Lady at the O.K. Corral (36 page)

Now he had it all.

Boyer kept up a steady stream of publications and appearances after
I Married Wyatt Earp,
and also stayed in touch with the Cason and Marcus family. It was, however, one of the rare dips in the popularity of Earp-themed films, and Hollywood did not come a-calling. Instead, Boyer received a film credit on a low-budget television movie starring Marie Osmond as Josephine Earp.

Questions first arose about the authenticity of Boyer's work when his book on Doc Holliday came under attack. His great discovery, the “Peanut” letter in which Doc Holliday confessed to another murder, was no scoop at all, just a rollicking good bit of creative writing. Eight years after its publication, after at least one unsuspecting historian relied on its findings, Boyer declared that the early work was a deliberate spoof, a “wild story” intended to entertain readers and entrap sloppy writers. He released it again with a new advertisement that admitted its fictional roots. However, sharp eyes were watching.

With Boyer's next book,
Tombstone Vendetta
, he flaunted his indifference about whether his critics found his research to be good enough. Almost immediately, the book was accused of being another fictional flight. The sins of
Doc Holliday
and
Tombstone Vendetta
were then visited on
I Married Wyatt Earp
: if Boyer fooled us twice, perhaps he had also bowdlerized the memoirs of Josephine Earp.

Boyer lobbied the University of Arizona Press with a blizzard of letters that proclaimed the historical authenticity of
I Married Wyatt Earp
. But the Press was looking worriedly over its shoulder at Boyer's noisy and persistent critics. The lawyers threatened to withdraw the book unless they were allowed to label it “historical fiction.”

The legitimacy of
I Married Wyatt Earp
took another blow when that provocative cover photograph of Josephine was alleged to have been mass-produced around 1914, long after Tombstone.

“If it isn't Josie, it ought to be,” Boyer grumbled.

Under pressure from indignant historians and journalists, the Press gave up all rights and returned its unsold copies to Boyer, who promptly announced that he intended to write his own account of the scandal, to be called
I Divorced Wyatt Earp.

Boyer lost the ability to see his seminal work influence the next generation of Earp writers. If he believed that nobody could produce major new works without access to his knowledge, or at the very least, without some citation as a source, he was wrong. In 1997, Casey Tefertiller published
Wyatt Earp: The Life behind the Legend
, a comprehensive and scrupulously researched biography that almost completely omitted Boyer, turning back to original source material and also cultivating the author's own relationship with the Cason, Marcus, and Welsh families. Boyer was also invisible in Allen Barra's
Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends
, and from Barra's bully pulpit as a respected and prolific freelance journalist for publications that included the
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times
, he kept up the heat on Boyer's credibility.

In 1990 the community of Earp writers and historians was galvanized by the announcement of two major Hollywood productions,
Tombstone
, starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, and
Wyatt Earp
, starring Kevin Costner. Fame and fortune were on the line, as Earp experts vied for lucrative contracts and the all-important bragging rights that went with being official consultants on a major Hollywood production.

Boyer was completely shut out of the biggest and most exciting game in town: the dueling arrival of two major motion pictures about a subject that he believed he knew better than anyone else in the world.

JOSEPHINE WAS USED
as a punching bag by all sides of the
I Married Wyatt Earp
controversy. Over the years, memories grew dimmer, tempers shorter, and the authenticity of original Earp documents more hotly contested: experts and amateurs jousted about the Flood manuscript, Allie Earp's memoirs, the transcript from the 1881 Tombstone hearing, the letters of Louisa Earp, the manuscript of Forrestine Hooker, the maybe-but-not-for-sure diary of Wyatt's niece Adelia Edwards, the papers of Big Nose Kate, and a Grand Canyon–size collection of miscellaneous guns, recordings, beds, scraps of cloth, and photographs of questionable provenance. But none caused more grief than the so-called Clum manuscript.

The idea that John Clum had written an early, unfinished version of Josephine's story originated with Mabel's daughter Jeanne Cason Laing. Neither a writer nor a historian, Laing was vague about what was in the uncataloged pile of papers that she identified as “the Clum manuscript,” which she turned over to Boyer in 1967. Over the years, her recollection would change about the source of the papers and which copies of the Cason-Ackerman manuscript were burned and which were kept. But neither Laing nor her siblings repudiated the idea that Josephine had “started a manuscript” with John Clum. In a 1983 affidavit, Laing made this clear: “My mother and Aunt were aware of the earlier ‘Clum' manuscript covering the Tombstone years, and for that reason were willing to burn that portion of their manuscript at Mrs. Earp's request. My Aunt had written that portion.”

When experts demanded that Glenn Boyer produce the Clum manuscript, he refused, which was taken as evidence of more chicanery on his part. But Boyer could not show anyone the Clum manuscript because it never existed as a “manuscript,” i.e., a single document of some internal coherence such as the Cason manuscript. So what was in that “stack of papers almost a foot high”? Probably a precious heap of handwritten letters and notes relating to the Tombstone era, which Clum and others had gathered for Josephine, supplemented by Mabel's own research, her extensive correspondence in the 1950s as she went in and out of partnership with John Gilchriese, and then more letters, clippings, and research notes about the momentous discovery of the Mattie Blaylock story.

It has been a long time since anyone looked beneath the deceptive surface that Josephine herself created, never guessing that she would be followed by others with their own reasons to extend her trail of deceit. The advent of online message boards for the Earp faithful kept the idea of a conspiracy front and center, with extravagant claims that Boyer had perpetrated the greatest hoax since the Clifford Irving autobiography of Howard Hughes or the forged Hitler diaries. Anonymity of comments lent to the discussion the occasional raw sewage scent of anti-Semitism and homophobia.

The ad hominem attacks displaced the focus on history. The result was that in the six or so decades since Josephine's death, she has had no honest broker like Mabel Cason.

One wonders, what would Mabel do now?

UNTIL THE END
of her life, Jeanne Cason Laing stayed in touch with Glenn Boyer, trading stories about hip replacements, hearing aids, and the endless round of doctor's appointments that consume much of octogenarian life. Their relationship survived a rough patch when her family demanded the return of the Cason manuscript, arguing that Ernest had intended a loan rather than a gift. Boyer reacted with his usual restraint. He threatened a lawsuit and unleashed his own accusations of a “criminal conspiracy” motivated by the greed of the younger Cason generation. The conflict was never resolved, and today, the manuscript sits in the Dodge City Historical Society, with Laing's affidavit affixed on top, available only to those who have received Boyer's permission in advance.

Telling the truth about Mrs. Wyatt Earp was a responsibility that Laing felt she owed to Josephine, to the Cason family, and to history. She was bothered by the distortions that threatened to obscure the Aunt Josie she knew so well. “Eventually, no one will really know about the charming and aggravating little girl who ran away from a good home and into ‘the wild west' to find the love of her life, but who never forgot that she was Josephine Marcus of San Francisco,” she reflected.

On her eighty-fourth birthday, Glenn Boyer called Jeanne Cason Laing for the last time. “Are you having trouble with men chasing you?” he inquired, assuring her that he was still “blindingly handsome,” but hadn't pulled off a seduction in months. Sorry to hear that she too was now using a walker, he blamed her sore back on her ample bosom. They chuckled together like old friends who accepted their losses as long as they were able to laugh, especially at themselves. There was not a speck of self-pity in either one of them.

AND NOW, ABOUT
that curse.

I guess I should be worried. After all, this is the book that Josephine never wanted to be written. Hide your history, she demanded of herself—or at least control it. The story of the breathless beauty who stole handsome Wyatt away from his hapless wife would shock and alienate anyone who heard about it.

Wouldn't it?

Josephine never dared to believe that she would be forgiven. She cared too much about public judgment to take any chances. Time, however, was on her side. Today, we can see her as a passionate, resilient, unconventional woman, a myth builder for a bold new American era, with a remarkably modern understanding of media and celebrity. But she deserves far more than just forgiveness. She earned her recognition as an artist of adventure who emerged from one cocoon as an immigrant Polish Jew to mine the dynamic energy of the frontier. Even when the frontier mutated into a sterner, more constrained America, she fashioned new fables that fit the legend of Wyatt and Josephine Earp to the new century.

In that long road trip she took from Tombstone to Hollywood with Wyatt, she was not always the driver, but you can bet that she was never in the back seat. She was the one holding the map and laughing all the way.

And how ironic that it should fall to another Jewish woman to wonder if Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp would forgive me.

Or is there a statute of limitations on curses?

Either way, I've decided to believe that Josephine would not curse me for writing her back into American history.

And long may her story be told.

T
HANKS TO
the ever curious Michele Slung for asking that fateful question: How did Wyatt Earp end up in a Jewish cemetery? The year was 2008, and I was thinking about whether I could write another biography.

My first book was
Sala's Gift
, an intensely personal journey through my mother's history and heroism during the Holocaust. She inspired my passion to uncover the stories of strong women and the circumstances that shape their lives. She and my father Sidney Kirschner are the greatest sources of strength and wisdom for me and for three generations, now including seven beautiful great-grandchildren: Hannah, Michelle, Joseph, Jordan, Nathan, Samuel, and Jacob.

For this book, I traveled with a powerful posse that assured me that yes, I could juggle a family and another book and a dean's responsibilities and ambitions.

Elisabeth, Caroline, and Peter taught me that parenting is surely the most joyous adventure of all, especially in the company of such a remarkable trio, now making their way in the world with heart, soul, and style.

Josephine never had a best friend. I do, and it is my good luck that Lorraine Shanley allowed the Earps to elbow their way into our Scrabble games and phone marathons. We are opposites only in being blond and brunette and a few other details; we are twins in all the ways that matter.

When I started writing, Jane and Bob Stine were not yet my
machatunim
. We hit the in-law jackpot when our families were joined officially by the marriage of our children. Jane's wit and wisdom informed my efforts at every turn.

My agent and friend, Flip Brophy, declared that I
would
finish this book, and so I have: when Flip believes in you, all things really do seem possible.

Gail Winston, my remarkable editor at HarperCollins, took a mess of ideas and events and characters and led me to the story. She and Maya Ziv and Joanne Pinsher have been wonderful colleagues and friends, and I thank the extended HarperCollins family for creativity and commitment to this book.

Macaulay Honors College is so much more than my day job; it is my daily inspiration. I am grateful to Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, who should win a prize for being my longest-running boss, to my dear colleagues, and to the Macaulay students and instructional technology fellows, especially my gang of hardworking and brilliant research assistants: Dan Blondell, Cecille Bernstein, Virginia Milieris, Savannah Gordon, Katherine Maller, Mary Williams, David Kane, Ayelet Parness, and Gregory Donovan. Thanks for teaching me so much.

I have tipped my hat to my many Earp history colleagues in the endnotes. I hope you will consider my inevitable mistakes and omissions to be honest ones. A special note of appreciation to Casey Tefertiller, Jeff Guinn, Eric Weider, Mark Ragsdale, and Roger Peterson for a myriad of professional courtesies, plus the fun of shared speculation, and more than one timely shout of “Danger, Will Robinson!” I am deeply indebted to my distinguished panel of first readers: Lynn Bailey, Anne Collier, Bruce Dinges, Karen Franklin, Ava Kahn, and Bob Palmquist. Your knowledge saved me from many an infelicity. To the one and only Glenn Boyer and Jane Candia Coleman, thank you both for welcoming a New Yorker and an “acaDUMic” to Planet Earp, and for opening those doors to the past to which only you have the keys.

Dr. Walter Cason played an indispensable role as my one true link to Josephine and Mabel Cason. I am grateful for his generosity and grace.

And finally, to my husband, Harold Weinberg. Ever loving and patient, you have made my choices your priorities. Had medicine not been your calling, you could have been a fine editor. I marvel at the twist of good fortune that brought us together in 1968 to build a charmed life together. I never hesitated to believe in the triumph of Josephine's nearly fifty-year marriage of love, laughter, and loyalty, because I know we too are on that journey.