Prop Really Isn't a Prop!

[Chupachub]

Not sure if this is a re-post or not, but I thought it was really interesting! Crazy what people do for money and entertainment!

The hanging picture at the bottom is from a different story, but It seemed to fix the story. All other pics are accurate.
(Sorry for all the typos. )



In December 1976 a Universal Studios camera crew arrived at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California, to fill an episode of the television action show, The Six Million Dollar Man. In Preparing the set in a corner of the funhouse, a worker moved the "hanging man," causing one of the prop's arms to come off. Inside it was a human bone. This was no mere prop; this was a dead guy!

The body was that of Elmer McCurdy, a young man who in 1911 robbed a train of $46 and two jugs of whiskey in Oklahoma. He announced to the posse in pursrit of him that he would not be taken alive. He was proved right - they killed him in the ensuing shoot-out.

McCurdy began his career as a sideshow attraction right after his embalming. He looked so darned good dressed up in his fancy clothes that the undertaker propped him up in a corner of the funeral home.s back room and charged locals a nickle to see "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give up." The nickles were dropped into the corpse's mouth/

No next of kin showed up to claim McCurdy so the corpse kept mouthing nickles for a few years. Carnival promoters wanted to buy the stiff, but the undertaker turned them down. McCurdy was producing a steady income for the funeral parlor - why tamper with success?

In 1915, two men showed up and claimed that McCurdy was their brother. They hauled the body away, supposedly to give him a decent burial in the family plot. In reality, McCurdy's "brothers" were carnival promoters and this was a ruse to get the deceased away from that proprietary undertaker. The promoters exhibited McCurdy throughout Texas under the same billing as the undertaker had given him - "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up."

After that tour, McCurdy popped up everywhere, including an amusement park near Mount Rushmore, lying in an open casket in a Los Angeles wax museum, and in a few low-budget films. Before the Sim Million Dollar Man crew discovered this prop to be a corpse, McCurdy had been hanging in that Long Beach fun house for four years.

In April 1977, the much-traveled Elmer McCurdy was laid to final rest in Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. To make sure the corpse would not make its way back to the entertainment world, the state medical examiner ordered two cubic yards of cement poured over the coffin before the grave was closed. McCurdy hasn't been seen hanging around amusement parks since.

[Curb Stomper]

Havent seen it before, I wonder how much the equivalent of 46 bucks is from back then.

[Chupachub]

Originally Posted by Curb Stomper

Havent seen it before, I wonder how much the equivalent of 46 bucks is from back then.

That's a good question! If you ever do find out let me know!

[Curb Stomper]

Because of the recession, 47 bucks.

[skullsoup432]

If you can find the book "Body Snatchers, Stiffs and other Ghoulish Delights" by Frederic Drimmer, it gives the whole story.

He was embalmed with an arsenic solution, that is why the corpse is almost mummified.

[Curb Stomper]

The site only could go back as far as 1914..

$46.00 in 1914 had about the same buying power as $967.06 in 2009.

Annual inflation over this period was about 3.26%.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

[The2Halves]

Interesting read!

[Chupachub]

Originally Posted by Curb Stomper

The site only could go back as far as 1914..

$46.00 in 1914 had about the same buying power as $967.06 in 2009.

Annual inflation over this period was about 3.26%.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

Woah! What a sly devil!

[RancidMind]

Hmm, think I remember seeing this on a show called "Urban Legends". Interesting post