Rodeo star and sharp-shooter, born in Darke Co, Ohio, USA. She learned to shoot at an early age, and married Frank E Butler in 1876 after beating him in a shooting match. They formed a trick-shooting act, and from 1885 toured widely with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. A tiny woman just under five feet tall, from 30 paces she shot cigarettes from her husband's lips and the lips of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and through the pips of a playing card tossed in the air. Annie Oakley became a synonym for a complimentary ticket, because of the hole traditionally punched in it. Her story was fictionalized in the Irving Berlin musical comedy Annie Get Your Gun (1946), starring Ethel Merman.
Editors: Many Oakley biographies contain wrong dates, names and legends. Please check the two Annie Oakley Foundation external links before reinserting myths.
Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860-November 3, 1926) b. Oakley's amazing talent and luck led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and propelled her to become the first American female superstar. Using a .22 caliber rifle at 90 feet (27 m), Oakley could split a playing card edge-on and put five or six more holes in it before it touched the ground.
Biography
Born near North Star, Ohio, Annie was the fifth of seven children.
Susan Mosey remarried, had another child and was widowed a second time.
Annie did not go to school. Her family's surname, "Mosey", appears on her father's gravestone, in his military record and is the official spelling by the Annie Oakley Foundation, maintained by her living relatives.
Annie began hunting at the age of nine to support her siblings and her widowed mother.
Annie soon became known throughout the region as a sharpshooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match with Annie, age 21, to be held in ten days time in a small town near Greenville, Ohio. Frank began courting Annie, won her heart, and they began a happy marriage of 44 years on June 20, 1882.
They lived in Cincinnati for a time, and she is believed to have taken her stage name from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided. At first, Oakley was Butler's assistant in his travelling show. Later, Butler realized that Oakley was more talented, so he became her assistant and business manager. Annie and Frank's personal and business success in handling celebrity is considered a model show business relationship even after more than a century.
They joined the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1885. Standing only 5 feet (1.5 m), Oakley was given the nickname of "Watanya Cicilla" by fellow performer Sitting Bull, rendered "Little Sure Shot" in the public advertisements. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the Prince of Prussia, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. Oakley later joked that, had her aim been a little worse, she might have averted World War I.
During her first Buffalo Bill show engagement, Oakley experienced a tense professional rivalry with sharpshooter Lillian Smith. Smith promoted herself as younger and, therefore, more billable than Oakley. Oakley temporarily left the Buffalo Bill show but returned after Smith departed.
Oakley had initially responded to the show's age rivalry by removing six years from her promoted age.
In 1901, she was badly injured in a railway crash, but she fully recovered after temporary paralysis and several spinal operations. The newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, published a false story that Oakley had been arrested for stealing to support a cocaine habit.
Annie continued to set records into her 60s, even after suffering a debilitating automobile accident that forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg.
Annie Oakley died on November 3, 1926, of pernicious anemia, at the age of 66.
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