The Plainsman is a 1936 American Western film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur.

The film presents a highly fictionalized account of the adventures and relationships between Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, and General George Custer, with a gun-runner named Lattimer (Charles Bickford) as the main villain.

The film is notorious for mixing timelines and even has an opening scene with Abraham Lincoln setting the stage for Hickok's adventures.

On a paddle steamer, he bumps into his old army scout colleague, Buffalo Bill Cody and his new bride.

John Lattimer, an agent for unscrupulous gun makers, has supplied the Cheyenne with repeating rifles, which enable them to kill half of the troopers at a United States Cavalry outpost.

After a desperate six-day siege on a river bank, the survivors are saved when Custer arrives with the cavalry.

After meeting in the woods, the two friends capture an Indian and learn that Custer has been killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and that the Cheyenne are moving to join the Sioux in the Black Hills.

He also describes his pleasure in the acting of Cooper and Bickford as well as the "unexpected trace of sophistication" in Antheil's soundtrack for the film.