The real wild west

Foley’s third film in series definitive story of hangin’ judge.

Filmmaker Larry Foley admits that the story of “Indians, Outlaws, Marshals and the Hangin’ Judge” has largely been a regional one — until now. Now he hopes his film by that name will elevate the “real story of Fort Smith [to] be considered up there with Deadwood, Tombstone and Dodge City when telling tales of the Wild West. It’s too often forgotten.”

Foley’s film, which will be released Sept. 10, is the third in a series the film’s producer, director and writer — who is also a professor and chairman of the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Arkansas — promised himself he would make.

“Several years ago, I wrote down a goal of three films that I wanted to produce,” he remembers. “Kind of my own professional documentary bucket list — Arkansas-based stories that impacted the nation. The first was ‘The Buffalo Flows,’ the story of our first national river. It aired in prime time on PBS, and I won a Mid-America Emmy for writing. The second, ‘The First Boys of Spring,’ the story of the birth of spring baseball in Hot Springs, aired nationally on MLB Network and the Fox Sports channels. I won two Emmys for that film — writing and documentary.”

The story of Judge Isaac C. Parker, whose strict rule of law earned him the sobriquet “the hanging judge,” captured Foley’s attention way back when he was a Cub Scout on a field trip to the old federal courthouse in Fort Smith in the mid-1960s.

“I’ve done a few previous stories about the subject, but I’ve always wanted to produce the definitive documentary on Judge Parker and those Wild West days of the late 19th century,” he explains. “And I wanted to include the story of American Indians, from their point of view, the role they played, and how they got to what we now know as Oklahoma.

— Bill Rogers

“The story wouldn’t leave me alone. So, here it is!”

Appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant, Isaac Charles Parker served as federal judge for the Federal Court of the Western District of Arkansas in Fort Smith from 1875 to 1896. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, his court was unique in the fact that he had jurisdiction over all of Indian Territory, covering more than 74,000 square miles.

Fayetteville actor Bill Rogers says he didn’t know much about Parker until he was cast to portray him in Foley’s film.

“I knew a few bits and pieces, primarily through a few articles, movies and books like ‘True Grit,’ and his reputation as the infamous ‘Hanging Judge,’” Rogers says. “I learned that he served 21 years, presided over almost 13,500 cases, sentenced 160 to death — of which around 80 or so were executed.

“Judge Parker was a fascinating man of many layers and, in my opinion, a good man who had a most difficult job.”

(Courtesy Photo/James Brewer) Filmmaker Larry Foley says he “dispatched a film crew to shoot the dedication of the Bass Reeves statue in Fort Smith in 2012, hoping to someday include those scenes in what turned out to be this film. I include clips from a 1986 piece I did for AETN. I've been joking that I've been at this for so long, I'm now serving as my own archive!”