No matter how much Cody fabricated before or after 1883, his expertise as an Army scout and hunting guide is indisputable, and the events in his Wild West reflected his personal experiences. There has been no celebrity like him. Wild Bill Hickok was a bigger name on the frontier, but he couldn’t cut it as a showman. In more recent times, Jimmy Stewart was an actor who became a combat pilot in WWII and then reinvented himself as an actor (starring in many Westerns), but he didn’t produce or direct his own movies. Audie Murphy was the most decorated U.S. serviceman in WWII, and he went on to play himself in his best movie, but he was also a gunslinger in many mediocre-at-best Westerns and never returned to combat. And as we all know, John Wayne never took a Nazi scalp for Eisenhower.