Save the Date: Elmer McCurdy's Main Street Revival (Tuesday, April 15)

Gentle Reader,

You are cordially invited to participate in Elmer McCurdy’s Main Street Revival, a free, ticketed Esotouric walking tour that is also a memorial procession honoring the short life and the long, weird afterlife of Elmer McCurdy, a train robber and safecracker who was shot dead by an Oklahoma posse in 1911 and who has deep roots on Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

Estranged from his family and unclaimed by next of kin, Elmer’s corpse was mummified and exhibited as a carnival sideshow attraction until 1976, when the body was recognized as a human corpse by a crew member of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” taken into the Coroner’s custody, and became international news.

For most of his posthumous career, Elmer was in possession of showman Louis Sonney, who operated a touring true crime wax museum with a brick and mortar location on Main Street. It was a ticket from this venue found shoved into Elmer’s mouth that helped to identify him.

When they learned Elmer had been found, Old West historians in Oklahoma sought permission to bury him in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Guthrie.

On April 14, 1977, newspaper headlines blared ELMER MCCURDY IS GOING BACK HOME. On April 15, the body was taken to LAX, and on April 16 shipped east. Elmer was buried on April 22, and his grave sealed with cement to ensure no more wandering.

We believe the folks who claimed the body meant well, but Oklahoma was not Elmer’s home. He came from Maine and spent much of his posthumous career in California. Oklahoma was merely the site of his crimes, of his violent death and of the initial desecration of his corpse. In California, he made countless people laugh and scream with delight.

Elmer McCurdy’s Main Street Revival is happening on April 15 because that is the last possible date on which his friends and fans in Los Angeles could have absconded with his corpse in order to hold a local funeral ceremony. And while that didn’t happen in real life, maybe it should have happened… and now, almost 50 years late, it is happening!

We will be accompanied on this procession by Elmer McCurdy himself (thanks to Al Guerrero), there will be prayers for his immortal soul from Bishop Dylan Littlefield, and the walk will conclude at the historic Million Dollar Theatre for a funeral reception.

Friends and fans of Elmer McCurdy are cordially invited to be part of this long overdue memorial. There will be stories of Elmer told along the way—some true, others tall tales that cannot be confirmed, but which we believe to be true.

Participants are encouraged to dress up in the spirit of the honoree and his lively life and weird afterlife, to bring musical instruments or noisemakers, and offerings of flowers, fruit, feathers, pebbles or coins. There will be opportunities to express your love for Elmer.

Some of the colorful characters who Elmer rubbed shoulders with in life and in death, who might inspire your costuming, include:

• Old West Outlaws and Lawmen

• Morticians and Coroners

• Carnival Barkers and Sideshow Entertainers

• B Girls and Taxi Dancers

• Tattoo Artists and Clients

• Gospel Shouters and Sidewalk Loiterers

• Exploitation Movie Cast and Crew

• Newspaper Reporters and Hard-Boiled Editors

Or something completely new, imagined by you, to honor the dearly departed Elmer McCurdy, who is also the subject of a much anticipated musical opening on Broadway this season, Dead Outlaw.

Come along, in loving memory, as we seek to make Main Street weird again.

And while you’re clicking over to book your free ticket to attend Elmer’s procession, perhaps you’ll also sign up for Saturday’s Film Noir / Real Noir, a walking tour about how Downtown landmarks feature in some of the wildest movies ever shot on location, and the grim and sometimes nutty true crimes that inspired Hollywood screenwriters. The rains will have let up and we’ve got some very special guests in tow, so join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

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UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 2/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 3/1) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 3/8) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (Sat. 3/15) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 3/22) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (Sat. 4/5) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 4/12) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (5/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (5/17) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Broadway (7/26)