Woolies & Chinks

For all its gritty Old West authenticity, the Coen brothers’ 2010 movie version of Charles Portis’s book True Grit includes some near misses, time wise. Mattie Ross’s “Boss of the Plains” Stetson may not have quite made it to western Arkansas by the mid-to-late-1870s, and her put-down of Texas Ranger La Boeuf for dressing like a “rodeo clown” is at least half a century too early. The appearance of “Lucky” Ned Pepper in angora hair-on chaps is also a little suspect. S