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List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 (13%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783255057
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 0783255055
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Universal Studios
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 01, 2004
Running Time: 114 minutes
Sales Rank: 30934
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: November 16, 1936
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Just maybe the most shamelessly enjoyable of Cecil B. DeMille's pseudo-historical epics, this rumbustious frontier saga offers a three-for-one Western legends combo--Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Calamity Jane, all cutting up in the 1870s, with George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. (Wait a minute, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865--oh, never mind.) Truth to tell, Buffalo Bill doesn't really pull his weight, since (1) he is hopelessly distracted by virtue of having recently married and (2) he's played by James Ellison, an eternal juvenile normally relegated to second-banana duty in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series. However, Gary Cooper's Wild Bill and Jean Arthur's Calamity supply enough star power to light up the Dakotas and parts of Missouri.
Every once in a while, DeMille and his small army of writers stumble upon an actual historical fact. Bill Cody did fight to the death with an Indian chief named Yellow Hand. George Custer and James Butler Hickok did both buy the farm in the summer of 1876. (Custer's Last Stand is handled imaginatively, if cheaply, as a vision narrated by a wandering Cheyenne warrior--none other than C.B.'s son-in-law Anthony Quinn in one of his earliest screen appearances.) Jack McCall (veteran weasel Porter Hall) did find himself in Deadwood, South Dakota, at the same time Wild Bill was drawing aces and eights in a poker game ... though McCall was not necessarily affiliated with DeMille's favorite villain, Charles Bickford, in the business of running guns to the Indians. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - RUN OF DeMILLE !
This film is NOT a DeMille great - It becomes quite tedious in fact, after the first 40 min's. - due in no small part to Jean Arthur's atrocious miscasting and annoyingly whiney voice (what on earth was her appeal?). James Ellison (of the very great & crazy THE GANG'S ALL HERE) is totally absurd as Buffalo Bill. And poor Cooper seems ill at ease with the silly script.
One can usually count on DeMille to "deliver the goods", here he delivers the not so goods. And there is'nt even a "bath ... Read More
Rating:  - The Plainsman
While this film highly historically inacurate, it's still such a classic flim from a magical era of Hollywood.
Rating: - Just enjoy the story - and the music.
Plenty has been written above about historical inaccuracies in this epic DeMille production; and enough people have told you to just enjoy the fine casting and story telling. Follow their advice. You also may want to keep an ear open for the music. Like so many movies of the era, the soundtrack was written by an American symphonic composer; many of whom did film work to keep food on the table. George Antheil called himself the "Bad Boy of Music" in his autobiography. But far from his compositions ... Read More
Rating: - Obscure battlefield accurately depicted
As someone who has actually been to the hard-to-find Beecher's Island battlefield site (in the badlands of NE Colorado), I was pleasantly amazed to note how accurately the terrain is depicted in "The Plainsman." I have been to the sites of other notable Indian fights, including both the Fetterman Massacre and Little Big Horn, and although distinctive in their own ways, they are basically just dusty hills in barren grasslands. Beecher's Island was different. It occured near a rare shady spot along a ... Read More
Rating: - western classic
it is a classic western with legendary western
characters such as wild bill hickock, calamity jane,
george custer, and buffalo bill cody. it is also
one of the better films with gary cooper where his
natural charm comes through. it does not disappoint
fans of westerns.
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