How Buffalo Bill Became America’s First Global Superstar

I think I’ll give readers a few days free of the Biennale. Buffalo mozzarella might be delicious, but today Buffalo Bill beckons via the Buffalo Bill Center for the American West. I visited earlier this summer and wrote then about its top-notch collection of Western art, beautifully arranged in the center’s sprawling campus in Cody, Wyo., but the place is five museums in one, known as the Center for the West. Today I’ll look at galleries on the life, times, and immense fame of Buffalo Bill Cody (1846–1917).

Italy won’t be far. Cody is a story of world-size adventure and grit. He once established a Kansas boom town that he named Rome. It went bust. Years later, and what a wonderful American story, his name was on the marquee at the Vatican, where he and his Wild West show performed for the pope. He’d later hit Milan, Turin, Naples, Bologna, Ravenna, and Verona, where 65,000 saw him in the town’s ancient amphitheater. And Cody called his gun, a Springfield Model 1866, Lucretia Borgia, the Italian noblewoman portrayed as a vamp and murderess in a Donizetti opera he loved.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I think I’ll give readers a few days free of the Biennale. Buffalo mozzarella might be delicious, but today Buffalo Bill beckons via the Buffalo Bill Center for the American West. I visited earlier this summer and wrote then about its top-notch collection of Western art, beautifully arranged in the center’s sprawling campus in Cody, Wyo., but the place is five museums in one, known as the Center for the West. Today I’ll look at galleries on the life, times, and immense fame of Buffalo Bill Cody (1846–1917).

Italy won’t be far. Cody is a story of world-size adventure and grit. He once established a Kansas boom town that he named Rome. It went bust. Years later, and what a wonderful American story, his name was on the marquee at the Vatican, where he and his Wild West show performed for the pope. He’d later hit Milan, Turin, Naples, Bologna, Ravenna, and Verona, where 65,000 saw him in the town’s ancient amphitheater. And Cody called his gun, a Springfield Model 1866, Lucretia Borgia, the Italian noblewoman portrayed as a vamp and murderess in a Donizetti opera he loved.