Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer Cultural depictions of George Armstrong Custer George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. He was defeated and killed by the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. More than 30 movies and countless television shows have featured him as a character. He was portrayed by future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan in "Santa Fe Trail" (1940), as well as by Errol Flynn in "They Died With Their Boots On" (1941). In 1896, Anheuser-Busch commissioned from Otto Becker a lithographed, modified version of
Custer of the West from critics. At Rotten Tomatoes, the film received only a 25% "rotten" rating. It holds average rating of 4.1/10. Many were unimpressed by the attempt to shoehorn two different viewpoints into the same film – the mistreatment of the native Americans by American troops, and the portrayal of Custer as an American hero who was not to blame for the disaster. The general inaccuracies of the film were also questioned, particularly the portrayal of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. "Custer of the West" was released to VHS by Anchor Bay Entertainment on July 14, 1998 and on DVD by