When Cowboys were Rock Stars

Old West Iconography and Meaning: its growth in the 1880s, its peak in the first half of the 20th Century, and its eventual decline, through Images and the Arts

The American Cowboy represented the nation’s identity, and perception of itself, for the better part of a century, and—to a lesser degree—even longer. As an icon, it has been routinely mocked and celebrated in near-equal measure in the decades following the end of its cultural peak in the early 1960s. There may be current and recent iterations of Western/Cowboy-related films and television shows (Justified and Yellowstone, among others, come to mind), but nothing comes close to the centrality of cowboy culture and entertainment that prevailed from the 1880s to the 1960s.

What does the image of the cowboy and the American frontier exemplify? What are its best and worst iterations? Why did it loom so large and for so long in the American psyche, and what—if anything—replaced the cowboy as America’s avatar in the decades since? There exist no solid answers to such questions, but there is no doubt that the cowboy symbol is significant, in all of its variations, interpretations, and meanings.

Take a gander at the images below, and trace the evolution and transformation of depictions of the American West and the American Cowboy, from actual history to fictionalized portrayals.

Grabill, John C. H, photographer. "The Cow Boy" / J.C.H. Grabill, photographer, Sturgis, Dakota Ter. South Dakota, ca. 1888. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/99613920/.

Grabill, John C. H, photographer. Cowboys, Roping a Buffalo on the Plains. South Dakota. [Between 1887 and 1892] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/99613915/.

Grabill, John C. H, photographer. "Bucking Bronco." Ned Coy, a famous Dakota cowboy. South Dakota, 1888. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/99613921/.

At the dawn of the 20th Century, the West and the Cowboy—in reality and in fiction—began to be presented in new and growing mediums, including stage and screen.

Watch this 1904 film footage (produced by Thomas Edison), of horses herded by cowboys across a river, by clicking here. Abadie, Alfred C. , Camera, Inc Thomas A. Edison, and Paper Print Collection. Herding Horses Across a River. United States: Thomas A. Edison, Inc, 1904. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/00564532/.

Professor of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, Nanna Verhoeff, published her book in 2006 that examines the depiction of the West in early American film.

Verhoeff, Nanna. The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning. [Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, ©, 2006]. https://www.loc.gov/item/2020718219/.

Billy the Kid: production shot. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/copland.phot0044/.

By the 1930s, depictions of the American West and the Cowboy went from cheap vaudeville to legitimate “high art” theatre. According to the Library of Congress, “In the mid-1930s [legendary composer, known as the Dean of American music, Aaron] Copland began to receive commissions from dance companies… His second commission… resulted in Billy the Kid (1938), one of his best-known works and the work which first definitely identified him with the American West.”¹

Photo of Gene Autry from the cover of a 1942 New York Sunday News magazine. Gene Autry became one of the most famous Americans in the world, taking his Cowboy persona through the mediums of music, film, and television from the 1930s to the 1960s. (Wikimedia Commons)

Publicity photo of John Wayne and Marguerite Churchill for the 1930 western The Big Trail, which was Wayne’s first leading role in a film. Perhaps no other actor in American history embodied the American Cowboy in life and on screen as did The Duke. (Wikimedia Commons)

Though there had been Hollywood Westerns before and after World War II that had depicted Native Americans as something more than savages getting in the way of westward expansion, the 1950 Jimmy Stewart film, Broken Arrow, is significant for presenting its Native American characters in a sympathetic manner. This is an early instance of what would later come to be known as Revisionist Westerns, which sought to bring some level of humanity and perspective to the genre. After the early 1960s, more and more Westerns would be—to some degree—revisionist in nature, seeking to portray more of the complexity embedded in the actual history of the American West and explore how Americans viewed elements of their own history. (Tubitv)

John Wayne from the trailer for one of his best-known Westerns, the 1959 film Rio Bravo. (Wikimedia Commons)

Publicity photo of Clint Eastwood for the 1964 film (released in the United States in 1967) A Fistful of Dollars. The “spaghetti westerns”—westerns made on the cheap by filmmakers in Italy (with some scenes shot in Spain)—were not new when Eastwood participated in the “Fistful Trilogy,” but his character (known only as the Man with No Name) embodied a new cowboy: one that represented a morally ambiguous figure. Westerns of the late 1960s and into the 1970s often cast the protagonists not as heroes, but as rebels or outlaws, rebranding the role of the cowboy into one fitting the zeitgeist of the American counter-culture. (Wikimedia Commons)

The 1992 film, Unforgiven, was one of many Westerns in the later 20th Century that reframed the depiction of life in the “Old West,” as well as the portrayal of the American Cowboy. About a century after the phenomena of Western iconography commenced, and a few decades following its peak, the idea of the American West became just as often a vehicle for American self-examination as for celebration. (Movieweb)

Has anything replaced the Cowboy as America’s avatar? Or does the iconography serve as a placeholder for a time when such imagery acted as a means for how the nation saw itself, whether as a heroic individual or as an amoral entity? That is a matter of opinion, but one certainly worth a moment’s consideration. There is no doubt that the icon will endure, and likely continue to progress, regress, and morph endlessly in unforeseeable ways well into the future. Nevertheless, the concept of the American Cowboy will continue to wander yonder west, following the setting sun and searching for ever more frontier.

[James M. Masnov is a writer, historian, and lecturer. He is the author of Rights Reign Supreme: An Intellectual History of Judicial Review and the Supreme Court, available here. His first book, History Killers and Other Essays by an Intellectual Historian, is available here.]

1. https://www.loc.gov/collections/aaron-copland/articles-and-essays/about-aaron-coplands-works/music-for-dance-and-film/