In 1867, six-year old Josephine Sarah Marcus moved with her observant immigrant German-Jewish parents from Brooklyn, NY, to San Francisco. There, Josie was given the rudiments of a Jewish education, including saying her prayers at home, but she was also exposed to the romance of San Francisco’s Gold Rush era. In 1879, when she was 18, Josie went to see the Pauline Markham Theater Company perform Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” and, with a friend, decided to run away with the company when it left town. When the troupe performed in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, she fell in love with Johnny Behan, Tombstone’s corrupt sheriff. Johnny introduced Josephine to Wyatt Earp, at that time a deputy U. S. marshal. Earp won Josie’s heart and married her, a relationship that lasted fifty years. Thus it is that Wyatt Earp, legendary figure of the Wild West, today lies buried in a Jewish cemetery.
While we know a great deal about Josie Earp’s and her Jewish upbringing, Wyatt Earp is a figure whose life story is mixed in with his myth. In 1881, Wyatt Earp (still a U. S. marshal) and his brothers Virgil and Morgan, along with their friend Doc Holliday, attained immortality in a shoot-out with their sworn enemies, the Clanton gang, at the O.K. Corral. During the confrontation, three members of the Clanton gang were killed and Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded. The surviving Clantons charged that the Earp brothers and Holliday stalked their victims, some of whom were unarmed, and shot first without provocation. The Earps and Holliday, in turn, claimed that the Clantons were waiting for them and cocked their pistols first.
When Josephine heard the sound of guns that October evening, she ran from her house and jumped on a passing wagon, which took her to the O.K. Corral. She knew that the Earps and the Clantons had a showdown but, in her first moments on the scene, she couldn’t tell who was left standing. “I didn’t know at the time who was wounded,” she later wrote, “and was too frightened to get closer. I almost swooned when I saw Wyatt’s tall figure very much alive. . . . He spotted me, and [with companions] came across the street. Like a feather-brained girl my only thought was, ‘My God, I haven’t got a bonnet on. What will they think?’”
While the facts of the shoot-out will remain forever in dispute, the courts acquitted the Earps and Holliday on the ground of self-defense. The Clanton gang later took revenge by ambushing Wyatt and Morgan Earp in a saloon, killing Morgan. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday then took justice into their own hands by raiding various outlaw hideouts and killing individuals who they suspected participated in Morgan’s death.
Now on the run from the law in Arizona, Josie and Wyatt Earp moved to Gunnison, Colorado, where that state’s governor refused to extradite Wyatt back to Arizona on the grounds that he could not get a fair trial. The restless Wyatt and Josie began a life that matched a Hollywood movie script, relocating whenever a new gold, silver or copper mining boomtown appeared. They invested in mines and real estate and operated saloons and gambling parlors in such far-flung places as Nome, Alaska and Eagle City, Idaho. For a while, they lived with Josephine’s parents in San Francisco, giving Josie -if only briefly- with a bit of the warmth of the Jewish home she grew up in. Finally, Wyatt and Josie settled in Southern California, where they owned racehorses and lived on their winnings from gambling and real estate speculation. In the 1920’s, Josephine and Wyatt invested in oil wells, worked on Wyatt’s autobiography and drafted a screenplay about his career as a lawman.
According to historian Harriet Rochlin, the Earps’ original screenplay was never produced but journalist Stuart Lake took a great interest in it and began to write his own biography of Wyatt Earp. When Wyatt died in 1929 at age 81, Josie Earp and Stuart Lake argued about Lake’s forthcoming portrayal of Wyatt, which Josie found unflattering. In 1931, when Lake’s biography, “Wyatt Earp – Frontier Marshal,” finally appeared with the offending passages stricken, according to Rochlin, it “fueled fifty years of Wyatt Earp mania, pro and con, in print and in film.” At least three movies have been made about the gunfight at the O. K. Corral. Josephine Marcus Earp had helped craft an authentic American legend.
The widowed Josie buried Wyatt’s ashes in the Marcus family plot at the Little Hills of Eternity, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. When she died in 1944, Josie’s remains were buried next to Wyatt’s. Today, their graves are the most popular tourist destination in Colma.
A simple plaque anchored flat on the ground marks Josephine and Wyatt’s shared plot. Unlike the other graves around it, no upright stone marks the location. Josie once had an imposing stone marker embedded in a 250-pound block of concrete to mark Wyatt’s grave. In 1957, some of what must have been Wyatt’s fans stole it.
-from the American Jewish Historical Society
Here’s what Wikipedia says about Josie (I love her):
The middle child of three, Josie and her family moved to San Francisco when she was young. Her baker-father, Henry, and her mother, Sophia, were both Jewish immigrants from Prussia; it is not known when they arrived in the United States. The Marcus household also included siblings Nathan (born about 1857) and Henrietta (born about 1863). Marcus wanted to become an actress and at the age of eighteen, Josie and friend Dora Hirsh ran away to join a theatrical company, where the two girls were hired as dancers.[citation needed]
As members of Paulina Markham’s traveling theater company, Marcus and Hirsh travelled all over the wild west, including Arizona Territory. Records show that the Markham troupe reached Tombstone in December of 1879, after which they headed north to Prescott.
[edit] Johnny Behan and Tombstone, Arizona
While on their way to Prescott, Josie met Johnny Behan, then a Yavapai County sheriff’s deputy. At the time of the troupe’s trek to Prescott, Behan was travelling the same route, following the trails of three fugitive robbers. Marcus caused quite a stir in Behan’s heart, and he left the pursuit in order to spend time getting to know the woman with whom he had fallen in love.[citation needed] Soon after arriving in Prescott, however, Marcus became homesick and returned to San Francisco.
Johnny Behan followed her, in order to ask her to marry him. Marcus declined, and he returned to Arizona Territory. Marcus, however, soon changed her mind and returned to Tombstone, where she lived with a lawyer for some time, while working as a housekeeper for Behan and his ten year old son, Albert. This version of her return has been disputed, as some believe that she was really living with Behan all along after her return to Tombstone, while other versions indicate she was working as a prostitute with the lawyer acting as her pimp.
In the midst of their romantic relationship, Behan continued to see other women, a fact known by most, including Marcus. She wrote a letter to her father, who sent her $300 for a return to San Francisco. Rather than leaving Tombstone, Marcus was instead convinced by Behan to use the money to build a house for them. In addition to using her father’s money, Josie pawned a diamond ring in order to complete the construction.
[edit] Relationship with Wyatt Earp
In 1881, Behan became involved in a serious romantic relationship with another woman and Marcus then left him for good, becoming enamored instead with Wyatt Earp. Behan suffered public embarrassment because of this; in Tombstone, everyone thought that Marcus and Behan were legally married. Her breakup with Behan and her arrival into Wyatt’s life were publicized by the Tombstone Epitaph, a leading local newspaper. To add to the scandal, Earp was in a common-law marriage with Mattie Blaylock since sometime in 1873. It is reported that the two women had at least two verbal altercations over the affair between Josie and Wyatt Earp.[citation needed].
Gunfight at the OK Corral
The embarrassment suffered by Behan was one of many factors that may have contributed to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Numerous other events between Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton, and others of the Clanton gang, actually sparked the gunfight; the feud between Behan and Earp was little more than a side show. On October 26, 1881, Josephine Marcus was at her home when she heard the sound of gunfire. Taking a wagon in the direction of the shots, Marcus, to her relief, saw Wyatt standing and uninjured.
[edit] Later life
By 1882, Josie Marcus had adopted the name of “Josephine Earp”, although no official record of their marriage exists. Following what has been dubbed as the Earp vendetta ride, Josie and Wyatt travelled through various western states hunting for gold and silver. It is also said that they ran horse races in San Diego as well as operating saloons in Idaho and Alaska.
Wyatt and Josephine became gamblers during this period. She became friends with millionaire Lucky Baldwin, from whom she received money in return for her jewelry. Eventually, Josephine would give almost all of her jewelry to Baldwin in exchange for gambling money.
Earp biographer, Stuart Lake, learned that Wyatt and Josephine were hostile to each other during their relationship when he went to collaborate with Wyatt on his autobiography. In the course of writing the Earp biography, Lake learned some other unsavory aspects of Josephine’s life: the fact that she had worked as a prostitute. Wyatt became critically ill in 1928 and died on January 13, 1929. Before Wyatt’s biography was released soon after his death, Josephine traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, in an attempt to convince the publisher to stop the release of the book.
Much later, in 1939, Josephine tried to stop 20th Century Fox from making a film based on the book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. Under the condition that Wyatt’s name be removed from the title, the movie was later released, as Frontier Marshal.
In Los Angeles, Josephine became friends with many celebrities, including Cecil B. DeMille and Gary Cooper. She received part of the money made by Stuart Lake’s book about her husband as well as royalties from the movie Frontier Marshal. Josephine also wrote her own book entitled I Married Wyatt Earp; The Memoirs of Josephine Sarah Earp. She approached several publishers for the book, but backed out several times due to their insistence that she be completely open and forthcoming, rather than slanting her memories to her favor. It was later printed, but many parts were refuted as being fictional and inaccurate by Wyatt’s sister-in-law, Allie Earp, wife of Virgil. Ownership of the book, following Josephine’s death, eventually fell to Glenn Boyer, following his obtaining rights from the relatives of Josephine Earp.
Josephine Earp spent her last years in Los Angeles, where she suffered from depression and other illnesses.[citation needed] One of her few consolations toward the end of her life was the correspondence she kept with Albert Behan, whom she had grown to love as her own son.
Sarah Josephine Marcus died on December 20, 1944 in Los Angeles, California. Her body was cremated and buried next to Wyatt’s cremains in Colma, California in the Marcus family plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park cemetery.
Wow. A blog post followed by a book…
a novella