Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer

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George Armstrong Custer (1839 – 1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Contents

[edit] Films

Custer has been played in motion pictures by Francis Ford (1912 twice), Ned Finley (1916), Dustin Farnum (1926), John Beck (1926), Clay Clement (1933). John Miljan (1936), Frank McGlynn (1936), Paul Kelly (1940), Addison Richards (1940), Ronald Reagan (1940), Errol Flynn (1941), James Millican (1942), Sheb Wooley (1952), Douglas Kennedy (1954), Britt Lomond (1958), Philip Carey (1965), Leslie Nielsen (1966), Robert Shaw (1967), Wayne Maunder (1967 & 1990), Richard Mulligan (1970), Marcello Mastroianni (1974), Ken Howard (1977), James Olson (1977), Gary Cole (1991), Josh Lucas (1993), Peter Horton (1996) and William Shockley (1997).

  • They Died With Their Boots On, a 1941 film starring Errol Flynn. Made as World War II was looming, it is a heart-tugging morale-booster that presents frontier history in a sometimes incredibly idealized light.
  • In the 1967 movie Custer of the West, Robert Shaw depicts Custer as an Indian sympathizer, having disagreements with his superiors about fighting the Indians, but duty bound as an officer of the U.S. Cavalry to enforce orders given to him.
  • Custer (played by Richard Mulligan) was a major character in the 1970 film Little Big Man. Dustin Hoffman's character in the film has many encounters with him and in the end, Hoffman's character claims he is responsible for Custer's death at Little Big Horn. Custer is depicted as an insane megalomaniac.
  • Custer was portrayed by Jonathan Scharfe on the mini-series Into the West (2005).

Fictional Portrayals

A number of Westerns have featured characters that, while not specifically Custer, are very closely based on his character. Some of the more noteworthy examples:

  • Fort Apache (1948, John Ford) featured Henry Fonda as Colonel Owen Thursday, a West Point-educated cavalryman who provokes a war with the Apache Indian chief Cochise and is killed in a suicidal charge and last stand, a la Custer.
  • Major Dundee (1965, Sam Peckinpah) had Charlton Heston playing the main character, a cavalry officer who leads an illegal raid into Mexico in pursuit of a gang of renegade Apaches during the Civil War. The screenwriters - and Heston - based the portrayal of the character on historical accounts of Custer's personality.
  • The Glory Guys (1965, Arnold Laven) saw Andrew Duggan playing General Frederick McCabe, a US cavalry officer who leads his outfit in yet another suicidal campaign against the Apaches.

Mentions

  • Custer was also mentioned in We Were Soldiers, the film starring Mel Gibson in which a battalion of the 7th Cavalry (now Air Cavalry) is engaged in a battle with the North Vietnamese.

[edit] Alternate history

The larger than life nature of Custer's life has made him a popular subject for several alternate history stories.

  • In The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer a Novel by Douglas C. Jones is set in an alternate history that takes as its point of departure that George Armstrong Custer did not die at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Suppose that, instead, he was found close to death at the scene of the defeat and was brought to trial for his actions. With a masterful blend of fact and fiction, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer tells us what might have happened at that trial as it brings to life the most exciting period in the history of the American West. It was made into a TV movie in 1977 with James Olson as Custer and Blythe Danner as his wife Libbie.
  • The short story Custer's Last Jump by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley is set in an alternate history that takes as its point of departure the use of aircraft in the American Civil War.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 alternate history novels, Custer was not killed at the Little Bighorn, and became a Colonel in Kansas by 1881, chasing Indians and then doing battle with rebel Mormons in Utah Territory and an Anglo-Canadian column invading Montana in the Second Mexican War, becoming a war hero. In World War I, he led a tank offensive that crushed the Confederate States of America, and later became Governor-General of occupied Canada, dying of old age in early 1930.
  • Wes Anderson satirizes such portrayals of Custer-as-survivor in his film The Royal Tenenbaums, in which the character Eli Cash writes a book called “Old Custer".
  • In the collection of short alternate history stories Drakas!, Custer, the famed Yankee general known for "Custer's Last Stand" became persona non grata after refusing to lead troops against apparently overwhelming Indian forces. Drummed out of the military in America, he responded to the invitation of an old associate to go to Africa where the Draka empire was looking for experienced field officers.
  • In Percival Everett's novel God's Country, Custer is portrayed as a cross-dressing homosexual who eats raw meat.

[edit] Music

  • The first and probably best-known Custer pop song was Mister Custer ("Please Mister Custer, I don't wanna go"), a Billboard Top Ten novelty hit of 1960 for performer Larry Verne, in which "a voice from the rear" of the Seventh Cavalry charge asks "What'm I doing here?" and "Mind if I be excused the rest of the afternoon?" Words and Music by Fred Darian, Al DeLory, and Joe Van Winkle. In the UK, it was successfully covered by Charlie Drake.
  • Experimental-pop group Perky Custer have derived their name from General Custer and a generic version of Dr Pepper.
  • Influential American punk/alternative band The Minutemen mocked Custer's defeat and questioned the dignity - or lack thereof - in which he died during the Battle of the Little Bighorn, on the title track of their 1981 LP The Punch Line: "I believe when they found the body of General George A. Custer/Quilled like a porcupine with Indian arrows/He didn't die with any honor, dignity, or valor/I believe when they found the body of George A. Custer/American general, patriot, and Indian fighter/That he died with shit in his pants."
  • In The Arrogant Worms's song, History is Made By Stupid People, he is mocked by the line "General Custer's a national hero, for not knowing when to run"
  • On his 1996 album Cowboy Celtic, Canadian singer David Wilkie sang "Custer Died A-Runnin'".
  • On Johnny Cash's 1964 album 'Bitter Tears', the song 'Custer' had lines such as "General George A.Custer, oh, his yellow hair had lustre, But the General he don't ride well anymore, For now the General's silent he got barbered violent...".
  • A 1991 album, Blazon Stone, by the German Heavy Metal band Running Wild, includes a song about Custer's final battle called Little Big Horn. It starts with the words "Hey Mr. Custer, why did you dare the hand of fate?"
  • In the 1997 song 'Banner Year' ska band Five Iron Frenzy blames the death of Black Kettle, at the Battle of Washita, on Custer. "Where Custer shot and killed Black Kettle"
  • The rapper Nelly mentioned Custer in his song "Heart of a Champion" off his 2004 album Sweat. The exact lyric was: "My last stance be a stance of a General Custer, I hot dog cause I can, I got the cheese and mustard"

[edit] Videogames

  • A controversial adult video game known as Custer's Revenge was published for the Atari 2600. This game consisted of Custer moving from the left hand side of the screen to the right hand side of the screen through a barrage of arrows emerging from the top of the screen. Once Custer reaches the right hand side of the screen he sexually assaults a Native American woman who is tied to a cactus. It has been called one of the worst video games of all time. [1]
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