Actors - Josephine Earp

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	Actors - Josephine Earp

Josephine Marcus (probably born in Brooklyn, New York in 1861; dead on December 20, 1944) was a dancer who became better known as the wife of Wyatt Earp. Her birthdate or place was never exactly known; some records show that she may have been born in Brooklyn in 1861, but this has never been proven.

Marcus and her family moved to San Francisco when she was very young. Marcus wanted to become an actress, so, at the age of eighteen, she and her friend Dora Hirsh escaped to join a theatrical company, where the two girls were hired as dancers.

As members of Paulina Markham's travelling theater company, Marcus and Hirsh travelled all over Arizona. Records show that the Markham group tour reached Tombstone in December of 1879, after which they headed out for Prescott. While on their way north to Prescott, Josephine Marcus met Johnny Behan, who was by then a Yavapai County sheriff, and who was on the same route, following the trails of three fugitive robbers.

Marcus caused quite a stir in Behan's heart, and he left the persecution to spend time getting to know the girl he had fallen in love with.

Soon after, Marcus became homesick and returned to San Francisco. Johnny Behan followed her, to ask her to marry him. But Marcus declined, and he returned to Arizona.

Marcus, however, soon changed her mind and returned to Tombstone, where she lived with a lawyer for some time, while working as a homemaker for Behan and his ten year old son. This version of her return has been quite disputed, as some believe that she was really living with Behan all along after her return to Tombstone.

Johnny Behan saw other women behind Marcus' back; this was well known by Marcus. She wrote a letter to her father, who sent her 300 dollars so she could return to San Francisco. Marcus instead was convinced by Behan to use the money to build a house for the couple and Behan's children, and "Josie", as she was known to friends and family, pawned a diamond ring to help raise money to construct the house, deciding to stay in Tombstone instead of returning to California.

In 1881, Behan became involved in a romantic relationship with another woman, and Marcus then left him for good, becoming enamored instead of Wyatt Earp. Behan suffered public embarrassment because of this: in Tombstone, everyone thought that Marcus and Behan were legally married, and her breakup from him and her arrival into Wyatt's life were publicized by the "Tombstone Epitaph", a leading newspaper of the day that still continues to run monthly.

This was one of the first events that led to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Numerous other events sparked the feud between Behan and Earp.

On October 26, 1881, Josephine Marcus was at her home when she heard the sound of gunshots. Unknown to her, the O.K. Corral gunfight would take place on that day, as it had been planned without her knowledge.

Josephine got on a wagon and was transported to the gunfight scene. To her great relief, she saw Wyatt standing. By 1882, Josephine Marcus had adopted the name of Josephine Earp. The couple left Tombstone that year. They hunted for gold through various states, ran horse races in San Diego and ended up operating saloons in Alaska.

The Earps became gamblers during this era of their lives. Josephine Earp became friends with millionaire Lucky Baldwin, from whom she got some money in return for jewellery. Eventually, she would give almost all of her jewellry to Baldwin in exchange for gambling money.

One biographer, Stuart Lake, learned that the Earps were hostile to each other during their relationship when he went to collaborate with Wyatt on Wyatt's autobiography. Wyatt Earp became critically ill in 1928; he passed away in 1929, and the book was released shortly after. There were many negative things said about Josephine Earp in this book, and she tried to change the book's script, causing the writer to become bothered by her insistence on having the book rewritten.

Lake knew many secrets that Josephine Earp did not want to be public knowledge, such as the fact that she had worked as a prostitute while in Tombstone, and that Wyatt Earp had abandoned his commonlaw wife Mattie Blaylock Earp when he fell in love with Josephine. Mattie Earp died of a laudanum overdose in 1888. In 1930, Josephine Earp travelled to Boston, Massachusetts, to try to convince the publisher to stop the release of the book.

In 1939, Josephine, then 79, tried to stop 20th Century Fox from making a film based on the book, a movie which would have been called "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal". She almost succeeded; but the movie was later released, under her condition that her husband's name be removed from the title, as "Frontier Marshal".

Josephine Earp spent her last years in Los Angeles, where she suffered a bout with depression and other diseases. One of her few consolations towards the end of her life was the correspondence she kept with Albert Behan, Johnny Behan's son, whom she had grown to love like a son.

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