CALAMITY JANE

   One of the most colorful traditional female characters in Westerns, Calamity Jane was, historically, Martha (Calamity) Jane Canary (1848–1903), author of a famous autobiography and entertainer in Wild West shows near the end of her life. How much of the Calamity Jane legend squares with historical fact will probably always remain conjecture. The essentials of the legend that play out in numerous Western films and television Westerns is that Calamity Jane was a cross-dressing female scout for General Crook, a buffalo skinner, a sharpshooter, and the beloved of Wild Bill Hickok. Her character has been played as glamorous, by Jean Arthur in The Plainsman (1936) and Frances Farmer in Badlands of Dakota(1941) ; as comic, by Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953; directed by David Butler), a film musical; and as dirty, unglamorous, and crude, by Ellen Barkin in Wild Bill (1995).

   As with most historical characters, film versions of Calamity Jane isolate a few features of her character and gloss over anything inconvenient to the story. Evidently, the real Calamity Jane was unlikable, even repulsive. Nothing about her could be termed glamorous. Yet Calamity Jane the legend serves her purpose, playing the pants roles either for the irony of the part or for a comic effect.