Lewis Holder was an outlaw.  After hearing the news from Judge Isaac Parker that he was going to die on the gallows, Lewis left forth a piteous scream then collapsed to the floor, paralyzed with fear.  There was an immediate concern that Holder had died from fright, but the defendant was still very much alive.  Holder, who had been convicted of murdering his partner George Bickford in the San Bois Mountains in Oklahoma on December 28, 1891, vowed that he would return to Fort Smith in spirit form and would haunt Judge Parker and the jury men if he were indeed hanged.  No one paid much attention to the desperate warnings of a condemned man.  Holder was executed as scheduled on Nov. 2, 1894.  About one month later, jailer George Lawson was startled by a moaning sound coming from the direction of the jail yard gallows.  Upon further examination, a thoroughly inebriated man was found lying prone on the wooden gallows. 

The most decorated American war hero in World War II, Audie Murphy returned home with no place to go but down.  What could top his spectacular battle feats?  After lying about his age to join the army at 17, he had been wounded three times and credited with killing 240 Germans.  Of 235 men in company, Murphy was one of two who survived.  Not yet 21, he won twenty-seven medals, including three from the French and one from Belgium.  After the war, Murphy was recruited to Hollywood by James Cagney, and in 1955 he starred in a movie version of his autobiography, To Hell and Back.  He said it was “the first time, I suppose, a man  has fought an honest war, then come back and played himself doing it.”  Murphy joked about his lack of talent, but in twenty years his boyish face and freckles appeared in forty movies, mostly war films and Westerns in which he played eager fighters.  It was a far cry from his youth as one of eleven children of a Texas cotton sharecropper-and from the battlefields of Europe-and the transition was not smooth.  Murphy said the war left him with nightmares for years.  He slept with a loaded automatic pistol under his pillow, and when he was asked how people survive a war, he said, “I don’t think they ever do.”  One of Murphy’s friends, cartoonist Bill Maudlin, said “Murphy wanted the world to stay simple so he could concentrate on tidying up its moral fiber wherever he found himself.”  Murphy became a quasi law-enforcement officer in the 1960s.  He was made a special officer of a small California police department and rode around with police during drug busts.  In 1970, he and a bartender friend beat up a dog trainer in a dispute over treatment of the friend’s dog.  Murphy was acquitted of attempted murder.  Though he had earned more than $2.5 million in his film career, Murphy was forced by too many bad business ventures to declare bankruptcy in 1968.  Three years later, hounded by creditors and still trying to rebuild financial security for his wife and two teenage sons, he became interested in a company in Martinsville, Virginia, that manufactured prefabricated homes.  He was on a small charter flight from Atlanta to see about making an investment when the plane crashed in a wooded mountain area during a light drizzle.  The region, northwest of Roanoke, was so isolated that the wreckage, including the bodies of Murphy and five company officials, was not found for three days.  The was hero was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. 

After acting as either a cowboy or a soldier in nearly one hundred films, John Wayne finally won a best actor Oscar in 1969 for True Grit.  The quintessential macho man was himself exempt from service during World War II owing to a problem with his shoulder.  Winning the Oscar, some say, added another ten years to his life.  Although he was a longtime smoker, averaging four packs a day, Wayne nevertheless died of gastric cancer at age seventy-two in 1979.  In 1955 John Wayne was among two hundred twenty cast and crew member who worked on the film The Conqueror.  It was shot on a location in Utah, which was contaminated by radioactive fallout from atomic bomb tests.  Much of the soil was transported back to Hollywood for studio scenes.  By 1980 more than ninety of those who worked on the movie contracted cancer; forty-six died.  Even though Wayne knew of the danger, often carrying a Geiger counter onto the set, he believed the risk insignificant.  For more information about the great John Wayne read The Young Duke: The Early Life of John Wayne by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss. 

Senorita Rosalie was the Mexican star of the Wild West Show. She was a stunning, black-haired woman who had achieved fame as a trick rider. She would jump over walls and ride holding the reins in her mouth while standing on the back of her horse. With her feet firmly placed on the ground, she would spur her horse on and jump on its back. While the animal was in full gallop, she would fling her body in and out of the saddle and dangle precariously off the sides of the horse. She could even lie down in the saddle and retrieve items left on the arena floor. Senorita Rosalie’s expertise on a horse made her a highly sought after riding instructor. Many Wild West performers benefited from her horseback-riding advice.

Ethyle and Juanita Parry

The famous cowgirl twins were a major attraction to Bill Cody’s program in the early 1900s. The twins were called Cossack Girls because they performed all the reckless and daring feats of horsemanship attributed to the Russian Cossack cavalry men. The twins were adept at riding wild broncos and were exceptional ropers. Newspaper reviews hailing the ladies’ performance at a show in Minnesota noted that not only could the Parrys ride well but “they were pretty and attractive, and nice to look at on or off a horse.”