Wild Women of the West: Calamity Jane

Today I found an interesting documentary on the biography channel about "Calamity Jane", wild woman legend of the west. All I have to say is that the documentary was so very, very delightful.

Calamity Jane earned the reputation for out-smoking, out-drinking and out-shooting any man at the time in the west. Sounds like my kind of lady! Biographers have a hard time sorting out the truth versus the myth of who really Calamity Jane was because so many over-exaggerated myths swirl around her. Was she really dangerous? Was she a prostitute? Was she a wild alcoholic? Was she a mean, wild, crazy bitch? Who was she really??

I have actually never even heard of Calamity Jane until today. I don't have much experience with the "wild west" days and honestly it hasn't really interested me much. Apparently Calamity Jane is a character in the "Deadwood" HBO special, which I have never seen, but I sure might be watching now!

You can find the biography by clicking here. You will need to click on "historical figures" and her biography will be located there. I had some issues while watching the video, because the media player would often not open, but I just exited out of my browser and reopened it again. The video is broken into several sections and will automatically switch to the next section when done with one section. If the video freezes while switching from one part to the next, just click on the video and it should go to the next section. There were a few technical issues, but I think it was definitely worth it.

Believe me, I'll be revisiting the myth of Calamity Jane at another time, as soon as I find out more information on her!

I don't know how long the video will be up on the biography channel website, but if you are interested in purchasing your own video of Calamity Jane's biography, you can purchase it by clicking here.
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