Walt Willey returns to Wild Bill role for Mendota shows May 25-26

“Wild Bill! An Afternoon with James Butler Hickok,” a one-man show from actor/writer Walt Willey, will be performed Saturday, May 25, and Sunday, May 26, at the Hume-Carnegie Museum, 901 Washington St., Mendota, in conjunction with Wild Bill Hickok Day.

Performances are scheduled for noon, 1:30 and 3 p.m.

Willey will be performing the “Special Edition,” emphasizing Hickok’s time in Mendota, Troy Grove and Utica areas. The first-person narration follows Hickok’s life from his birth in 1837 and adventures in Illinois as a youth to his return to the area in 1869.

Willey, a La Salle County native (born in Ottawa) who played Jackson Montgomery on “All My Children” for almost 25 years, had been looking for a one-man show to take on tour.

“And here was this legend, right in my own backyard,” Willey said in a news release. “I began to research this man’s life and I was fascinated. Even with the myth and fable surrounding him stripped away, his life is as exciting as any of the fiction written about him. And he was six-foot two, blonde and blue, so it wasn’t much of a stretch.”

“This is a man who was, in his lifetime, a farmer, a teamster, a trapper, a scout, a spy, a marshal, a sheriff, a gunfighter, an actor and a gambler – and a legend in his own time. And he died at thirty-nine! In Western movies, when we see gunfighters step into the street for a showdown, it’s because Wild Bill did!”

Willey performs Hickok’s life story from the legend’s own words.

“The sources I’ve used are the ones that lean on provable truth,” Willey said. “Now whether Hickok could separate his truth from legend ... well, that’s part of the journey.”