Is Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘1883’ Character Based on a Real Person?
Was the gunslinger played by Billy Bob Thornton in the 'Yellowstone' prequel based on a real-life figure?
In the second episode of the first season of Taylor Sheridan‘s Western drama 1883, there is an appearance by a very well-known actor who plays the Marshal of Fort Worth, Texas. The cast of the Yellowstone prequel series is led by Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Isabel May, who play James, Margaret, and Elsa of the renowned Dutton family, the descendants of whom now run the Yellowstone Ranch in Sheridan’s flagship show. In 1883, however, Billy Bob Thornton‘s cameo is one of the most memorable turns of the spinoff’s first and only season to date. Thornton is a natural fit for the genre period piece, given his Southern drawl and purposeful swagger, but his performance also left us wondering if the character he plays in 1883 is actually a real-life person from history.
Who Does Billy Bob Thornton Play in ‘1883’?
Billy Bob Thornton appears toward the end of the second episode of 1883 as Ft. Worth Marshal Jim Courtright. After Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott) and James Dutton (McGraw) learn that their loved ones and a group of German immigrants have been ambushed down by the Trinity River by a group of bandits, with several killed (including Dutton’s niece, Mary Abel), the two round up a group that heads into Ft. Worth to seek retribution for the assault. The man they go to see about getting it? Marshal Jim Courtright.
James Dutton enters the marshal’s office claiming he has a score to settle with some bandits; he needs Courtright’s help to find the parties responsible and hold them accountable, which is something that Courtright is more than happy to do. The marshal immediately deputizes Dutton before telling him that the group in question is probably hanging out at the White Elephant, a local saloon in town. Dutton leads the men into the crowded bar and asks Josef (Marc Rissmann), one of the German immigrants present during the attack at the Trinity, to point out the men who raided their campfire quietly. Josef points out the ringleader and Courtright wastes no time drawing on the man and shooting dead where he stands. He kills several more of the group who are dumb enough to pull on the sharpshooting quick draw Courtright. He punctuates the display with a classic Billy Bob Thornton line as he announces to a shocked group of bar patrons, “There’s only one killer in Ft. Worth, and that’s me.”
What Happened to Marshal Jim Courtright in Real Life?
Jim Courtright had a very interesting life, to say the least. Not only was he the actual Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff and marshal of Cowtown (a nickname for Ft. Worth) close to the time of the show after the Civil War and before the turn of the century, but he was also a notorious gunslinger who was on the other side of the law as well. According to oldwest,org, Big Jim Courtright, or “Long Haired Jim” as he was also known (even though his hair appears to be short in photos), was born in 1845 near Springfield, Illinois under the name Timothy Isaiah Courtright and served as a Union soldier at Vicksburg during the Civil War when he enlisted at the tender age of 17.
After mistakenly being called Jim instead of Tim during the war, Courtright decided he liked the sound of Jim better and took it as his own new name. He ran for the office of marshal of Ft. Worth in 1876 and won. Though Courtright’s methods were considered questionable at best, the crime rate in the notoriously raucous red-light district of town known as Hell’s Half Acre dropped significantly during his tenure in the 1870s and 80s. Some would call into question whether he was any better than the outlaws he was rounding up and saw him as a bit of a controversial figure at the time.
By all accounts, although it makes for a great plot device, Jim Courtright lost his third bid for reelection in 1979 and had in fact moved on to New Mexico where he had been accused of murdering two people along with an associate in what was known as the American Valley Murders. Courtright fled New Mexico and apparently escaped the law. Several years later, he would return to Ft. Worth in 1884, where he established his own detective agency called the T.I.C. Commercial Agency. It appears that he missed the actual 1883 timeframe by just a year, but was in Ft. Worth before and after the time that the scene in Episode 2 takes place. Nonetheless, Sheridan apparently saw just how close of a historical discrepancy it was and made the correct artistic choice by deciding to have Thornton star as the controversial figure in the show.
Courtright died at the age of just 39 in what was considered a legendary gunfight with his one-time friend turned nemesis Luke Short — who ran the White Elephant, the very same saloon that Thornton’s Courtright enters and kills three men in his sole episode of 1883. In real history, however, the two men had a falling out over Short’s refusal to hire Courtright’s agency, and decided to take to the streets for a gundraw similar to the ones we’ve all seen in Western television and film. It was Short, however, who was the last man standing that day. In a time when the line between good and evil was fuzzy, to say the least, Courtright was the embodiment of what was a newly incorporated and somewhat lawless Ft. Worth in the 1870s. While serving as the town marshal, he allegedly engaged in money-for-protection extortion schemes in Hell’s Half Acre and even worked as a hitman for a certain price. His skill with a pistol was undeniable, and he used it on both sides of the law. His portrayal in the show by Billy Bob Thornton was just a tiny glimpse into the complex and morally ambiguous Old West gunslinger’s life.
1883 is currently available to stream on Paramount+.
