Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Born 1880. Shot dead 1911. Buried 1997. In life Elmer McCurdy was a plumber-cum-miner who jumped a train and drifted west across America on the back of an infectious, turn-of-the-century optimism. He was a drunk too and, soon enough, a failed outlaw. In 1911, after a short spree of failed robberies, he held up the wrong train and rode away with a haul that was described by papers as "one of the smallest in the history of train robbery." It wasn't long before the sheriff and his posse caught up with him and shot him dead. At this point McCurdy, like us all, should have slipped into the earth and quietly from memory. But, in death, he accidentally found fame. From the Joseph Johnson Funeral Home, where the owner propped up McCurdy's preserved corpse and charged a nickel-a-look, to the sideshows of the Great Patterson Carnival where he was exhibited as a felled outlaw, McCurdy became big business. In 1928 he was the star attraction in a carnival that accompanied an extraordinary transcontinental running race from Los Angeles to New York. In the 30s and 40s, he was reinvented as a prop for a series of Hollywood exploitation films like Dwain (Reefer Madness) Esper's film Narcotic, before winding up painted day-glow orange and hanging by his neck in the Laff in the Dark ghost tunnel in Long Beach, California. It was here, in 1976, during the filming of an episode of The six Million Dollar Man, that Elmer was rescued from his strange journey, a forgotten corpse as light as tinderwood. In his mouth the coroner discovered a green, corroded 1924 penny and a ticket stub that read "Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime". Mark Svenvold tells the bizarre story of this quixotic American anti-hero and the journey through the 20th century of his embalmed remains. A travel book, an exposition of the exotic corners of the entertainment industry, a meditation on death and its meanings and one of the most daring biographies of recent times, Elmer McCurdy brilliantly reveals America's deepest obsessions and how they have changed. - Jacket flap.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Showing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1 |
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2
Elmer McCurdy: The Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw
October 7, 2003, Basic Books
in English
0465083498 9780465083497
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3
Elmer McCurdy: the misadventures in life and afterlife of an American outlaw
2003, Fourth Estate
in English
1841153222 9781841153223
|
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
4
Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw
October 15, 2002, Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group
Hardcover
in English
046508348X 9780465083480
|
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
First Sentence
"In December of 1976, Detective Daniel P. Sallmen of the Long Beach Police Department arrived at the office of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner holding a severed arm as if it were a baguette in a brown paper bag."
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Excerpts
Links outside Open Library
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?History
- Created April 30, 2008
- 10 revisions
Wikipedia citation
×CloseCopy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?
December 17, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
December 9, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
August 14, 2021 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
April 30, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
April 30, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |