Billy Tilghman takes the stage
Distinguished Bill in later years
William Matthew Tilghman (1854 – 1924) was one of the great lawmen of the old West. His name may
not trip off the tongue in the way that an Earp or a Hickok does, and he
certainly has not enjoyed the levels of Hollywood exposure that those men did,
but nevertheless, to students of the West he was an important figure.
Silent-movie
Bill
He’s only appeared twice on the big
screen, that I know of. The first time he was played by himself, in The Passing of
the Oklahoma Outlaws,
subtitled Picturization of Early Days in Oklahoma, a 1915 silent movie directed by himself, filmed by Benny Kent,
a pioneer movie photographer and Tilghman's neighbor in Lincoln County,
Oklahoma, and released by Tilghman’s
own Eagle Film Company.
Outlaws and lawmen, 1915 style
Bill intended
to produce a movie that gave a realistic portrayal of outlaws and lawmen,
though the motion picture,
while showing many actual events, contains several fictional people and scenes.
Tilghman filmed on location at many of the old outlaw hideouts in Lincoln and
Payne counties and in the old Creek and Osage reserves. He recruited local
people, as well as cowboys from the 101 Ranch, to act in the film. He enlisted
Deputy US Marshals Bud Ledbetter and Chris Madsen to take part. Arkansas Tom
Jones (Roy Daugherty), the only survivor of the Doolin–Dalton Gang, also played
himself.
Arkansas Tom plays himself
Tilghman
toured with the movie, introducing it personally to enthusiastic crowds, and he
picture was a huge hit in the nickelodeons, though not everywhere: the Chicago
Board of Censors refused to issue a permit allowing the showing of the film
because it featured the exploits of a band of train robbers and outlaws.
Bill also plays himself
The Passing
of the Oklahoma Outlaws
originally ran for about 96 minutes. Today, only thirteen minutes of the film
survive. It’s available among the features on a 2011 3-DVD boxed set with
132-page book at $59.98 from The National
Film Preservation Foundation. There’s a two-minute extract on YouTube, with
surprisingly good picture quality, here.
Steiger is Bill
The second feature appearance was when Rod
Steiger played him in Cattle Annie and Little Britches
(1981) and Steiger is reasonably
restrained for once. Steiger’s Tilghman is hunting down outlaw Bill Doolin
(Burt Lancaster) and his gang. Steiger does manage to convey a steely
determination to bring the renegades to justice.
Rod is an aging Bill - though in fact at the time he was in his thirties
At one point in the movie,
Tilghman says, “Bill and me, we’re old.” Steiger was 55 and Lancaster 67 so he
had a point (Lancaster was ill with hepatitis and
suffered a mild heart attack during filming) although in reality in 1893 both Tilghman and Doolin
were in their thirties. Never mind. It adds to the slight ‘end of the West’
tinge to the film: the Wild West is disappearing. The day of the outlaw and
gunman is over.
TV Bills
Tilghman appeared more often on the small
screen. In 1956 Don Kennedy played him in an episode of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp entitled Dodge
City Gets a New Marshal,
which you can watch here. It’s complete hooey historically: Wyatt arrives
from having cleaned up Wichita in 1876 to take over as Marshal of Dodge and
promptly shoots half a dozen men on Front Street. Charlie Bassett (Bob Fortier)
is the county sheriff and Bill Tilghman the “chief deputy”.
Don as Bill
Actually,
Tilghman probably did sign on as Ford County Sheriff Charles Bassett’s deputy in
September 1874, when he was twenty. There is no historical record of this but
his second wife, who wrote his biography, said so.
That's Charlie, seated, left, next to Wyatt
His farming
family had come to Kansas from Iowa when Bill was three and the young man had
been a buffalo hunter before taking up the lawman’s trade. Tilghman later
became a partner in the Crystal Palace Saloon in Dodge. His first documented
service as a lawman began on January 1, 1878, when he became a deputy under County
Sheriff Bat Masterson.
Buffalo Bill Tilghman, left
Anyway, in the
Wyatt Earp episode Charlie and Bill
are surrounded by thirty gunmen at the depot. Jim ‘Dog’ Kelley (pre-Rawhide Paul Brinegar), a saloon owner
and not yet mayor, reluctantly helps out and Wyatt heroically saves them. Earp,
Bassett and Tilghman, “the greatest lawmen who ever lived,” as Dog Kelley calls
them, then go out and arrest the ringleader of the gunmen, shooting a few more
gunhands while they are at it. Boot Hill gets several new residents. Oh well,
at least Bill Tilghman was featured.
In February
1960, Brad Johnson played Bill Tilghman in an episode of the syndicated TV
series Death Valley Days enitled The Wedding Dress (Season 8, Episode 18). I can’t find this on
YouTube among the many episodes available but it may exist. Send me a link if
you find it!
Not quite clean-as-a-whistle Bill
Bill Tilghman
may not have been the spotlessly clean peace officer he is usually shown as on
screen, however. Within a month of his appointment as Bat Masterson’s deputy, he
was charged with being an accessory to an attempted train robbery, though the
charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. Tilghman was again suspected
of a crime only two months later, in April, 1878, when he was arrested by Bat
on a charge of horse theft. Once again the charges were dismissed. In March
1879, Masterson had to sell his deputy's Dodge City house, at auction, to
satisfy a judgment.
Bill is marshal of Dodge City
In 1883
Tilghman became deputy to the new Ford County sheriff, Patrick F. Sughrue. He sold
his share of the Oasis saloon in Dodge to his brother Frank. But Bill gained
his first important lawman's position on April 10, 1884, when he was appointed
city marshal of Dodge City. In May 1884 the citizens of Dodge presented
Tilghman with a solid gold badge. Tilghman's widow, in her biography of her
husband, wrote that Tilghman and Assistant Marshal Ben Daniels ran Mysterious
Dave Mather out of Dodge during late July 1885, though this is dismissed by
Mather’s biographer Jack DeMattos. In March 1886 Tilghman resigned as city
marshal of Dodge to tend to his ranch, but the great blizzard of that year
wiped out his livestock.
It was as a
peace officer rather than rancher that Tilghman would continue. In 1888 he shot
and killed a man named Ed Prather. Prather, a newspaper reported, “threw his
hand upon his revolver; but Mr. Tilghman was too quick for him and held a
revolver in his face. Mr. T. ordered him three times to take his hand off his
gun, and would have disarmed him if he had been near enough; but Prather sought
a better position, but Tilghman pulled the trigger and Prather was a dead man.
A coroner's jury ... after a thorough examination of the circumstances,
returned a verdict of justifiable killing.”
County seat wars
In the late
80s and early 90s conflict raged over whether Ingalls or Cimarron should be the
county seat and in January 1889 there was a pitched battle between partisans of
the two towns in which one man was killed and five were wounded. Bill Tilghman
was one of the wounded: he sprained an ankle.
Oklahoma
It was at this
time that the Tilghmans moved to Oklahoma. One of the 15000 population of the
new boom town of Guthrie was Bill Tilghman, who built a commercial structure on
his Oklahoma Avenue lot. Another land rush was held on September 22, 1891, and
Bill Tilghman established a ranch. But the profession of lawman was never far
away: Oklahoma was suffering the depredations of outlaws and in May 1892
Tilghman was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal.
Bill in his prime
When the new
town of Perry, Oklahoma was created after the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893,
Tilghman was appointed city marshal there. It was at this time that he and his
fellow lawmen were tracking down members of the Doolin gang. On September 6,
1895, Tilghman and two other deputy marshals tracked down William F
"Little Bill" Raidler. After being ordered to surrender, Raidler
opened fire and was brought down by a blast from Tilghman's shotgun. The outlaw
survived his wounds and was sentenced to ten years.
The capture of Bill Doolin
Tilghman's
career as a peace officer came to a famous climax in January 1896, when he
captured Bill Doolin. Tilghman had followed Doolin to Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
He recognized Doolin sitting in the lobby of a bath house. Doolin failed to
recognize Tilghman, though, and Tilghman was able to overpower the gang leader without
a shot being fired. It was a mighty coup. The day after, 2,000 people crowded
into the Guthrie railroad station to see Tilghman bring Doolin in. But it didn’t
pan out well for Tilghman: on July 5 Doolin escaped from jail, and Tilghman
never got the reward. Doolin was finally tracked down by Tilghman’s friend Heck
Thomas and his posse and was shot to death on August 24, 1896.
Doolin is nabbed
The popular
Bill Tilghman won an easy victory in the elections to the post of sheriff of
Lincoln County, Oklahoma in 1900. He was re-elected two years later. In 1900
his first wife, Flora, died and three years later Tilghman remarried, to Zoe
Agnes Stratton, twenty six years his junior. They had three sons, Tench,
Richard and Woodrow.
Politics
Politics
beckoned. In New York, Tilghman’s old friend Bat Masterson introduced him to
President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt wasn’t going to give Bill the plum job
he wanted, US marshal of Oklahoma – that would go to a Republican and Bill was
a Democrat – but Roosevelt remained fond of Tilghman, and these political
connections enabled Tilghman to win election as an Oklahoma state senator in
1910. Following his term in the senate, Tilghman became chief of police in
Oklahoma City on May 8, 1911. He served two years and helped rid Oklahoma City
of much of its criminal element. By now he was a senior figure in law
enforcement and state affairs.
Elder statesman Bill
The flickers
It was now
that Tilghman turned to the movie business. And it is here that the biggest and
best screen depiction of Bill Tilghman starts. On August 22, 1999 TNT broadcast
the made-for-television film You Know My Name, which starred Sam Elliott
as Bill.
Sam Elliott is Bill
The TV movie
concentrates on the last year of Tilghman’s life, so now we will too.
While he is on
the set of his motion picture, Tilghman (Elliott, actually a slim 55 to
Tilghman’s portly 70 but putting on the age) is approached by a citizen of
Cromwell, east of Oklahoma City and about fifty miles to the south east of Tilghman’s
home of Chandler. The town is lawless and in the grip of crooks and thugs. Will
he help? At first he declines but you can tell he would like one last go at
marshaling, and he gets a six-month contract. In reality, this was a good ten
years after the making of the movie, but never mind. He goes off to Cromwell alone,
promising his wife and sons that he’ll be back soon. Naturally he rides. No
perishing autymobile for him.
Sam as Bill
I must say
Turner spared no expense (well, maybe a bit) in creating the set for the oil
town of Cromwell. It’s a filthy place full of corruption. As Tilghman rides in
he regards the lowlife with that Sam Elliott Western silent disdain. Of course
it doesn’t take him long to start cleaning up the town.
The main town
crook should have been Robert Middleton, who would have been ideal, but sadly
he passed away in 1977 and was unavailable, so they got a Bob Middleton lookalike
(perhaps they held a competition) and Walter Olkewicz, the Twin Peaks guy, as Killian does an
excellent job of impersonating him. Killian is a saloon owner, naturally, as
bad guys have to be. He is properly blaggardly as leader of the anti-law ‘n’
order brigade. Law ‘n’ order will reduce his trade in bootleg liquor (it’s
Prohibition time), drugs, gambling and prostitution. I don’t know if there was
a real Killian.
Walter is Killian
But the real
villain, the seriously repellent one, did exist, though. I’m not sure that in
reality Wiley Lynn was quite such a psychopath teetering on the edge of homicidal
madness that Arliss Howard portrays him as, but Lynn was certainly a pretty
loathsome character. Though a federal agent charged with eliminating illegal booze,
he was in fact on the take in a major way. The movie Lynn is addicted to cocaine
and pretty well barking mad. He murders various people, including the county
sheriff, with glee and shoves their bodies in oil tanks. He was certainly
Tilghman’s main obstacle in bringing some semblance of peace and order to Cromwell.
Arliss is the loathsome Lynn
Part of
Tilghman’s strategy to tame the town is to show his movie, and we get the
delight of James Gammon as Real Arkansas Tom who reluctantly steps onto the
stage to back Bill up. The crowd cheer every move the goodies make, in the way
that people used to at the flickers. This scene is well handled by the cast and
by director/writer John Kent Harrison, who had done another TV 1910s Western
with Elliott a couple of years before, The
Ranger, the Cook and a Hole on the Sky.
We also get
flashbacks as Bill relives his capture of Bill Doolin. In the movie he appears dressed
as a clergyman and has a shotgun in a violin case. “You know my name,” he warns
Doolin.
Bill is helped
by a young assistant, Hugh Sawyer (Jonathan Young), which was in fact the case,
and by rather rough methods he manages to get a spy in the enemy camp, Alibi
Joe (James Parks), though it does not end well for Alibi when he is discovered.
The oil tank has plenty of room for one more.

Bill in the Cromwell time
Bill goes back
for bucolic weekends with his family. They are all a bit too good to be true.
In fact the middle son, Richard, is written out altogether. In 1929 Richard was
shot in the liver while attempting to hold up a dice game and died of his
wounds, so maybe he was airbrushed out of the picture. But then Woodrow was
also a career criminal, who spent much of his life behind bars, and he
features, as a little boy.
Riding back to
Cromwell from such an idyllic weekend, Bill is set upon by gangsters in an
automobile who spray sub-machine gun bullets at him but of course a cowpoke on
his horse is far superior to a mere car, and the vehicle careers over a cliff,
leaving Bull unscathed.
You do get the
impression that it has all been sensationalized a bit. Still, it is a movie.
The death of Bill Tilghman
Well, a
drunken Lynn turns up in town, discharging his pistol wildly. Bill grabs his
gun hand and succeeds in wrestling the firearm away from him but the skunk
pulls a second pistol from a pocket and shoots Bill in the gut several times.
Bill falls, mortally wounded. He died on November 1st, 1924. That
was more or less what did happen.
Amazingly,
Lynn was acquitted at a trial. Eye-witnesses conveniently disappeared and Deputy
Hugh Sawyer, either incompetent or bought off, testified that he could not see
clearly what happened, though in fact he was standing right next to Tilghman.
Lynn continued his criminal ways until finally killed in a gunfight with
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent Crockett Long (who also died) at
Madill, OK in 1932.
Bill Tilghman
lay in state in the Oklahoma capitol building and was buried in Chandler.
I would
recommend any of the screen Tilghmans, except perhaps the Wyatt Earp episode, and even that has its interest, I suppose. Or
you could read Zoe’s bio: Zoe A Tilghman, Marshal of the Last Frontier: Life
and Services of William Matthew (Bill) Tilghman. Glendale, CA, The Arthur
H. Clark Company, 1964. Bat Masterson wrote about him in Famous Gun Fighters of the Western Frontier: 'Billy' Tilghman, Human Life Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 4.
July 1907. Or try Guardian of the Law: The Life and Times of William Matthew
Tilghman (1854-1924) by Glenn Shirley, Austin, TX, Eakin Press, 1988.
Well, so long, e-pards.