ROUNDUP

THE REEL WEST

ow accurate are Hollywood Westerns? special contributor Johnny D. Boggs addresses that question in his 2020 book , the latest in ABC-CLIO’s series. “Movies rarely got the facts right in most genres,” Boggs writes in the preface, “but movies aren’t about history; ideally, they’re about entertainment.” Looking at 11 popular Westerns, the author compares each film’s depiction of a post–Civil War event or figure with the real history (or at Boggs concludes, “Many historians agree that while came closer than other movie in depicting the events surrounding the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, it was far from actual history.” In another chapter he assesses director Arthur Penn’s 1970 revisionist Western  , based on Thomas Berger’s eponymous 1964 novel. “ was woefully historically inaccurate, but that was never the point,” Boggs writes. “Berger’s novel tackled the myth of the frontier; Jack Crabb is an unrepentant liar. Penn’s film version, while showing the wrongs inflicted on native Americans in the 19th century, also echoed social injustices and an ugly foreign war haunting 20th-century America.”