Title	Montana Frank [poster]
Date	Undated
Production	Montana Frank Show
Artistic roles	Montana Frank (Performer)
Genre	Vaudeville
Item description	Lithograph poster advertising coming 'Montana Frank Shows.' The poster states that there is music during the show and that the company has their own light plant. The poster is in color, depicting a cowboy on a horse in the desert looking off into the distance. The poster is estimated to be dated around 1897.
Object narrative	Montana Frank' is believed to be Frank McCray, a Western frontiersman who traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody as a scout and rough rider. He was born in Butte, Montana in 1864, the second white child born there, and grew up the son of an army major at Fort Shaw. This is where he began his career as a messenger and government scout; his job was to supply meat to the soldiers and guard mail coaches from enemies. Leaving his government career, McCray rode in Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, including the World's Fair in 1893, Madison Square Garden, and two years in Europe. After six years with Buffalo Bill, he continued to travel with a roping and riding act, traveling the nation with the Keith-Orpheum vaudeville circuit and with several minstrel shows. Wild West shows were extremely popular from 1880-1930, with many different troupes touring the mid and Eastern parts of the U. S. They portrayed an exciting, dangerous, and romanticized view of the West in a circus-type format, contributing to the image we have of the 'wild west' to this day. Wild West shows began to die out as Hollywood began making movies about the West, picking up on show ideas and duplicating their themes.
Type	image
Original format	posters
Original publisher	[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified]
Language	en
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	MSS255 Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection
Series/grouping	9.1: Posters -- Plays/Perfomances
Finding aid link	http://library.uncg.edu/info/depts/scua/collections/manuscripts/ead/mss255.xml
Preferred citation	[Identification of item], Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection, 1753-2006 (MSS255), Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives and Manuscripts, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA.
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Additional rights information	NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES. This item has been determined to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The user is responsible for determing actual copyright status for any reuse of the material.
Object ID	MSS255.P004
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304
OCLC number	872280906

Montana Frank [poster]

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