documentary series, "Gunslingers", that is slated to premiere on the American Heroes Channel (formerly the Military Channel) on July 20, 2014.  The first episode examines the life of the legendary Wyatt Earp.  Castle Pictures, who produced this docudrama series for AHC, recalls the life of each of these larger than life characters from the Old West by having the individual narrate (via a professional actor) the events of his life. AHC assures us that great care has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information presented.

WYATT EARP: World Premiere Sunday, July 20 at 10/9c

A reimagined Wyatt Earp.  Image courtesy of  the
American Heroes Channel.

"Tombstone was one of the Wild West’s most infamous settlements. The town’s powder keg of competing interests explodes, culminating in the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. When the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday confront a group of cowboys demanding they surrender their arms, the cowboys opt to use them instead… and three of them wind up dead. But the gunfight is just the beginning of the story. In its wake, Wyatt’s two beloved brothers are shot down, prompting him and Doc to go on a “ride of revenge.” This is the true story of Wyatt Earp: the town-taming marshal who sacrificed everything to bring his own kind of justice and order to the American West." - American Heroes Channel

Since I've seen the movie "Tombstone", I was pretty familiar with the events portrayed in this first segment. In fact, Kurt Russell, who played Wyatt Earp in the Hollywood film and is apparently an avid admirer of Earp and has studied Earp's life extensively, provides some of the commentary in this episode.

There were two incidents related in the docudrama, however, that I either had forgotten or were not mentioned in the Hollywood film. Doc Holliday, along with the rest of Earp's posse, apparently retreated during a gunfight with a group of cowboys that Earp's posse stumbled across while hunting for Morgan Earp's killers.   This left Earp alone and practically defenseless with his gunbelt around his knees because he had loosened his belt while riding to be more comfortable.  Earp still managed to kill one of the men who was thought to have been involved in Morgan's murder and somehow mystically escaped being wounded in any way. He later spreads his arms to show his bullet riddled coat to the astounded posse and they could hardly believe what they were seeing.

I was also unaware of Earp's apparent friendship with a very young John Wayne.  I know I saw a movie once (Sunset) where Earp in his twilight years (played by James Garner) is serving as a technical consultant in Hollywood for Republic Pictures and becomes a kind of sidekick of Tom Mix (played by Bruce Willis). Apparently Earp really did finish his career in this way.

Although this series covers similar material explored in the 2008 History Channel series "Outlaws and Gunslingers" (except for extensive coverage of John Wesley Hardin and Tom Horn) and omits some of the seedier activities of Wyatt Earp, I found the series a well crafted production and look forward to seeing future episodes examining the lives of Billy The Kid, Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin and Tom Horn.

Related articles

• Wyatt Earp Legend Crashes and Burns
• Dodge City, Tombstone, the OK Corral and 'Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life' (Review)

Related books

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DVD Review: Civil War: The Untold Story (of the western theater)

A history resource article by Mary Harrsch © 2014

Next week RLJ Entertainment will be releasing the new DVD series "Civil War: The Untold Story".  I know many of you Civil War buffs may be wondering how there could be anything about the Civil War that hasn't been told before, but this series, unlike a lot of others I have seen, focuses on the battles of the "west" which the producers claim actually led to the ultimate Union victory.

Now as someone from Oregon, I hardly think of Tennesssee as "the west" but it was, as far as the scope of the Civil War was concerned.  This series closely examines the battles of Shiloh, Stone's River, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and Chickamauga as well as Sherman's infamous march across Georgia that wasn't as one sided as many other programs have led us to believe.

These conflicts were particularly interesting to me because back in 1993 when my husband and I were helping my daughter move to the east coast, we visited almost all of the national military parks where these battles occurred on our way home, although we visited the sites in reverse, starting our journey at Fort Sumpter then traveling south to Savannah before swinging east to the site of the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville.  Then we drove on to Atlanta then Chatanooga, stopping at the Chickamauga National Battlefield, probably the largest military park on our trip.  Pressing on we drove to Stone's River then Franklin and finally visited our last Civil War cemetery at Shiloh.  The visitor's centers had excellent presentations about the battles, particularly at Chickamauga where the Park Service had just installed a new multimedia theater-in-the-round-type exhibit.  So receiving a review copy of this DVD set was like reliving that unforgettable trip!

The series begins with a discussion of the economic history of slavery.  I didn't realize that slavery was on the decline in the late 18th century until Eli Witney invented the cotton gin.  I remembered how, as a girl, I studied famous inventors like Eli Witney and his cotton gin.  Back in the 50s, though, school teachers did not point to the cotton gin as one of the primary reasons for the outbreak of the Civil War.
The documentary explains that, although the cotton gin was a labor-saving device, it made the cotton cleaning process so efficient that it made the growth of cotton far more profitable than almost any other crop.  Cotton exports jumped from 500,000 pounds in 1793 to 93 million pounds in 1810.  Cotton became as important to the U.S. economy as oil is today.

So, there was a land rush to develop more and more acres into cotton fields.  This corresponded to the increasing acquisition of land during the "manifest destiny" period of U.S. growth.  But, politically, there were sharp differences in opinion about whether newly admitted states would then have to legally sanction slavery viewed by some as necessary for cotton development.

The program was quite candid in pointing out that northerners, with the exception of a few passionate abolitionists, had no real objections to slavery as a labor strategy.  Researchers stated simply that white northeners didn't appreciate the racial "pollution" slavery introduced.   Apparently, successful black individuals in the north,  like Solomon Northup portrayed in "12 years a slave", were an extremely rare exception.

19th century Caricature of the so-called Hottentot
Venus.  Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

I had never heard about the so-called Hottentot Venus, a rather large African woman named Saartje Baartman, who was sold into slavery.  She was exhibited by showmen in London and Paris because of large fatty deposits on her buttocks.  After her death in 1815, famous French anatomist Georges Cuvier, performed an autopsy on her body, claiming it clearly showed that Africans were more closely related to such primates as orangutans and monkeys, than humans.  These types of studies not only reinforced attitudes of racial superiority in the north but the opinion that slavery actually served to civilize such unfortunate individuals in the south.

I was also surprised to learn that four slave states actually stayed with the Union throughout the Civil War.  Slavery was still legally recognized by the federal government and the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states in rebellion as a war measure intended to cripple the Confederacy.

The other military goal accomplished by the Emancipation Proclamation was that it successfully prevented the involvement of foreign nations in the struggle.  Britain and France actually considered supporting the Confederacy, since they imported most of the American cotton crop that was sold for export. But, many Europeans opposed slavery as an institution so Lincoln's directive along with a significant Union victory at Antietam successfully influenced foreign powers to maintain a "hands off" policy.

The series then shifts to an examination of military objectives of the Civil War.

From a military standpoint, reclamation of the important economic highway of the Mississippi River was paramount to defeating the Confederacy.  Yet, it appeared to me that Confederate leaders seemed to think there was more importance in victory at the high profile battles along the eastern seaboard (the Civil War version of winning hearts and minds) than in protecting the vital commerce artery of the Mississippi River in the west.  The most famous Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were assigned to those eastern theaters of war, while the battle for control of the Mississippi was relegated to Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood, names much less familiar to people like me that have not studied the Civil War as intensely as I have battles of the ancient world.

Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

I use the word relegated as if Johnston, Bragg and Hood were lesser commanders but that was not necessarily the case.  Johnston was an experienced combat veteran, fighting and directing engagements in the Texas War of Independence, the Mexican-American War, the Utah War and the American Civil War.  Johnston was actually considered to be the finest general officer in the Confederacy by Confederate President Jefferson Davis.  But this did not prevent Davis from distributing most of the Confederate resources to the eastern front.

Johnston had to supply his troops by conducting raids and engaging in maneuvers that made it appear that he had larger forces than he actually did.  My additional research revealed that this was compounded by the assignment of support staff that were either incompetent or frequently intoxicated.

Despite all of these obstacles, Johnston still managed to pull off a massive surprise attack against Ulysses S. Grant on the first day at the battle of Shiloh, despite being delayed for three days by adverse weather.  Grant just couldn't imagine Johnston would leave his well fortified position at Corinth to confront Grant in the field.  The surprise maneuver almost worked, with Confederates overcoming bitter Union opposition at the "Peach Orchard" and the "Hornet's Nest".  But, Johnston, charging back and forth ahead of the advancing Confederate line, was shot behind the right knee, possibly by one of his own soldiers .  The bullet cut a major artery and Johnston, seemingly unaware of the seriousness of the wound, bled to death.  The three days lost to bad weather would also prove fatal.

The epic struggle at the "Hornet's Nest" on the first day of the battle of  Shiloh.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

By the second day, Grant, with control of the vital Tennessee River,  received reinforcements bringing total Union troops to 45,000 men to the Confederates'  remaining viable troops estimated at only about 20,000.  To make matters worse, Confederate General Beauregard, unaware of the Union reinforcements, pressed Grant, only to be driven back.  Later counterattacks were eventually repulsed as well. So, Confederate forces finally had to fall back to the heavily defended railroad center at Corinth.

It makes you wonder if Grant had faced the more formidable Johnston on the second day and the battle had occurred on schedule, if the outcome would have been different.

Later in the series as the researchers discussed the campaigns of Sherman in Atlanta, I was surprised to learn about the Confederate successes at Kennesaw Mountain and the more aggressive resistance in Atlanta after command was given to General John Bell Hood.  As my husband and I did not visit any Civil War museums in Atlanta, I only remember Hood as a Confederate general who had suffered severe casualties at the battle of Franklin (where we did stop) in an action sometimes known as the "Pickett's Charge of the West".

Confederate General Braxton Bragg.  Image
courtesy of Wikipedia.

The other Confederate general I enjoyed learning more about was Braxton Bragg.  When I first saw a picture of him at the Chickamauga National Battlefield Visitors' Center, I thought he looked a lot like John Brown with his bushy brows and rather wild look in his eyes.  But this surly officer orchestrated what has been called the greatest Confederate victory in the Western Theater, defeating Union General William S. Rosecrans at the battle of Chicamauga.

As for other political issues of the Civil War, I had never read about George McClellan's run against Abraham Lincoln for president or that if Sherman had not taken Atlanta at the time he did, Lincoln may have lost to powerful and vocal northern supporters in favor of a truce that would have ended in two separate nations.  So I found all of this background information fascinating.

As for the production quality of the DVD set, I thought the reenactment sequences were very well done with very life-like special battle effects and the cinematography was excellent.  Elizabeth McGovern's narration was articulate and quite empathetic.  I much preferred her voice to the rather harsh newsbroadcaster voiceovers I have heard in other presentations.

The series will premiere tonight (April 22, 2014) on a number of public television channels and the DVD set will be available for purchase next week.  I highly recommend it!

Related articles

• Braxton Bragg led the best organized and disciplined army in the Confederacy

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