The Second Life of Elmer McCurdy
I love reading about interesting people. Usually, I don’t mind the fact that they’re interesting and I’m boring. In fact, I’ve often thought if there were an insomniac channel a show based on my life would be a big hit, “Episode 27: Will Anneli be seduced again into forbidden lust?” The answer, of course, is yes. I make great brownies. On another episode, I might eat a cookie, and so on. But this is good. Boring means I don’t have an active catastrophe going on, and when I hear about others doing exciting things, I can enjoy a little vicarious zip to my life. Sometimes though, people take excitement too far. Such is Elmer McCurdy who died and still continued to lead a more exciting life than I do. This seems unfair.
Before his death, Elmer was an outlaw. In 1911 he stole $46 and two jugs of whiskey from a train and went north to Kansas to make his get-a-way. He was hiding out in a barnyard when the law caught up and killed him in a good old-fashioned shoot-out. Afterward, his body was taken to the local funeral home, where he was embalmed. Now things start to get interesting. The funeral director refused to release the body until he got some money, and when no one volunteered to give him any, he got creative. He dressed Elmer in street clothes, put a rifle in his hand and let people have a look at him if they would put a nickel in Elmer’s mouth. He called him, ‘The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.’
This went on for about five years until two long lost brothers showed up. I’m sure they had a heart-warming story about wanting to lay dear brother Elmer to rest. But it would be many years before Elmer got any peace. These men were no relation. They ran a traveling carnival and set Elmer up as “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive.” They kept him for a while, before selling him to another carnival. Elmer spent years moving from one carnival to another and even spending some time in a traveling museum of crime. By 1933 Elmer’s skin had mummified and his body had begun to shrink. This gave the director of the movie, “Narcotic” a bright idea for advertising his show. He put Elmer in the movie lobby as a “dead dope fiend” and gave him an appropriate sordid backstory. Later, Elmer made his movie debut in the 1967 horror film, “She Freak.”
After his movie career, Elmer went back on the carnival circuit until he was damaged by high winds while performing at Mt. Rushmore. At that point, the carnival decided that he was not “lifelike” enough to exhibit. He was sold to Pike’s Peak Amusement Zone in California and put into their haunted house as a hanged man. By this time everyone had pretty much forgotten Elmer’s history and it was assumed that he was just a mannequin like the others (at least I hope the others were mannequins). He stayed in his new creepy home until 1976 when the film crew for The Six Million Dollar Man came to shoot the episode called, “Carnival of Spies.” The truth about Elmer was finally rediscovered when one poor prop man got the shock of his life. He was trying to arrange Elmer for a better shot; accidentally broke his arm and saw that the arm still had bones inside. In 1977 Elmer was finally put to rest in the Boot Hill section of the cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma
For more information you can read, “Elmer McCurdy: The Life and After-Life of an American Outlaw,” by Mark Svenvold.