Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Paintings

In 1896, Anheuser-Busch commissioned from Otto Becker a lithographed, modified version of Cassily Adam's painting Custer's Last Fight, which was distributed as a print to saloons all over America. It is reputed to still be in some bars today. Edgar Samuel Paxson completed his painting Custer's Last Stand in 1899. In 1963 Harold McCracken, director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, deemed Paxson's painting "the best pictoral representation of the battle" and "from a purely artistic standpoint...one of the best if not the finest pictures which have been created to immortalize that dramatic event."

Films

Custer has been portrayed in motion pictures by Francis Ford (1912 twice), Ned Finley (1916), Dustin Farnum (1926), John Beck (1926), Clay Clement (1933). John Miljan (1936), Frank McGlynn (1936), Paul Kelly (1940), Addison Richards (1940), Ronald Reagan (1940), Errol Flynn (1941), James Millican (1942), Sheb Wooley (1952), Douglas Kennedy (1954), Britt Lomond (1958), Philip Carey (1965), Leslie Nielsen (1966), Robert Shaw (1967), Wayne Maunder (1967 &...
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