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| Broncho Billy Anderson |
Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson (1880-1971) was the first great cowboy star. A
vaudeville actor in New York when he appeared in Thomas Edison’s Great Train
Robbery in 1903, he was so taken by the enthusiastic reception of this
short film that he decided to make a career of filmmaking.
By
the end of the decade, he was a partner in Essanay Pictures and had appeared in
82 films. The company was based in Chicago, and Anderson, inspired to make
cowboy movies, roamed the West with cast and crew cranking out 15-minute films
at a rate of one a week for several years.
Anderson
understood the importance of having a continuing character, and he bought a
story by Peter B. Kyne in Saturday Evening Post, which featured a
character called Broncho Billy. Reportedly unable to find an actor for the
part, he played the role himself and the series began with “Broncho Billy’s
Redemption” (1910). From then on, he was billed as Broncho Billy Anderson,
appearing in a series of 144 films during a period that ended in 1915 when he
left Essanay.
Anderson
produced two more westerns, Shootin’ Mad (1918) and The Son-of-a-Gun
(1919), after which his movie career rapidly ended. The introduction of
feature-length films had made the old one- and two-reelers outdated. Film
historian Jon Tuska argues that the new sophistication
of the 1920s also altered what audiences wanted to see.
