>> From The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Peggy Pearlstein: Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm Peggy Pearlstein, Head of the Hebraic Section here in the African
and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress.
Welcome to today's program with Dr. Ann Kirschner, Dean,
Macaulay Honors College City University of New York
who will be talking about her newest book, "Lady at the O.K. Corral:
The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp."
Since March is Women's History Month,
this subject is especially fitting.
Ann Kirschner has had such a varied career.
Writer, media and marketing pioneer in television, cable, and satellite,
academic and administration that I'll just give you some
of the highlights of her accomplishments.
In addition to Bachelors and Masters Degrees,
Ann has a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University
where she began her academic career
as a lecturer in Victorian Literature.
She's been a freelance writer, an editor at CBS,
The New York Times, and a publishing house.
She's held administrative positions at the Modern Language Association
and The New York Public Library.   In the area of media, she's headed
up several start-up services including the National Football
League's Sunday Ticket and NFL.com.
And I've got someone here you've got to talk to who's writing a book
at the Library called "Football Nation".
NFL.com, the first sports league on satellite T.V. Ann has served
in executive positions for communications, consulting firms,
and sales and marketing companies.
She has, and continues to serve as a Board Member for such diverse
and prestigious organizations as the Jewish Women's Archive,
Open University of Israel, and Soros Foundation.
Ann's first book is "Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story".
It's based on her mother's experiences over five years
in Nazi slave labor camps, the diary she kept,
and more than 350 letters she saved.
The Story of Josephine Marcus Earp goes
into an entirely different direction and we'll soon learn more
about this Jewish woman and Wyatt Earp.
And following the presentation,
there will be a book sale and signing.
Let me remind you that this event is being videotaped
for subsequent broadcasts on the Library's website and other media.
The audience is encouraged to offer comments
and raise questions during the formal question and answer period,
but please be advised that your voice and image may be recorded
and later broadcast as part of this event.
By participating in the question and answer period, you're consenting
to the Library's possible reproduction
and transmission of your remarks.   A warm welcome to Dr. Ann Kirschner.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Ann Kirschner: Thank you for that gracious introduction.
It strikes me just from the outset how different the recording
of history and events is today as opposed to the era
that we're going to talk about.
Because one of the things that I found so striking about the Earps
and the telling of their tale is how hidden things could be in those days
as opposed to these days when it seems like so little is hidden.
So, let's see if I can figure out the mouse.
Ah, there we go.   No, don't look at that picture yet.
So, did you know that Wyatt Earp was buried in a Jewish cemetery?
I didn't. And that was the question
that really set me off on this quest.
It seems so odd to me.
I had grown up with Wyatt Earp as many
of us had who grew up in the '50s.
That's me as a baby and that's my big brother, Joey,
getting ready to watch black and white television.
And in the 1950s, Wyatt Earp was everywhere on television.
Every single American network had a Wyatt Earp
or Tombstone themed show on.
Anybody remember Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Gunsmoke?
Yeah. Some of you remember.
How many of you could still sing the theme song which,
since we're being webcast, I am not going to sing.
Okay, we've got a couple of takers here.
So, what really struck me was the untold story of Tombstone.
There were women in Tombstone.
Many of the early chronicles of the West made it seem
as if there were no mothers, daughters, sisters,
lovers, only men in Tombstone.
And so, when we were watching television and watching Wyatt Earp,
we certainly never thought about Wyatt Earp having a Jewish wife.
And we thought we knew something about the gunfight.
We thought it was the good guys against the bad guys.
What we didn't know was that there was this gutsy,
busty broad who had a lover on both sides
of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
And we thought we knew something about Wyatt Earp himself.
He was the one with the white hat, right?
But, what we didn't know was that the Wyatt Earp that we knew was
in large part a story of Josephine Earp's making.
She had the extraordinary sense of celebrity that, in some ways,
shaped the legend of Wyatt Earp
into what she would call a nice clean story.
So, let me take you back to Josephine's beginnings.
And, in later life, Josephine would always say that she was the daughter
of a wealthy German merchant.
Not true. In fact, most of what Josephine told us
about herself was not true.
So, this is a map of the German Empire, 1871.
And the section that's circled in red, Posen,
is where the Marcus family was from.
This is Josephine's father's family, but her mother was
from that region as well.
And actually, in case you think I have wandered totally
from my mother's story, if you look just south of Posen,
you come to Silesia which is the region
of now Poland that my mother was from.
But, that is the only thing that my mother
and Josephine Marcus Earp have in common.
So, the Marcus family came from the Posen region around 1850
and they came first to New York.
Josephine was born in 1860 and the family was struggling.
He was a baker, her father and they were reading
in the many Jewish newspapers in New York at the time
about the wonders of San Francisco.
And you could make your fortune in San Francisco
and they really were not making their fortune in New York
so they decided to emigrate again.
And off they go to San Francisco via the Isthmus of Panama.
This is one of the steamers that served San Francisco in that era.
That's how you got there through the Isthmus
and then up to San Francisco.
But, the San Francisco that they arrived
in was a thriving Jewish community
and a highly stratified Jewish community.
The most successful San Franciscan Jews were German Jews
and then there were the other Jews.
And the Polish Jews, and that would be Josephine's family,
they were definitely on the wrong side of the tracks.
And this prejudice goes back to those early days
of the German Empire when it was the German Jews
who were better educated, more affluent, more secular.
The Polish Jews spoke Yiddish rather than German,
they tended to be peddlers and much more religious than the German Jews
and that was the stratification that existed in San Francisco as well.
And so, Josephine found herself, once again, in a community
that was highly stratified and there was nothing second class
about Josephine.
She was an extremely pretty, active, outgoing young woman
and she felt she had the world to conquer.
The spark for what would change Josephine's life came
from an unexpected source and that was the H.M.S. Pinafore craze
which swept America in this time.
Every town had a Pinafore troupe and the Arizona territory which was,
you know, just out there to the East
of California had several touring companies and they were so desperate
for performers that they would go into the amateur dancing academies
and attract young singers and dancers to join the troupe.
So, Josephine gets recruited to go to the Arizona territory
and this strikes her as a terrific idea.
She's going to run away from home, she's going to become an actress.
And that woman there, sort of, lolling on the couch,
that's Pauline Marcum whose troupe was one of the best known ones
in the Arizona territory.
So, Josephine goes off to what is not yet the state
of Arizona, but the territory.   Oops. Let's just cover her up.
We don't actually know exactly what Josephine looked
like as a young girl.
We do know that she was very attractive.
And I'll show you a little bit later from a slide from one
of the forensic experts I worked with to try and authenticate some
of the pictures of young Josephine.
But, we do know that she caused quite a sensation
when she showed up in Tombstone.
These are some of the age progression photographs
that I think are pretty close to accurate.
All the ones on the bottom are the ones
that we know really are Josephine.
The ones on the top are ones that have been theorized
and authenticated as far as we can by my expert.
So, there's Wyatt Earp in the middle of this slide.
And Wyatt was about 6 foot tall, he and his brothers looked
so much alike that sometimes people mistook them for each other.
But, they all shared this incredible height
and leanness and handsomeness.
Now, the two people on the bottom of the page on either side of Wyatt,
those were the secrets
that Josephine most did not want you to know about.
The fellow on the right is Johnny Behan
who was the first sheriff of Cochise County.
And the woman on the left is Mattie Blaylock
who was Wyatt's common law wife when he first came to Tombstone.
And everything that I will tell you about Josephine's deep, deep,
deep interest, some might say, obsession in keeping the truth
of what happened in Tombstone from you has really nothing to do
with the gunfight itself and everything to do
with Johnny Behan and Mattie Blaylock.
The gunfight actually did not take place in the O.K. Corral.
This is real inside baseball stuff but, if any of you are Earp experts
and I meet them everywhere I go, you will jump up at the end
of this presentation and say, "But you didn't tell them
that the gunfight actually didn't happen at the O.K. Corral."
It's true.   It didn't.
It happened next to the O.K. Corral on Fremont Street.
And it was, in fact, the lawmen and the cowboys.
But, there's a tremendous amount of ambiguity about the right and wrong
of this situation and historians have spent their entire lives trying
to figure out what happened in those 30 seconds.
What we do know is that they changed Wyatt's life forever
because he was forever associated with that gunfight.
And it certainly changed Josephine's life forever.
At the end of the gunfight, Wyatt Earp was the only man who escaped
without any gunshots whatsoever.
3 people were killed and Wyatt, then, embarked on what became known
as the Vendetta Ride to find the people
who killed one brother and maimed another.
When the gunfight was over and Wyatt was cleared of any wrongdoing,
he and Josephine, whom I believe met first in Tombstone,
you know I haven't actually told you that story yet.
Let's go back two minutes.
When Josephine first came to Tombstone,
she came as the common law wife of Johnny Behan.
She had chosen very badly.
Johnny was a dirty dog, he was a womanizer,
and she soon left him and, in the intervening months,
she met Wyatt Earp who had a wife.
He left his wife and he and Josephine had an affair.
The gunfight, one part was allied with Johnny Behan
and one part was allied with Wyatt Earp.
But, the feud that had been ignited just before the gunfight really
never ended and Wyatt had work to do and so Josephine left Tombstone.
She left. She had already left Johnny Behan, now she left Wyatt
as well, went back home to wait for Wyatt while Wyatt took his wife,
put her on a train and sent his common law wife, Mattie Blaylock,
back to his mother and father.
I think that was probably the most cowardly act Wyatt Earp ever did was
to send poor Mattie Blaylock back to his mother to wait for Wyatt.
But, he did and it took quite a while before she figured
out that he was not coming to get her.
Their adventures from there on in, Wyatt Earp picks up Josephine
in 1882 and for the next 47 years, they are together.
They had adventures in every boom town that you've heard of
and probably quite a few boom towns that you haven't heard of.
I went to visit many of them.
Probably the one where I had the best time
and where I think actually Josephine
and Wyatt had the best time was Nome, Alaska.
Just to give you a sense of where Nome is, it is almost as far north
of Seattle as Seattle is west of New York.
It is right under the Arctic Circle.
When they got together, Josephine and Wyatt, in 1882,
they didn't have any money and, for the next 47 years,
that's really what they did was make money,
lose money, make money, lose money.
They never seemed to care about money for the sake of it,
but it was adventure that drove them.
Josephine, her love of adventure which I think is what first led
to that running away to the Pinafore troupe really never left her.
Nome, Alaska in 1900 was one of the most exciting places on earth.
I mean, today it's a sleepy little town, quite desolate.
But, you could go out to the public beach in Nome, Alaska,
and there I am on the shore of the Bering Sea,
and with a little pan just go out to the sand as you would
on any beach now, only gold would emerge.
So, instead of having to have incredible equipment to dig
down into the earth, gold was found on the shores of Nome, Alaska.
And the reason that I say Josephine was so happy there was because,
in Alaska, for the first time she was in a community
where the stratification that she had experienced in San Francisco
between the German and the Polish Jews and in Tombstone
and in the other boom towns where to be a saloon keeper's common law
wife, which is what Josephine was, always made her feel
as if she wasn't quite the respectable woman she wanted to be.
And that title, "Lady at the O.K. Corral" is, in part,
ironic because Josephine did have those two sides to her.
Part of her wanted to be gung ho for adventure always and the other part
of her wanted to be a respectable lady like her sister,
her younger sister who became a very successful business woman
and society lady in San Francisco.
So, they roamed around and as they aged, they spent most of their time
in a circle between Los Angeles, the desert between L.A.
and between Arizona and California and San Francisco,
Oakland where Josephine's family lived.
And she was very close to that one sister in particular.
I've actually been to the site where this picture was taken.
Josephine, in addition to having this deep conflict
about whether she wanted to be an adventuress or a lady;
the other conflict in her was did she love luxury
or did she love the desert.
You know, she loved to stay in fancy hotels with beautiful sheets
and fancy clothes, but she also loved living out in the desert.
And, believe me, you don't get any more isolated
than this particular spot which is outside
of what's now called Earp, California.
In 1929, the era of Tombstone and the O.K. Corral
which had already been famous throughout their lifetime got a new
shot in the arm.
First of all, by the town of Tombstone itself
which launched what it called Helldorado Days,
but much more importantly and lastingly, by the creation
of Hollywood and the first films.
So many of which had cowboys, Indians, western themes.
And two of the most popular stars were William S. Hart and Tom Mix
who became very, very close to Wyatt and Josephine.
That's William S. Hart on the horse.
So, the story of Tombstone and the O.K. Corral was being told,
but Josephine didn't like how it was being told.
First of all, she was nervous that somebody would find out about her
as Mrs. Behan or the sad story of Mattie Blaylock.
But, more importantly, she wanted the image of Wyatt to be heroic
and scrubbed clean like a Sunday school teacher
as somebody said later on.
What made her so nervous about Mattie was not simply
that Wyatt had had a common law wife before, but after Mattie figured
out that Wyatt was not coming back for her,
she didn't have too many options.
You know, women at that time, particularly women who were not
at all educated, it wasn't as if she could go and get a job someplace.
She became a drug addict, she was a prostitute,
and she committed suicide.
And on the day before she died, she was cursing Wyatt Earp
as the man who done her wrong.
So, this was the story that Josephine was most terrified about.
When an enterprising writer named Stuart Lake approached the Earps
to tell the story the way Wyatt and Josephine wanted it told,
they thought that was a really dandy idea.
And Wyatt began to sit for interviews with Stuart Lake,
Josephine there almost all the time making sure
that she caught every word.
And so, it was Stuart Lake who published the first biography
of Wyatt Earp and it was an immediate best seller.
America, particularly in the era
of the Depression, was ready for a hero.
To the end of his days, Wyatt was this good looking,
aristocratic guy while Josephine, well ladies that's not really fair,
but she didn't quite keep her looks the way Wyatt did.
I kind of think she looks like Sophie Tucker
in some of her later pictures.
And when Wyatt died in 1929, it was a national news story.
This is the photograph-- the telegram that Josephine sends
to Stuart Lake telling him that Wyatt has died
and asking him to come to the funeral.
And these are the pallbearers who were there at the funeral,
including Wilson Mizner and William S. Hart and Tom Mix
and the newspapers seized on it as the passing of the Old West.
Josephine didn't even attend the funeral, she was too distraught
and it took years before she was seen again in the public eye.
But, one of the things that really brought her out of hiding
and into a new era of her life was a letter from Lincoln Ellsworth,
the Arctic explorer, who had read Stuart Lake's book,
thought that Wyatt Earp was the epitome of American individualism
and heroism and decided that he would name his boat the Wyatt Earp
when he went back to the South Pole.
And he wrote to Josephine and Josephine, with that modern sense
of celebrity that I think is very special to her,
immediately realized this was a really great thing.
In our parlance, this would be like naming the moon landing, you know,
the shuttle or something after Wyatt Earp.
So, she sends Lincoln Ellsworth Wyatt's last eyeglasses and one
of his shotguns and Lincoln Ellsworth creates a little shrine
on the boat.
And it's hard to imagine today, but Lincoln Ellsworth's name
and the Wyatt Earp, the name of his ship,
was in The New York Times every month for about six years.
And when Lincoln Ellsworth was lost at sea, it was a front page story
and when he was recovered, it was, you know,
continued to be a front page story and this is The New York Times
on January, I think it's the 22nd, 1936.
Edward the VII proclaimed, you know, new leader of Britain and there,
over on the left hand side of the page, is Lincoln Ellsworth.
So, this was as great a polishing up of Wyatt Earp's reputation
as you could possibly have.
This was my attempt to show you what that actually said.
But, take it from me, the byline is, "Aboard the Motor Ship, Wyatt Earp".
So, perhaps, the good feeling
about Lincoln Ellsworth was what emboldened Josephine
to think now it's time to tell my story.
And she met some distant cousins of Wyatt's, two women,
Vinolia Earp Ackerman and Mabel Earp Cason and began to talk to them
about writing her memoirs.
And they worked together on it for several years and,
during these years, Josephine lived mostly with their family.
You can see she's sort of slimmed down here
and looks a little like an Italian widow.
And they even went back to Tombstone.
Here's a picture of Josephine, this is on the way back from Tombstone.
So, imagine, it's her first trip back since 1882.
You know, we think America has changed in the last 10 or 20 years,
but the era that Josephine lived through with Wyatt was a time
of unbelievable change for America.
You know, going from stagecoaches and horses
to planes, trains, and automobiles.
Going from an era when a man like Wyatt could make his money
as a saloon keeper and a gambler, now you're in an era
of prohibition and gambling is illegal.
So, the changes in America were unbelievably powerful,
but Josephine was-- the closer that Vinolia and Mabel came
to the real story of Tombstone
and they were fine writers and researchers.
The more nervous Josephine became that, even now
and now it's in the late 1930s.   Even now, she hears those, you know,
hoof beats from Tombstone coming closer and what if they out her
as Mrs. Behan or what if they tell the terrible tale
of the demise of Mattie Blaylock?
So, she loses her nerve and she forces them
to stop writing the memoir.   She has them burn the manuscript,
she watches them burn the manuscript.
She puts a hex on anybody who will tell her story
which is usually the part where people
in the audience begin moving away from me.
And, as far as she's concerned, that's the end.
You know, her story will never be told.
And she doesn't see too much of the Casons after that
and she probably is in the early stages of dementia.
She is more and more paranoid, she has very, very little to live on,
she walks around with a big purse filled with clippings.
Interestingly, not clippings about Wyatt Earp,
but clippings about her younger sister and her success
in San Francisco society.   She takes to stalking John Flood
who had been her very close friend and Wyatt's.
And he writes all of this down so this is his writing
on the back of an old calendar.
She comes to his house, she tries to put her hand
through the screen door, I'll get back at you good and hard.
That's what Mrs. Earp wrote to him.
But, when she eventually dies, which is in 1944,
it is not a national news story, it's a tiny little piece
in the Los Angeles Times that the widow of Wyatt Earp has passed on.
Nobody attended her funeral, she died penniless.
Sid Grauman of Grauman's Theater
and William S. Hart paid for her funeral.
And, interestingly, it was officiated over by a Rabbi.
Josephine's relationship to Judaism was very tenuous.
She wasn't ashamed of it,
but she also wasn't very engaged with Judaism in any way.
And, yet, at that darkest moment of her life, when Wyatt dies,
she decides that she will bury him in the family plot
in a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California.
And then, when she dies, she is buried right next
to him and there they are.
It's the most visited grave in Colma.
So, given that it is my pleasure to be at the Library today,
I thought I would just tell you a few more minutes
about how the story was put together.
I didn't go to every place on this map, but I went to most of them
and spent a lot of time reading newspapers and doing interviews
and trying to get as much of the primary source material as I could.
I talked a little bit before about some of the photography.
With the help of this forensic expert in New York, Cary Lane,
we did a lot of measurements and now I know what a philtrum is.
I'll share that with you, it's this little thing over here.
Yeah, you all know that already.
And that is how I ended up with this photograph as the one of Josephine
on the cover of the book in comparison
to the pictures of older Josephine.
I had access to more of Josephine's original letters
than anyone ever has and that was
through the good graces of a private collector.
And I worked with a couple of MaCaulay honors college students
in putting those letters into a form that I could use them.
Interestingly, and probably no surprise to any of you,
20 somethings don't know how to read cursive handwriting.
So, that was, when you think about where this is all going,
it's an interesting finding.
So, they were very helpful on this project,
but reading cursive was not one of their strong suits.
I worked in many, many different libraries and this is a page
from the original manuscript.   They didn't burn all the copies.
So, one of the copies is in the Ford County Historical Society
in Dodge City.
And it was my great pleasure to spend 3 days
in Dodge City reading that manuscript.
And, again, this is not something
that the young'uns are good at doing.
I guess I'm really a library rat when it comes right down to it.
So, when it comes to American stories, I think you, kind of,
don't get much more American than the story of the frontier west
and Tombstone and the O.K. Corral.
But to my mind, you can't tell that story
until you put the women back in the picture.
Josephine was denied her story, in part,
because she didn't want it told.
But, for many women, and this is National Women's History Month,
for many women, it's simply because their stories have not been told.
So, I think the great joy for me was putting this woman back
in the picture and you don't get many more interesting
and fun stories to tell than the story
of Josephine at the O.K. Corral.
So, thank you very much for being so attentive and I'd love to hear
if any of you have some questions for me.
[ Applause ]   >> Did they have any children?
>> You'll have to repeat the question.
>> Ann Kirschner: The question was whether they had any children.
No. Alas, they did not.
Josephine had two miscarriages and, as far as I can tell,
she was unable to have children.
They were very close to Wyatt's family and she was very close
to her nieces and nephew.
And I did get to meet several of her descendants so it was fun
>> Did you ever find out exactly where she was and what she was doing
on the day of the gunfight?
>> Ann Kirschner: Did I ever find out exactly what she was doing
on the day of the gunfight?   I know what she says she was doing.
What she says she was doing is she was at home.
And, after the gunfight, there was a loud alarm, a ringing of the bell
that went up that could be heard throughout Tombstone.
Because there had been so much hostility
and frightening things going on in the town, robberies,
et cetera in the months leading up to the gunfight
that the Tombstone Citizen's Association had agreed,
in case there was a town emergency, they would ring a bell.
Josephine hears the bell and, according to what she writes
in the memoir, she runs into town so fast
that she didn't even put her bonnet on.
She gets to the site where everybody is gathered around.
She sees a tremendous amount of bloodshed
and there were already dead bodies being taken away,
but she sees Wyatt standing unharmed and so she goes back again.
That's what she says that she did.   And I have no reason to doubt it.
In talking to some of the Earpists or Earpies,
as my husband calls them, you know sometimes it is useful
to have a woman's point of view.
And many of the Earp historians have said to me, particularly one fellow
in particular, that they can plot every day practically
down to the minute of what Wyatt Earp was doing leading
up to and at the gunfight.
And they have assured me, these men, that Wyatt didn't have time
to have an affair in Tombstone.   That's a joke.
Of course, Wyatt had time to have an affair in Tombstone.
It's, sort of, a funny thing to imagine that he
and Josephine could not have found a quiet place and a quiet amount
of time to conduct affair.
I do think that in the days immediately before the gunfight,
Wyatt really was very busy.   >> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: The question is whether,
what was her relationship with the Earp women.
All of the Earps had common law wives.
None of them knew Josephine in Tombstone.
In fact, Virgil's wife, Allie,
she didn't even think Josephine really was in Tombstone.
So, again, in Tombstone the society was quite stratified,
but the Earp wives kept entirely to themselves, you know,
they made a little money sewing and they never went into town.
So, there really would not have been too much opportunity
>> I know you did most of your research at [inaudible],
what resources did you find here at the Library?
>> Ann Kirschner: The newspapers online are an
extraordinary resource.
Thank you, Library, whoever did that.
Just to be able to scan the newspapers,
and they were in a wonderfully searchable form,
was fantastic for me.   >> Those are the Chronicles America.
>> Ann Kirschner: Chronicling America.
It's an incredible historical resource.
Any other questions?   >> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: The question was how did they allow non-Jews
to be buried in the Jewish cemetery?   I asked the manager of the Hills
of Eternity cemetery exactly the same question.
And he, sort of, shrugged and said, "This is California."
Not only did they allow Wyatt Earp to be buried in the Jewish cemetery,
but both Wyatt and Josephine were cremated.
And, you know, so clearly these are, they play by different rules.
>> As someone from [inaudible], I appreciate that answer.
My question is given the true story of Josephine Earp
and the one that she perpetuated.
As the storyteller, which one do you prefer?
>> Ann Kirschner: Oh, I prefer the true story.
And you know what?
I don't think, if I were to make a novel out of this, you know,
you probably would think that it's unbelievable.
I think the true story is so incredibly interesting
that it's the one that grabs my attention.
>> And why would she be so reticent about the truth
if it is a better story and she was so loving
of the celebrity and the publicity?
>> Ann Kirschner: So, the story is why did she prefer a whitewashed
story to the real story.
Because, together with things like Prohibition and gambling,
common law marriage, which was entirely common in the frontier,
was no longer so common in 1930s and 1940s.
I mean, the frontier was closed and she didn't want to appear
to be a woman of ill repute.
And so, part of it was the story of Johnny Behan
and that she had lived openly in Tombstone as Mrs. Behan.
She received her mail as Mrs. Behan.
So, that is one part of it that she didn't want you to know.
But the other part of it was, you know, that she
and Wyatt could be blamed for the dark demise of Mattie Blaylock Earp.
That she had committed suicide
and had become a prostitute, not in that order.
And that somehow it would be laid to the adultery
between Wyatt and Josephine.
So, she didn't want to be the floozy of Tombstone.
And the story of Mattie Blaylock did not come out until 1955.
So, Josephine managed to keep a lid on it all of those years
and only a decade later did it come out.
Gary?
>> Did Wyatt go on to make any money, residuals,
from any of the books, stories, movies that were made?
>> Ann Kirschner: The question was did they make any money
from their story.   The answer is yes.
Josephine received half the royalties from Stuart Lake's book.
Almost nothing from the films and there was a lot of friction
between her and Stuart Lake.
And Stuart Lake, I think, was a very canny writer himself and I bet
if we could go back and audit those books,
I think Josephine got cheated out of quite a lot.
And then, after Josephine's death, her relatives write to Stuart Lake
because they've heard that there's a television show coming out
and they say, "Well, is there anything in this for us?"
And he says, "Oh, no, no, there's nothing, there's nothing."
So, I think Stuart cut a pretty sharp deal and, you know, Josephine,
the fact that she died in debt, you know,
I think there was probably much more money to be shared.
Because I can promise you, Stuart Lake did not die in debt.
>> [Inaudible].   >> Ann Kirschner: Yes.
The one in the hat?   >> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: That is Mattie Blaylock.
And I'm not absolutely sure that that's a fly photograph, but-- .
>> -- [Inaudible].   >> Ann Kirschner: Yes.
Then that is, thank you.
I will, henceforth, identify that as a fly photograph.
I think there's another one here also that's a fly photograph.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: I did not know that.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: It is my good luck to have historian
in the house who's actually from or whose family is from Tombstone.
And so to hear that is really fantastic.
So, this is not only a fly photograph, but when I'm asked
about the interesting women in Tombstone, and I think about women
like Clara Spaulding Brown who was the correspondent
for the San Diego Union and she was writing continually
about the gunfight and the feud with the Earps.
Or I think about Nellie Cashman who was an entrepreneur.
Now, I can add Mollie Fly, wife of Camillus Fly
and that she actually took a lot of the photographs.
That's fabulous, thank you.   >> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: The question is when did guns
in holsters become common?
It certainly was not common in Tombstone in 1881.
They either put their guns just in their waist or Wyatt had a coat
that had a special pocket in it, but there were no holsters.
So, that and the quick draw,
I think that those are more Hollywood inventions.
>> [Inaudible].   >> Ann Kirschner: Holsters?
>> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: Well, I'm not sure when it went out of style,
but it didn't come, holsters didn't come into style,
they were not in style in the frontier west as far as I know.
I would certainly not put myself forth as a holster expert.
But I do know that Wyatt was famous for keeping peace
when he was a lawman in Dodge City by what was called buffaloing,
which meant taking your gun and, with the barrel of the gun,
you know hitting a bad guy against the head
which was kinder than shooting him.
And none of that involved any holsters.
It was just the gun in the pants.
But I will do some research and find out the answer to that.
>> Ann Kirschner: One more question?
>> Did Josephine ever really perform in the Pinafore group?
>> Ann Kirschner: The question was did Josephine ever really perform
in the Pinafore group?   I believe she did.
I believe she performed in Prescott and a couple of other towns.
I believe she performed in Tombstone as well.
This is an area of some controversy, again, amongst the Earpies.
There's a whole school of thought
that says Josephine was not a Pinafore performer,
she was a prostitute.
And that's why she came to the Arizona territory.
I've looked at this research every which way to Sunday
and I am convinced that she was a Pinafore dancer.
When she was living with the Cason family in the 1930s
and there was a Pinafore performance that came to L.A.,
the two younger Casons were going to see it.
And, before they left, Josephine got up and did the hornpipe dance
for them which she remembered doing from her days.
So, I'm sold, but I think the Pinafore, the picture of her
as a Pinafore dancer, to me is one of the more charming ways
when I think of her as a young teenager, that's how I think of her.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Ann Kirschner: The question is were there not any newspaper
announcements or the equivalent of playbills?
There are.
Josephine had a bit part so she was just part of a dancer in the chorus
so she would not have had a shout-out
and she was also using an assumed name.
Because, you know, she was afraid that her parents would find her
and drag her back by the hair which is, in fact,
actually what happened the first time.
So, there's no definitive proof but, to me,
there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that adds up to that.
>> This has been a presentation of The Library of Congress.