FD 85-1

14" x 20" 1967

GREAT

I love this poster, and always have done. It's beautiful. This was up in my bedroom, and I always wondered who the model was, because there was something very odd about the photo I couldn't put my finger on. It was too "classic" for any photographer I knew to have pulled off. Have a guess at who this is...I only found out quite by accident a couple of months ago:

I went to visit my Grandfather's grave at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Colma, just south of San Francisco. I had never been there, and decided it was high time I tried to find it. Mt. Olivet is right next to a Jewish cemetery called Hidden Hills, a name which rang a few bells, but I couldn't place it. I walked over there, but it was a Saturday, and the cemetery was closed.

When I got back to LA, I did some research on Wyatt Earp and then remembered he was buried at Hidden Hills! But why? It didn't make sense, since he lived his last 25 years in LA and out in the southern California desert. So I dug deeper, talked to my dad in Missouri who remembered there was a big stink after WW II about Wyatt's remains being dug up from LA and moved to Hidden Hills.

After quite a bit of digging of my own (it's amazing how many uninformative books there are out there on Wyatt by people who can't write) it turns out that Wyatt was married to Josephine Marcus, whose family were well-to-do merchants in San Francisco, and who also were Jewish. Wyatt died in 1929, and Josephine died in 1944 and is buried at Hidden Hills. The family decided that Wyatt's remains should join Josephine's, and so his ashes were re-interred there with Josephine, where they have erected this incongruous tombstone:

I find this really bizarre.

Wyatt and Josephine led a rich and adventurous life...did you know that Wyatt was a lawman for only nine years and considered himself a miner and a gambler? He and Josephine spent three years in Alaska at the beginning of the century, made the equivalent of over a million today ($80,000 then), and came back to California to travel, mine, and live the rugged outdoor life. Wyatt refereed a highly publicized heavyweight fight in San Francisco (he had to be disarmed, first!) and caused mayhem because of his bad decision due to his inexperience. He wrote for the newspapers and knew William Randolph Hearst...he was quite a man, by any standard. Wyatt was even hired as a film consultant for Tom Mix and William S. Hart...who were also pallbearer's at Wyatt's funeral. Wyatt's exploits became famous well after he AND Josephine died....so neither he nor Josephine was ever to know his phenomenal place in history.

When I visited Wyatt and Josephine's grave and took this photo, at the bottom of the tombstone someone had left a pair of dice and some poker chips, and someone else had left a straight flush in a Ziploc bag. You can just make out the red chips on the left.

Oh! WHO'S the girl in the photo????

How about THEM apples?

This photo of Josephine Earp was probably taken in late 1880, or the first part of 1881, before the Gunfight at the OK Corral in October of '81. Josephine would have been 20 or 21 in this picture. There is some dispute regarding this photo, that it wasn't Josephine at all and was taken in 1916. My feeling is that it is a Victorian photograph from that 1880's period, but we will probably never know.