Many of us dream of being a movie star. but we also hope to be alive to experience it.
The video below is the story of Elmer J. McCurdy (January 1, 1880 – October 7, 1911). He was not anything like a movie star. He was a bank and train robber who was killed in a shoot-out with police after robbing a Katy Train in Oklahoma in October 1911. Dubbed The Bandit Who Wouldn t Give Up.
Elmer s body went unclaimed, so the undertaker decided to make some money off of him.
Back in those days some rather odd things were done with bodies. Posing them in life like positions and taking pictures of them for the family, for example. Elmer s mummified body was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and sideshow circuit during the 1920s through the 1960s. He was even displayed in The Museum Of Crime, and later was posed outside of a movie theater to promote a gangster film.