Miniseries I Missed Until Now: Buffalo Girls (1995)

There was a time when I was a big fan of Larry McMurtry’s work. This was back when I was in high school and college and he had published only a handful of novels. But those novels, especially THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, were the first ones I’d ever read that took place even partially in places where I’d been. When Sonny and Duane go to Fort Worth in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, they take the Jacksboro Highway, which meant they went within a couple of hundred yards of my house. I could stand in the street in front of the house and look down the hill to the highway and think, “Sonny and Duane drove right along there.” This immediacy and connection to my own life had a big impact on me, and I read everything by him I could get my hands on.

Then McMurtry went from being a Minor Regional Novelist (he claimed to have a T-shirt with that printed on it) to being a Big Bestseller and a Hollywood Guy, and while I still read one of his books occasionally, it was never the same after that. The kinship I’d felt with him (because I was an aspiring Minor Regional Novelist, too) was gone. Many years later, I sat at a Spur Awards banquet at the Western Writers of America convention in Fort Worth and listened to McMurtry give a long-winded acceptance speech because he won a Best Western Novel Spur for LONESOME DOVE. I maybe could have introduced myself to him later and told him I was once a big fan of his work, but nah, I was hanging around with Joe Lansdale and Scott Cupp and Bob Randisi, and that was a lot more fun.

So, speaking of long-winded, that’s why I never got around to reading McMurtry’s Calamity Jane novel BUFFALO GIRLS. They made a TV miniseries out of it in 1995, and I never watched it, either. But we came across a DVD of it at the library and thought, hey, why not? Anyway, it has Sam Elliott in it playing Wild Bill Hickok, and Sam Elliott is nearly always worth watching.

The story follows Calamity Jane from the time she’s working as a bullwhacker for the army through her time in Deadwood and finally her participation in her old friend Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show that traveled to England. As is common with McMurtry’s work, the plot strays within shouting distance of historical accuracy every now and then but doesn’t come any closer. McMurtry never worried about staying true to the facts, but I’m convinced he tried to capture the feeling of the times about which he was writing, and I’ll give him credit for that. This adaptation of BUFFALO GIRLS does capture the epic scope of the Old West and gets better as it goes along. The first half, which has all the Deadwood stuff in it, is actually a little weak, but the second half, about the Wild West Show going to England, is top-notch and very moving in places.

Anjelica Huston plays Calamity Jane. I thought at first that sounded like miscasting, but she does a fine job in the role. Sam Elliott is okay as Wild Bill but really has very litle to do. Peter Coyote plays Buffalo Bill Cody and is pretty good, although maybe not as flamboyant as he should have been. Melanie Griffith, an actress I’m not fond of, is the frontier madame Dora DuFran and came across to me as more annoying than anything else. Reba McEntire, a long-time favorite of mine, does a good job as Annie Oakley. Among fictional characters McMurtry added, the great Jack Palance and the very good character actor Tracey Walter are a couple of old mountain men and have some superb scenes, as does Floyd Red Crow Westerman as a sympathetic old Indian.

I really enjoyed watching BUFFALO GIRLS. It’s not going to make me rush out and read more of McMurtry’s books, but there are a few of them I’d still like to try. I have a copy of his Western TELEGRAPH DAYS, and I’m curious about his take on a gangster yarn, PRETTY BOY FLOYD. One of these days, maybe, if I get around to them. You know how that goes. Seldom. But now and then, it goes.