OAKLEY’S LIFE STORY
Born Phoebe Ann Moses to an impoverished, widowed mother with a large brood of children to support, the future Annie Oakley moved away from home before her tenth birthday. She was sent to the Darke County Infirmary, a group home for orphans, the elderly, and the mentally ill. At the age of ten, she was hired out to a nasty local family she referred to as “the wolves.” She ran away as a young teenager, reuniting with her mother and her mother’s new husband. The old homestead wasn’t any more prosperous than when she left, so Annie learned to shoot small game, which she sold to a local grocery store. She was such a good shot that she was able to pay her mother’s mortgage with the profits from her kills.
Word of Annie’s rifle skills spread far and wide. When she was fifteen, a Cincinnati hotel owner invited her to compete against a famous traveling marksman by the name of Frank E. Butler. Hitting twenty-five out of twenty-five targets to Butler’s twenty-four, she won the match and his heart: The two were married the following year.
Annie’s sharp-shooting skills lay dormant until 1882, when Frank’s performance partner got sick, and Annie jumped at the chance to fill in. She stole the show, adopted the stage name of Annie Oakley, and joined the vaudeville circuit with her husband. Annie’s sewing skills came in handy on the road; she made her own costumes and dressed like a real cowgirl. Annie quickly became the biggest act of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. Crowds turned out in droves to see her shoot a dime tossed in the air from ninety feet away. Her friend, the Lakota chief and holy man Sitting Bull, gave her the nickname “Little Sure Shot.” Her fame even brought her to the court of Queen Victoria, who marveled at the “very clever little girl.”
Oakley’s career continued until shortly after her fortieth birthday, when she was seriously injured in a train accident. She took a leave of absence from sharpshooting, during which time she starred on the stage in a melodrama, The Western Girl. She returned to professional marksmanship, performing well into her fifties. When World War I started, she offered to recruit women and train soldiers as sharpshooters. The government refused her, so she raised money for the Red Cross by holding shooting demonstrations instead. The straight-shooting do-gooder set her last record at the age of sixty-two and passed away four years later.
THE STORY OF HER SEX LIFE
Annie Oakley remained married to Frank Butler from the age of sixteen until her death at sixty-six. The couple performed together, shot together, and saw the world together. After Annie died, Butler followed just eighteen days later.
WHY SHE MATTERS
Annie Oakley became a legendary figure in spite of her hardscrabble upbringing. She was a proto-feminist, a philanthropist, and a dedicated showman. Composer Irving Berlin even immortalized her in the Broadway smash, Annie Get Your Gun.
BEST FEATURE: Her aim.
Oakley was always graceful, even when shooting a dime at ninety feet. As a woman working in a man’s world, she held her own and made a name for herself, while paving the way for future generations of women in the process.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN
Premiering on Broadway in May 1946, Annie Get Your Gun is perhaps the single most memorable tribute to the iconic markswoman. With music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, the musical centers on the romance between Oakley and her beau, Frank Butler. Their relationship is ridden with strife when Butler becomes overwhelmingly jealous of his GF’s success and splits. In a wild twist, chief Sitting Bull ends up adopting the abandoned sharpshooter, but we’ll stop there so as not to ruin the ending. The show was revived in 1966 and then again in 1999, with a film adaptation thrown into the mix in 1950. The über-successful, Tony-winning musical played to audiences of over a thousand and spawned the classic tune “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” The song has been covered dozens of times by the likes of Ethel Merman, Liza Minelli, and even lip-synchers on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
HEAT FACTOR: Who could resist a sharpshooting philanthropist in a circle skirt?
Annie Oakley wore her long hair loose, wore skirts over leggings to accentuate her athletic figure, and made her own clothes to perfectly fit her tiny frame. In the process of becoming a revolutionary female sharpshooter, she also became something of a trendsetter.
SHOOTING WITH THE KAISER
As part of their stage show, Annie would shoot a cigarette from Butler’s mouth. Legend has it that when the pair brought their act to Europe, Kaiser Wilhelm requested to take Butler’s place. Annie later said that, had she missed, she might have prevented World War I.
QUOTABLES
“The greatest woman rifle shot the world has ever produced.”
Will Rogers
“I think that what she projected was a vitality and freshness that for many people came to stand for American womanhood. It’s what made American women attractive: that outdoor complexion, that wonderful figure, and yet that carriage, that demureness, that suggested that she was in charge of herself and not to be had.”
historian Paul Fees
“She’s a very powerful woman and we are here today still honoring her because of all the examples she set… . She stood up for what she believed in. She traveled the world. She performed in front of queens, probably presidents, too … and she was very, very respected. So she’s a lady I’ve always looked up to and was kind of always there in the back of my mind, kind of ‘What would Annie do in a situation like this?’ ”
Reba McEntire, upon receiving the Annie Oakley Society Award
