The reality of the American frontier and its celebration by the cinema were remarkably close in time. Buffalo Bill was a major figure in the real West and lived to appear in films about it.
Or take Shane. This classic Western is set in 1889, and Brandon deWilde was nine when he played Joey Starrett.
Which means that his character would have been 73 when the film came out in 1953.
Where would he have watched it? In a city somewhere? Or did he do what Shane told him and stay to farm his parents' land?
It's hard to think of a similar telescoping of time in a British film. The nearest that occurs to me is that Henry Stephenson, who played Mr Brownlow in David Lean's 1948 film Oliver Twist, was born in 1871, the year after Dickens died.
Incidentally, there is some accidental telescoping of time in this trailer. If you look closely, you will see a car travelling on the road behind Shane as he rides in from out of nowhere.
And I don't think my point about Joey being able to watch Shane is original, but I can't find where I first read it.
Wyatt Earp was a close friend of Tom Mix and John Ford, and the first film to feature him as a character came out in his lifetime.
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