HOBBEMA, Alta. – Dwight Beard leaned back against the hockey bleachers and waited for the action to begin.
He was just one of 400 cowboys and Indians who showed up for the tryouts for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at Disneyland’s newest theme park outside Paris.
The bleachers in the hockey arena were full of Buffalo Bill look-alikes with fringed jackets, pointed goatees, chaps and big hats.
“You see some guys here that fit the part already, but wait till they get on a horse and the fun will begin,” said Beard, a member of the Gunfighters Western Stunt Club in Calgary.
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He was right. Many of the Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill wanna-be’s needed a leg up to get on the horses bareback. Then they had trouble staying on while they jogged the horses down to the arena and back. The ones who fell off got great rounds of applause from the audience.
Bill Roth, who works at a guest ranch outside Calgary, wasn’t happy with the minute-long tryouts.
“I thought it would be more involved as far as riding. There’s a lot more to riding than jumping on a horse bareback and riding around the arena,” said Roth, who was trying out for the lead role of Buffalo Bill but didn’t make the first cut.
It didn’t take long for Jean Phillipe Delaveau, EuroDisney’s show director, and Shawn Howard, a cast member, former rodeo cowboy and talent scout on the tour, to look over each person on horseback.
They wanted a certain look and horse skills for the popular Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in Paris. More than two million visitors have been to the show in three years. Organizers said they’re trying to recreate the original show that visited Paris at the beginning of the century with Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley and a cast of cowboys, Indians and bison.
“The audience loves that. For European audiences that myth of the West, cowboys, first nation’s people, it’s really a myth and they love it,” Delaveau told the crowd.
The crew that makes the list and works a trial period in Paris will be paid a minimum $600 (U.S.) a week for two shows a night, five days a week, plus benefits, five weeks paid vacation, relocation and a housing allowance.
Howard said he wasn’t making any money as a cowboy in Oklahoma and has been with EuroDisney since it began in 1992.
“Pretty much you’re a star over there. It’s like TV, the people just want to touch you,” Howard told the crowd.
And that’s what brought Beard and the others to the tryouts.
Chance to take a chance
“What an opportunity, and you’d never know if you didn’t come here and audition,” said Beard.
Barry Penney, of Nanton, Alta., said he thinks the show would be a great holiday and “fun for a few months.”
But Penney, who owns a sporting goods store, didn’t know about leaping on a horse bareback.
“I shouldn’t have a problem if my belly don’t get in the way,” he said.
Eugene Jackson, of Good Fish Lake, Alta., had no problem with the riding. The former bull rider and professional chuckwagon outrider is used to leaping on horses at a full gallop. But watching the other riders had him shaking his head: “They’re inexperienced, very inexperienced.”
Larry Bull, a member of the Louis Bull tribal council, said he thinks the wild west show is a good opportunity for young native people.
“It’s an opening for the native people to put their goals in action. It’s an opportunity for people to get off the reserve,” said Bull.
Leon Goodstriker knows all about the show. Goodstriker, from the Blood reserve near Standoff, Alta., was the first Sitting Bull at the wild west show and the first Canadian in the production.
“Disney’s a show for entertainment only. It’s not a career,” said Goodstriker watching the tryouts.
After two years with the show, Goodstriker said he was disillusioned. He was given three English speaking lines during the show and was never allowed to develop the Sitting Bull character.
“I felt I wanted to do more,” said Goodstriker.
One of the reasons he stayed was to let European visitors know not all Indians are vicious savages like the movies portray.
“I wanted people to know what Native American people are like,” said Goodstriker, who spent hours signing autographs and getting shot with a water pistol by “total brats.”
Martine Rose, of Nelson, B.C., also wonders about perpetuating the myth of the cowboys and Indians during a dinner show.
“Whose historical account of the wild west are we going by? It doesn’t give native people a lot of dignity and honor.”
