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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 7, 2011 22:12:43 GMT -5
Over my decades of reading history books, magazines and newspapers, I've run across numerous famous and infamous characters, who seem to be incredible or terrible liars. David Crockett, Mike Fink and a host of Americans have told various tall tales or windy stories about their adventures, but they usually have a degree of fiction that makes the truth discernable. In researching various other Americans, speciflcally Texans and rangers, I've discovered several blanket stretchers, who blatantly lied about huge sections of their lives, but newspapers, family and friends often considered them honest or heroic men despite their fibbing. Excluding Crockett and other ring-tailed roarers that knew the difference between truth and fiction, who do you think was this biggest or most prolific American liar? Those little known Americans that claimed in later life that they were actually dead outlaws (Billy the Kid, Jesse James, J. W. Booth, etc.) are at the top of my list.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Dec 8, 2011 9:58:04 GMT -5
Hard to choose, but I'll bet it was someone in politics.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 8, 2011 15:22:20 GMT -5
Do you mean people who created their own false mythologies, or people who just told monumental lies? (And for the sake of civility, let's avoid mentioning anyone in the last 50 years.)
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 8, 2011 17:35:46 GMT -5
Do you mean people who created their own false mythologies, or people who just told monumental lies? (And for the sake of civility, let's avoid mentioning anyone in the last 50 years.) Both I guess as I don't see a huge difference between false mythologies and monumental lies if the perpetrator was trying to pass them off as truth to his family/friends and the general public. I've mostly bumped into these fellows west of the Mississippi and especially in rough border states with Mexico and along the gulf. This phenomenon seems to have started in the early 1800s and diminished with the onset of the Great Depression or WW 2, so a stop point of 50 years (1960) is fine with me and keeps my little war stories out of the critique. Recently, I found a supposed wild west performer, Texas ranger, marksman, long-distance horse rider, etc., etc., named Texas Harry Hicks, who told a lot of incredible tales. I contacted a descendant of someone that knew Hicks and yesterday he sent me a letter attachment, where his ancestor states that Hicks claimed to be Jesse James minus a bullet in the head.
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Post by Hollowhorn on Dec 8, 2011 17:44:55 GMT -5
Bob Dylan, easy peasy.
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Post by Hollowhorn on Dec 8, 2011 17:46:01 GMT -5
(And for the sake of civility, let's avoid mentioning anyone in the last 50 years.) Ooops! ;D
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 9, 2011 0:17:59 GMT -5
(And for the sake of civility, let's avoid mentioning anyone in the last 50 years.) Ooops! ;D Don't worry about it. Of course, I was really wondering how some of the little known liars would rank against some of the big names from the pre-drug induced story era. Texas Harry Hicks' story sounds a lot like Buffalo Bill Show and long-distance rider Frank Hopkins (from the 2004 Hidalgo movie w/ Viggo) and I'm starting to wonder if he borrowed some biographical info from Hicks to soup up his resume. Texas Harry also claimed to have been part Indian and to have ridden with Buffalo Bill's Indians.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Dec 9, 2011 14:45:48 GMT -5
I was thinking of PT Barnum, but he's probably more of a huckster. Willaim Randolph Hearst? He might qualify. Dylan? Bob has been known to tell some big ones, but I think (sometimes) it's just his wicked sense of humor. If you're referring to his "borrowing" material, there's no doubt that's true. (I recently found a website devoted to Bob's lack of attribution.) Having said that though, I still consider him one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century. And, just to put it out there, no, his voice doesn't bother me. Jim
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Post by Hollowhorn on Dec 9, 2011 15:30:49 GMT -5
Dylan? Bob has been known to tell some big ones, but I think (sometimes) it's just his wicked sense of humor. I agree 100% No argument from me, on both counts. Unless of course you are America's biggest liar! ;D His vocals have enchanted me for decades, the last one though has left me less so. I suppose it's the constant touring since the mid eighties that has brought on the woe full barking that now passes for his singing voice, I just cannot listen to it anymore. This year was the first time in many (my first gigs were in 78) that I passed up the chance to go see him in concert. I'll stick with 'Old Bob', 'New Bob' will just have to fend for himself. Anyway, sorry for veering off topic.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 9, 2011 17:16:22 GMT -5
I was thinking of PT Barnum, but he's probably more of a huckster. Willaim Randolph Hearst? He might qualify. Barnum was certainly a huckster and wasn't Hearst just a shameless self-promoter of his newspaper empire. There were characters wandering across America, who told a lot of real whoppers about their military, frontier and sea adeventures. Sometimes people or newspapers called them on the more ridculous tall tales, but usually they did not. The lack of easy access to military/ government records and newspaper archives cleary allowed this problem to flourish.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Dec 9, 2011 20:46:38 GMT -5
I'd have to include Ned Buntline (nee Edward Zone Carroll Judson) as a finalist. One of the joys and tortures of old west historians has been picking through the manufactured fiction about guys like Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, et al, that was churned out in pulp by Buntiline and his ilk and finding the truth within and without it. Thanks to historian/biographers like Casey Tefertiller, Robert K. DeArment and Gary Roberts, we have a lot truer picture of some of these figures.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 11, 2011 22:58:24 GMT -5
I'd have to include Ned Buntline (nee Edward Zone Carroll Judson) as a finalist. Man, that's a good one. Buntline's special, he helped others lie about themselves. ;D
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Post by Allen Wiener on Dec 12, 2011 10:34:16 GMT -5
The king of pulp. As I recall, he "made" Buffalo Bill who he became (or had a big hand in it). No evidence there ever was a real "Buntline Special," but there were long-barrel Colts special ordered at the time.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 12, 2011 22:37:03 GMT -5
The king of pulp. As I recall, he "made" Buffalo Bill who he became (or had a big hand in it). No evidence there ever was a real "Buntline Special," but there were long-barrel Colts special ordered at the time. Yes, he was. I agree that Ned Buntline made Buffalo Bill and not the Buntline Special. I knew you would catch that pun. The Buntline Special exists, although Wyatt Earp couldn't have carried this model before Stuart Lake coined the phrase in his 1931 biography. Colt Fire Arms company was making and marketing an extremely long-barreled Buntline Special model in the late 1950s, but the alleged replica seems way too extended for a frontier lawdog. Incidentally, Old Ned probably bestowed William F. Cody's famous sobriquet in Buntline's December 1869 newspaper serial, Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen. Few people seem to have heard of Cody or Buffalo Bill before this date. Bill Cody stated a few times that he won his name in a bison-killing contest with scout Buffalo Bill Comstock, but he apparently gave different years (1857, 1866, 1868, etc.) for this event and the contest has yet to be verified by contemporary sources. I also think William Averll Comstock was called Medicine Bill, which throws another hole in Cody's buffalo naming tale.
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Post by sloanrodgers on Dec 14, 2011 20:32:41 GMT -5
I was a little off on my Buffalo Bill Cody facts and fiction above as I have not read over his early life in a long while. Cody obviously had the Buffalo Bill monicker before the 1869 Buntline article because at least two November 1867 newspapers mention him by this name. I also checked my old beat-up copy of his biography and he never calls Comstock, Buffalo Bill. The alleged bison killing contest was for a $1000 purse and the rights to the title Champion Buffalo Hunter of the Plains. Wikipedia and other places state that the match was over the sole rights to the sobriquet, Buffalo Bill, but that sounds ridiculous for the time, especially when so many rough characters used the nickname. A lot of criminals used the Buffalo Bill appellation in the mid 1800s and it seems to have had a very negative connotation during the period before hunters adopted it. Buntline did promote Cody as the original and only Buffalo Bill, which brought them into conflict with well-known bison hunter William E. "Buffalo Bill" Mathewson, who was using the name for years before the scout turned actor. Mathewson even called Cody out in a letter.
Cody sometimes stretched the truth with his Indian killing and other stories for his frontier image and later Wild West shows, but I don't consider hime a huge fibber. Texas Harry Hicks and others were much worse. Cody even called Harry a fraud and a liar.
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