From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Greger Hoel wrote:   
      
   > On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 01:56:52 GMT, "Linda Terrell"   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   >>>Little Big Man, the movie   
   >   
   >   
   >>It's a lot of fun.  Best caricature of Custer ever put on film.   
   >>Mulligan has a ball with his role of Custer, eating scenery as   
   >>even as he eats the dust.   
   >   
   >   
   > I had no idea Richard Mulligan played Custer. I just loved him in   
   > Soap. now I definitely gotta watch this movie.   
   >   
   >   
   >>But it has nothing to do with history as she is wrote.   
   >   
   >   
   > Jack Crabb himself is a historical figure, ain't he?   
      
   Nope. But it's high praise for an author that, even given readers' lack   
   of knowledge of the details and participants in events, that no doubt   
   any number of people assume the character was real. It no doubt helps   
   the impression that a prominent Sioux was called Little Big Man. One   
   movie review even calls Jack Crabb an Indian.   
      
   George McDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman is another fictional survivor of   
   LBH, although starting the battle from the Indian camp side as a   
   captive. Fraser's "Flashman and the Redskins" is one of a series of   
   Flashman stories, the only one set mostly in the American West and   
   filled with historical characters. (It helps to read "Flash for   
   Freedom", which is before and contiguous with Redskins and set mostly in   
   the American South.   
      
   Fraser does very detailed research and presents the stories of his   
   Victorian military hero, rake and secret coward (lifting the character   
   from the Hughes' Victorian novel, "Tom Brown's School Days") heavily   
   annotated with a mix of historical sources and sidebar comments about   
   "errors" and discrepencies between various accounts and the fictional   
   memoirs. He's very adept at having his character interact with (mostly   
   doing dirt to or running from) famous scalp hunters (Glanton and   
   company), Army officers (just about everyone and a few more),   
   gunfighters (Hichock), Indians (just about any Apache or Sioux worth   
   mentioning) and other real frontier folks (Carson, Wooton, etc.) in a   
   way that is entirely plausable and far more difficult to contradict with   
   historical fact than Jack Crabb's insertion into various affairs.   
   Flashman, for instance, is made out to be the fourth Sioux who charged   
   across the creek at the approaching troops, the forth man's identity   
   being not solidly established; and the enigmatic historical scout, Frank   
   Grouard, is made out as Flashman's illegitimate son from an earlier   
   cruel betrayal and his savior at the battle. His portrayal of Custer may   
   be closer to the real man than any other fictional characterization.   
      
   He's not unlike Jack Crabb, just on a global scale, in that Flashman,   
   through several books, appears at just about every major event of   
   Victorian times.   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)