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Cutting Up Custer (Pop Culture Takes on a Controversial Cavalryman)
Having just done a post on his battlefield opponent Sitting Bull, and this year marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book My Life on the Plains (1874), we thought this might be the time to do a thing on George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876). Now there’s a polarizing figure! Lionized and mythologized as a heroic martyr by some; condemned as a vainglorious buffoon and martinet by others, Custer was a complicated figure, and a fascinating one, though taken on balance, I think, pretty awful, and not just from the modern perspective.
Yet there are ways in which nowadays Custer is painted a little unfairly. For example, much is made of the fact that he graduated last in his class at West Point. True! But when people say this, they tend to omit the fact that half of his graduating class had already LEFT school prior to graduation, either to serve in the just-launched Civil War, or for other reasons. It is entirely possible that, were it not for that large number of drop-outs, he might have graduated somewhere in the middle.
Possible, but probably unlikely. Custer was a prankster and scofflaw as a student, amassing one of the largest numbers of demerits in the history of the academy (nearly 750). I have always cherished this photo of him from his West Point days, prior to the cultivation of his pretty locks and mustaches, which reveal him as the doofus and screw-up that he was:
That is most definitely a face for smacking: surly, stupid, vacant. Nothing short of massacre by what used to be called Indians could extinguish an arrogance that vast.
Yet, it must be conceded that Custer distinguished himself as a soldier during the war. An extraordinarily skilled horseman, at the remarkably young of age 23 he became a brigadier general. He licked J.E.B. Stuart’s Cavalry at Gettysburg, and played a crucial role in encircling Lee in his mad dash for Appomatox, thus helping ending the war. He personally attended the ceremonal surrender.
After the war, his road was bumpy again. He was deeply unpopular with subordinates during his Reconstruction enforcement service in Texas, and was suspended for a year in 1868 after going AWOL to visit his wife. A Jacksonian Democrat (thus not at all of the Party of Lincoln) he toured with the deeply problematic Andrew Johnson to drum up support for his Presidency. And of course there was his uneven service during the Indian Wars, resulting ultimately in the suicidal Battle of Little Big Horn, much criticized by President Grant and the press in the aftermath.
The rehabilitation of Custer’s image, the campaign to mythologize him was led by his widow, Elizabeth “Libby” Custer (in spite of his well documented infidelities, including the taking of Native women as concubines). Libby had a financial stake in elevating Custer in the public’s memory. She wrote three books about him: Boots and Saddles (1885), Tenting on the Plain (1887), and Following the Guidon (1890) and toured the lecture circuit. Fortunately, above all men, Custer LOOKED the part of the cavalier, with his long flowing hair and well groomed whiskers, the rakishly cocked hat, the smartly turned-out uniform. Even knowing what we know, he’s still what we think of when we picture an American cavalryman during the Indian Wars. Like Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok, he became the hero of popular dime novels, with titles like The Dashing Dragoon, or, The Story of Gen. Geo. A. Custer from West Point to the Big Horn (1884) and Last Shot; or, The Boy Trailer of the Little Horn (1902).
A decade after the latter book, the tale was first brought to the silver screen in Custer’s Last Fight (1912) with Francis Ford in the title role. Some particularly notable takes on the character, where he is placed front and center, include the hagiographic They Died With Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn, General Custer at Little Big Horn (1926) with John Beck, Custer’s Last Stand (1936) with Frank McGlynn, and two highly absurd attempts to liberalize Custer’s character and make him seem sympathetic, The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) with Philip Carey, and Custer of the West (1967) with Robert Shaw.
A thinly veiled fictionalized portrait is delivered by Henry Fonda in the thought-provoking, enigmatic John Ford film Fort Apache (1948).
Custer was also the lead character in several TV shows: Custer (1967) starring Wayne Maunder (canceled due to protests by Native tribes), and tv movies The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1977) with James Olson, and Son of the Morning Star (1991) with Gary Cole.
Other actors who played the role on the big and small screen included Dustin Farnum (The Flaming Frontier, 1926), William Desmond (The Last Frontier, 1932), Ronald Reagan, (1940, Santa Fe Trail), Sheb Wooley (1952, Bugles in the Afternoon), Whit Bissel (tv series Cheyenne, 1957), Leslie Nielsen (The Plainsman, 1966), Josh Lucas (Class of ’61, 1993), and Peter Horton (Crazy Horse, 1996).
There are also several comical or satirical takes. The most delicious and devestating caricature has to be Richard Mulligan in Little Big Man (1970). Marcello Mastroianni gave the role a similar spin in French/Italian comedy Don’t Touch the White Woman (1974). In the silent era, Lloyd Hamilton played the title character in Colonel Custard’s Last Stand (1914), and Al Forbes played Custer in Stan Laurel’s Wide Open Spaces (1924). The story of Little Big Horn was also treated comically in Larry Verne’s 1960 novelty song “Please Mr. Custer”.
Also, from 1924 to 1937 a tribute of a different sort. Actor Raymond Glenn starred in dozens of B mocie westerns under the screen name Bob Custer. Implying a relation, one reckons, where one didn’t exist.
There are DOZENS more portrayals than these I’ve listed, but I wanted to keep the list sane and manageable, and stuck pretty much to more recognizable names. The most recent depiction I’m aware of was in the finale to Hell on Wheels in 2016. May God save in advance anyone who tries take on this divisive character going forward, with the country the way it is now!
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