the movie with jeanne cooper and jean arthur. that isn't true is the only adversary of the united states speak to al[inaudible] all these things we don't know about wild bill that we are aree coke waiting to be unearthed and it turned out the real story in my opinion is as interesting or more interesting than anything made up about him. >> host: was he known contemporarily? >> guest: the first civil war you could make the argument he was the first civil war western celebrity. the reason for that is he already had sort of a resume built-up by then. the new york monthly magazine sent out a reporter to him and did an article about him and it was enormous. thousands and thousands of people write about it and there was this image of him as the iconic original lone gunmen of the american western frontier. to a large extent that's true. some things the reporter made up. that never happens, right? but a lot of the stories were true and suddenly everybody had this image of his iconic archetype of the individual, the gun man, the independe