Literature & Culture

Literature & Culture

Literature and culture of the old west encompasses the stories, myths, and artistic expressions that have shaped our understanding of this iconic period in American history.
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Bonanza

Bonanza is an American Western television series that ran on NBC from September 12, 1959, to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 431 episodes, Bonanza is NBC's longest-running Western, the second-longest-running Western series on American network television (behind CBS's Gunsmoke), and one of the longest-running, live-action American series.

Charles Marion Russell

Charles Marion Russell

Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, and landscapes set in the western United States and in Alberta, Canada, in addition to bronze sculptures.

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood

Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, filmmaker and musician.

Cowboy boot

Cowboy boot

Cowboy boots are a specific style of riding boot, historically worn by cowboys. They have a high heel that is traditionally made of stacked leather, rounded to pointed toe, high shaft, and, traditionally, no lacing.

Cowboy culture

Cowboy culture

Cowboy culture is the set of behaviors, preferences, and appearances associated with (or resulting from the influence of) the attitudes, ethics, and history of the American cowboy.

Cowboy hat

Cowboy hat

The cowboy hat is a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat best known as the defining piece of attire for the North American cowboy.

Dime novel

Dime novel

The dime novel is a form of late 19th-century and early 20th-century American popular fiction issued in series of inexpensive paperbound editions.

Fast draw

Fast draw

Fast draw, or quick draw, is the ability to quickly draw a handgun and accurately fire it upon a target in the process. This skill was made popular by romanticized depictions of gunslingers in the Western genre, which in turn were inspired by famous historical gunfights in the American Old West.

Frederic Remington

Frederic Remington

Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art.

Gene Autry

Gene Autry

Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American actor, musician, singer, composer, rodeo performer, and baseball team owner. He largely gained fame by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades, beginning in the early 1930s.

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Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke is a media franchise centered around the American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston. It centered on Dodge City, Kansas, in the 1870s, during the settlement of the American West.

High Noon

High Noon

High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, and Otto Kruger.