Calamity Jane

4/5/2026

**_Serious account of the frontierswoman mixes fact with mythmaking_** I say “serious” because the previous Western about Calamity Jane was the amusing musical with Doris Day from 1953. Yet this isn’t a serious biopic of Martha Jane Canary since it involves glaring mythmaking, as well as the fact that the story focuses on the day Wild Bill Hickok was shot playing poker in Deadwood and the subsequent capture of the killer, Jack McCall, which means we’re talking about a matter of a few days. Jane was rumored to have fronted a mob that aimed to lynch McCall, but the idea that she joined a small posse to track down Bill’s murderer appears to be fiction. Yet it makes for a good story, right? (Which is driven home at the very end of the movie). Another deviation from reality is the semi-wi