Hollywood Storytelling Embraces Contributions of Black Cowboys
By: Keith Ryan Cartwight
Gene Autry.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
John Ford and John Wayne.
Sam Peckinpah and William Holden.
Sergio Leone Clint Eastwood.
Kevin Costner.
Those are just a few archetypes typically associated with the western film genre. They represent the kind of men and women who settled the West, but they do not represent all of them.
Unlike the 20th century, nowadays, traditional westerns tend to fall in and out of favor with audiences. Unlike today’s wildly popular series 1883, Hollywood has often misrepresented Native Americans and underrepresented Black cowboys.
In 1922, Bill Pickett, namesake of today’s all-Black rodeo that has paired events with PBR, starred in the silent film The Bull-Dogger.
Pickett, a real-life Black cowboy who had become an international celebrity over the previous 20 years by performing with the 101 Ranch and Wild West Show, is credited with developing the skill of bulldogging, which later evolved into steer wrestling. In recent years, The Bull-Dogger, directed by Richard Norman, has been referenced and talked about far more than it has ever been seen.
In the late 1930s, Herb Jeffries (sometimes credited as Herbert Jeffrey) became the first Black singing cowboy.
But his string of four cowboy films — Harlem on the Prairie (1937), Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938), Rhythm Rodeo (1938), The Bronze Buckaroo (1940) and Harlem Rides the Range (1940) — were low-budget productions meant to amuse Black audiences.
Billed as a “roaring round-up of song-studded thrills,” Jeffries’ turn as Bob “the Bronze Buckaroo” Blake could have been a satiric coup, but white audiences largely ignored the films.
Years later, when Hollywood popularized western films and television shows, studio and network executives did not have the courage to put a Black man on a horse in heroic roles like their aforementioned white counterparts. Instead, they were cast out of storylines, despite the real-life epic tales of Black cowboys like Nat Love, Bass Reeves, and Bill Pickett, to name only a few of the most famous.
There were a few exceptions.
On television, there was The Outcasts and Centennial.
The Outcasts, costarring the late Otis Young as Jemal David (and Don Murray as Earl Corey), ran for one season (1968–69) — although American audiences were not ready for the emergence of a reel Black cowboy in a lead role, all 26 episodes have recently aired in syndication — and, a decade later, Glynn Turman appeared in the 12-part mini-series Centennial on NBC from October 1978 to early February 1979.
Turman, who was born in Harlem and later became a rodeo cowboy, and fellow actors Reginald T. Dorsey, Obba Babatunde and James Pickens Jr. are honorary grand marshals for the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo. The BPIR is partnering with the PBR to bring the history of Black cowboys to the forefront with its new Texas Connection Series at Cowtown Coliseum in the Fort Worth Stockyards — the first of which takes place February 19.
Last year, Turman and his granddaughter were featured in an advertising campaign for Beyonce’s Ivy Park by Adidas. The clothing line was inspired by the Black cowboys — many of whom are profiled in the recently released book Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West — who Beyonce remembers seeing perform back when she was growing up in Houston.
On the big screen, John Ford tried making up for his earlier depiction of the West by casting a former NFL pioneer-turned-actor, Woody Strode, as the “noble bearing and intelligent” title character in Sergeant Rutledge (1960).
Nevertheless, author and historian Peter Cowie, who wrote John Ford and the American West, described Ford’s narrative as “patronizing.”
Cowie wrote, “This film makes an intriguing parallel between the Black man and the Indian. Both are regarded with fear by the whites, not just because of the hue of their skin but also because of a perceived physical superiority,” which is why Ford was determined to cast Strode despite the studio’s push for Sidney Poitier.
Poitier, who died last month just weeks before his 95th birthday, teamed with Harry Belafonte a decade later in making Buck and the Preacher (1972).
Belafonte mended his fractured friendship with Poitier — the two had a falling out two years earlier following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because of altered funeral arrangements the two were involved in making — to pair up in what he characterized as “the Black equivalents of Robert Redford and Paul Newman,” who had starred together in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Originally, the film received mixed reviews, and audiences never turned up at theaters. In the half-century since its release in April 1972, Poitier’s directorial debut has become a classic on television and is arguably the most significant all-Black western.
A couple of years later, Cleavon Little costarred alongside Gene Wilder in the comedic Black western Blazing Saddles (1974), which was noted as “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress in 2006 and has since been preserved by the National Film Registry.
In 1975, Take a Hard Ride featured Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson, who also made Joshua a year later in 1976. Hard Ride, a Blaxploitation-inspired spaghetti western, was described in a New York Times review October 30, 1975, as having taken “inspiration from dimly remembered earlier movies.”
Take a Hard Ride is remembered as the last great western of the decade, while Danny Glover is one of the most significant Black cowboys on-screen with not one but two standard-bearing portrayals in the 1980s.
Glover played Mal — a Black cowboy he described as an American folk hero who draws his gun as fast and rides as swift as the best of them — in Silverado (1985), followed by his earnest and praiseworthy interpretation of Joshua Deets — loosely based on the life of Bose Ikard — in the 1989 mini-series Lonesome Dove.
Based on the Larry McMurtry novel of the same name, Lonesome Dove starred Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall, who more than once has referred to the popular mini-series as “the Godfather of westerns.”
The initial script written in the 1970s pre-dated McMurtry’s manuscript and was set to star John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda before it fell through. The storyline, which McMurtry updated with strong women and the recognition of the role Black cowboys played in the west, became a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and, later, an entirely new screenplay was written.
Four years later, in 1993, the success of Lonesome Dove led filmmakers to Return to Lonesome Dove and featured Black roles played by Louis Gossett Jr. and Reginald T. Dorsey, whose casting is chronicled in the Black Cowboys of Rodeo.
Mario Van Peebles, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx, and Denzel Washington have also taken their own notable turns in westerns. There was Morgan Freeman in Unforgiven (1992), and Dorsey is particularly fond of Jeffrey Wright as Daniel Holt in Ride with the Devil (1999), which the discussion of reel Black cowboys often overlooks.
Unfortunately, many others were simply token characters. Just this year, there was a media scrum following a pair of original Netflix films — Concrete Cowboy and The Harder They Fall — both of which featured an all-Black cast.
Both also starred British actor Idris Elba.
The Harder They Fall has received a great deal of press and media exposure; however, writer and director Jeymes Samuel’s narrative is teeming with historical inaccuracies.
The story features actual historical Black cowboys and cowgirls, the likes of which include Rufus Buck, Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Cherokee Bill, Jim Beckworth, Stagecoach Mary Fields, and Bill Pickett, yet their on-screen personas are not representative of who they were in real life. Namely, Love’s parents were never murdered by Rufus Buck. Nor did he have a cross carved in his forehead.
Tony Thomas, who examined 40 westerns in The West that Never Was, wrote, “the western is the least accurate and the most romanticized. The fabric is largely woven from fiction… Hollywood created a West that never really was, but it is possible to enjoy it alongside the West that really is.”
That said, though the Paramount series 1883 — a prequel to Yellowstone — follows the fictitious Dutton family as they travel the Oregon Trail, series creator Taylor Sheridan’s scripts are an unromanticized righting of Hollywood’s wrongs when it comes to his unvarnished depiction of American Indians, immigrants, Black cowboys and, like Lonesome Dove, strong-willed women.
“I’m interested in the truth,” said Sheridan, in a Paramount-produced look at the authenticity of 1883, which had the highest-rated series premiere on cable television since 2009.
While much of the initial media focused on Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and newcomer Isabel May, the series’ breakout performer has been LaMonica Garrett as Thomas, a former slave before becoming a Pinkerton. Thomas and Elliott’s character, Shea, formed a lifelong loyalty to one another as brothers in arms during the Civil War and, as Garrett told Thegrio.com, “To me, (Thomas) is the humanity of the show, the soul of the show.”
The following is an edited version of much longer conversations with Glynn Turman and Reginald T. Dorsey, both real Black cowboys who have portrayed reel Black cowboys in film and on television.
Keith Ryan Cartwright: Whenever I think about Black cowboys in film or on television, I think about Danny Glover’s portrayal of Deets.
Glynn Turman: I was glad we were recognized. Danny, of course, is one of our great actors and great personality and has all the sensitivities of representing the race. I thought it was a great choice to have Danny do the character.
Reginald T. Dorsey: His presence alone confirmed the fact that there were Black cowboys on cattle drives for those who didn’t know. And being that it was one of the most highly rated series – forget western, any series – that’s ever been on television, Suzanne de Passe doesn’t get the credit that she deserves (because) she single-handedly brought westerns back to life.
Turman: I’m glad the story of Lonesome Dove included us. What was more important, to me, was that (Deets) wasn’t just a figurehead — one Black in the entire story, an entire series — there was a sequel, and there were more characters of color. That’s what made his appearance more profound. It was a gateway to other characters being included in the series.
Dorsey: (Suzanne) had the broad stroke of actually laying the foundation for Black Indians with Dennis Haysbert’s character (Cherokee Jack Jackson). She quietly put that in there. All of it was very poignant. She knew what she was doing… We all had a significant presence in both of those pieces.
KRC: One takeaway, for me, is Deets was part of the fabric.
Turman: Danny’s character was melted into the storytelling in a believable and (not) sensationalized way.
Dorsey: And if you notice, with both of them (Lonesome Dove and Return to Lonesome Dove), they never made any issues or references to color.
KRC: The way you are talking about Lonesome Dove, we or I have not seen until watching 1883. How do you feel about LaMonica Garrett’s portrayal of Thomas?
Dorsey: Magnificent.
Turman: It was very gratifying that he was just represented as a man. And what you realize is how simple that is to do. [Laughs.] How easy that is to just do when you do it like that, as opposed to a big hoopla — look at what we’re doing. What was also important was that he came with his own set of skills. He wasn’t taught these skills.
Dorsey: He’s battle-tested. He’s a hand. He’s killed. You know he was an ex-slave. He’s seen pain. He’s seen brutality. And that’s why the young lady on the show is so attracted to him, in addition to the fact that she needs a man, but he brings a caveat to the table because he’s a good man.
Turman: And that didn’t happen with Danny’s character. He knew how to herd cattle. He knew how to ride. He knew how to shoot. He knew how to survive. He was contributing his skills to the collective. He wasn’t a burden on anybody or any culture. He was his own man. And that’s what was important to me.
KRC: LaMonica is the fifth-billed actor in the series, yet his work has made Thomas among the three most significant characters in 1883.
Dorsey: Yeah. And he keeps Sam Elliott in check. You hear me?
Turman: Well, what I took away from the pilot was there was a man-to-man exchange. What I always look for is a man-to-man exchange in life and in theater, where the exchange is human being-to-human being. Not status-to-status. And what was great in 1883 was a conversation between Sam (Elliott’s character Shea Brennon) and Thomas. Thomas had already seen him go through wanting to shoot himself in the head. And (Thomas’ response) was so simple, ‘Well, are you coming or not?’ That let us know right there we were on equal footing. Nothing else had to be said. And the man picked himself up — Sam Elliot did — and they went on about their business. They stepped into the bar, they had drinks, and he was his own man. That’s important.
KRC: I don’t know if LaMonica realizes the extent to which Thomas is a role he will be identified as for the rest of his life.
Dorsey: I think he does because I’ve read a couple articles on him about how serious he approached the role. That’s all I can ask of any actor… He’s doing a fantastic job. The overall style, the overall feel, everything is as authentic as you would want to be in a western. They got it right.
KRC: A lot of the credit goes to 1883 creator and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan.
Dorsey: Absolutely.
KRC: I read something where LaMonica said when he read the script, he felt a sense there was a sense of dignity to that character. And he wanted to portray Thomas with a sense of dignity. There’s a nobility to him.
Dorsey: Yeah. And there’s a quiet strength about him. Biggest role he’s ever had. What a breakout for him.
KRC: Closing thoughts?
Turman: I’m just glad we’re in a different era, in a different time and what’s interesting is how the Western community — rodeos and Western movies — how inclusive it’s all becoming now. And it’s being driven by a need for the Western heritage to survive.
KEITH RYAN CARTWRIGHT, a former editorial director and senior writer for PBR.com, is the author of Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West, which is available for sale at pbrshop.com.
Photos courtesy of Emerson Miller/Paramount+ and Steve Robinson.
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