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Elmer mccurdy7/4/2023 ![]() ![]() After working as a plumber and then later joining the Army (where he learned a little about explosives), McCurdy fell into some pretty bad ways. Mark Svenvold has reconstructed the bizarre itinerary of the corpse through sixty years of freakshows, sideshows, carnivals, and exploitation movies, capturing some of this country’s greatest fantasies and most elabourate publicity stunts. Born in 1880, the subject of our story, one Elmer McCurdy, turned to drinking and trouble-making when he found out he was an illegitimate child. ![]() ![]() His post-mortem career in show business lasted until 1976, when he was discovered painted orange and hanging by the neck in a California amusement ride. From the Oklahoma funeral home that propped up his 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. When Elmer McCurdy was shot dead by an Oklahoma sheriff and his posse after a short spree of bungled robberies, he was not laid to rest. In 1911, after a short spree of comically bungled robberies, a sheriff’s posse caught up with him and shot him dead.In death, Elmer McCurdy accidentally found fame. Shaken by the reality of his origins, the young man took to boozing, finding inconsistent work as a zinc miner, plumber and soldier in the west. He arrived in Oklahoma a few decades after the golden age of outlaws and attempted to resurrect the lost art of train robbing. The film includes an appearance of Elmer McCurdy, an Oklahoma would-be bank robber who was killed in 1911, and whose embalmed body circulated through various sideshows, fun houses and amusement parks for over 60 years. Elmer McCurdy, the Oklahoma outlaw, embalmed in his coffin. Who was Elmer McCurdy Born in 1880, McCurdy was an orphan raised by his aunt and uncle in his birth city, Maine. This is the story of Elmer McCurdy, a failed plumber from Bangor, Maine, who drifted west to become a failed outlaw. ![]()
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