I've found that Charles Bronson's portrayal of Wild Bill Hickok in the White Buffalo to be the best and most realistic one I've seen on film or television. He certainly looks the most like Hickok and is properly attired with both pistols in a sash as Hickok was known to favor.
The novel and film are set in 1874 as Hickok has returned to the west after several years of play acting as his good friend Buffalo Bill Cody talked him into doing. Whereas Cody was a natural for show business Hickok hated the whole business and went west again when gold was reported in the Dakota territory. It's there where he met his death in 1876.
But according to this novel Hickok went on a hunt for a legendary white buffalo which has been plaguing him in dreams. Hickok also suffered from glaucoma and had to wear dark glasses because his eyes couldn't deal with bright light. Clearly not the man he was when he was the legendary marshal of Abilene.
He was however the man who carried out what was essentially a contract hit on a legendary, charismatic Indian leader called the Whistler who back in the previous decade was trying to unite various Indian tribes to forget their own differences and wage a united war against the whites. The Indians, especially the Sioux hated Hickok for that though he was at the time carrying out Army orders, he was scouting for them at the time.
On his odyssey to the Dakotas Hickok meets up with Crazy Horse two years before he became legendary leading the Sioux to victory at the Little Big Horn. The white buffalo is real and stampeding through the Sioux village killed Crazy Horse's toddler. Because Crazy Horse, played by Will Sampson, did not show proper Indian stoicism on the death of the little guy, he's been banished from the tribe and can only redeem himself according to their religion by killing the white buffalo himself and not with the white man's guns.
Of course Crazy Horse and Hickok meet up in the Dakota territory each pursuing the albino bison. Whether they ever really met, they were in the same area at the same time. No record of it, but they could have met.
Bronson and Sampson are a fine pair of leads and are ably assisted by a veteran cast of players that include, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Kim Novak, Stuart Whitman, Cara Williams, Ed Lauter, Clint Walker and Douglas Fowley. Standing out however is Jack Warden playing Hickok's sidekick on the hunt.
If you want to see the best portrayal of Wild Bill Hickok done on big screen or small catch The White Buffalo by all means.
