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Leading Lady · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Poker has embedded itself into high stakes gambling
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  Speaker 1: cultures across the globe. After all, what's higher stakes than
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  Speaker 1: thousands of dollars floating around the table on the whims
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  Speaker 1: of a set of fifty two cards assigned randomly, where
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  Speaker 1: the challengers attempt to bluff one another into thinking that
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  Speaker 1: they have the best assortment of said cards. It's really something,
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  Speaker 1: of course, given the high stakes nature of it all,
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  Speaker 1: poker has also led to its fair share of memorable characters,
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  Speaker 1: although perhaps none more fascinating than one woman, Alice Iver's
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  Speaker 1: Duffield tubs hockerts and if you don't mind, I'm just
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  Speaker 1: gonna call her Alice. Alice was an Irish immigrant born
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one who found herself in the Colorado
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  Speaker 1: Territory by the time she was a teenager after her
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  Speaker 1: first husband died in a mining accident, and she lost
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  Speaker 1: her job as a teacher. Alice turned to another form
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  Speaker 1: of financial support, poker. It turns out she was really good,
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  Speaker 1: like really good. Before long, she had earned the name
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  Speaker 1: Poker Alice, and large crowds would gather to watch her play.
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  Speaker 1: Yet through it all she never lost her values. She
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  Speaker 1: dressed like a respectable woman and refused to play poker
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  Speaker 1: on Sunday, the Lord's Day. Of course, she kept the
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  Speaker 1: thirty eight revolver with her at all times too, just
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  Speaker 1: in case God wasn't paying attention. Gambling in the wild
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  Speaker 1: West could, after all, get a little dicey. Through her
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  Speaker 1: exploits at the table, Alice began to live the good life.
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  Speaker 1: She earned as much as six thousand dollars some nights,
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  Speaker 1: equal to roughly two hundred thousand dollars today, and that's
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  Speaker 1: when she began to indulge a bit. She'd take her
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  Speaker 1: earnings to New York, invest in high fashion, and build
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  Speaker 1: the image of a celebrity about her, a celebrity of
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  Speaker 1: humble beginnings who had more than earned her stay in
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  Speaker 1: an unforgiving world. You might say she became something of
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  Speaker 1: a rags to riches hero, someone that defied all the odds,
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  Speaker 1: all the cultural and gender norms, and really became something
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  Speaker 1: of herself. She used her newfound sense of high fashion
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  Speaker 1: against the men so eager to draw cards with her,
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  Speaker 1: and even when she was in her fifties, she was
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  Speaker 1: regarded for her good looks and her charming demeanor. Although
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  Speaker 1: she was no stranger to the thick cigar either, and
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  Speaker 1: was frequently found puffing on one as she raked in
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  Speaker 1: the money of many an unworthy adversary. Given how much
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  Speaker 1: of her professional life was tied to the cards, her
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  Speaker 1: personal life became tied to the game as well. While
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  Speaker 1: working as a dealer at Bedrock Tom's Saloon in Deadwoods,
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  Speaker 1: off Dakota, a drunken miner tried to attack her fellow dealer,
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  Speaker 1: Warren Tubbs. She chased the attacker off with her handy
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  Speaker 1: thirty eight revolver, and she and Tubbs struck up a
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  Speaker 1: relationship on the backs of this brush with death. They
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  Speaker 1: were married just before the turn of the twentieth century
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  Speaker 1: and had four sons together. Unfortunately, Tubbs died of tuberculosis
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  Speaker 1: and she had to turn back to poker tables to
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  Speaker 1: pay for the funeral. However, the life of a poker
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  Speaker 1: player in the wild West was rarely complete without a
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  Speaker 1: trip or two to jail. For Alice. That came when
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  Speaker 1: she had opened up her very own establishment, the Poker Palace.
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  Speaker 1: She still upheld the Lord's Day, though refusing all attempts
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  Speaker 1: at poker on Sunday, so when a few rowdy soldiers
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  Speaker 1: decided to defile the Lord's Day, Alice called her thirty
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  Speaker 1: eight revolver back into action and killed one belligerent soldier
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  Speaker 1: as well as injuring another, and she passed her time
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  Speaker 1: in jail by doing two of her favorite things, reading
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  Speaker 1: the Bible and smoking cigars. At the trial, she claimed
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  Speaker 1: self defense and was acquitted. In her sixties, Alice was
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  Speaker 1: arrested several more times for her role as a bootlegger,
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  Speaker 1: a madam, and a gambler, but she never stayed long,
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  Speaker 1: now receiving pardons due to her old age. When Poker
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  Speaker 1: Alice died on February, she had amassed upwards of two
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  Speaker 1: dollars roughly three million by today's standards, and all because
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  Speaker 1: she knew just what to do when the cards hit
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  Speaker 1: her hands and how to use the weaknesses and let's
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  Speaker 1: call them dated beliefs of her adversaries, so long as
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  Speaker 1: she had her latest dress, her thirty eight revolver, and
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  Speaker 1: a cigar, and of course her Bible. We have such
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  Speaker 1: a short amount of time on this earth before we leave.
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  Speaker 1: Our lives are made up of memories of birthday parties
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  Speaker 1: and cris miss of work days and weekends, and before
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  Speaker 1: we know, it's the time we thought we had had
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  Speaker 1: all run its course. Yet one word runs through our
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  Speaker 1: lives like a thread, tying everything together for when we
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  Speaker 1: finally go. And that word is legacy. What do we
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  Speaker 1: leave behind for those who loved us and who will
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  Speaker 1: remember us when we're gone? And how the creatively minded
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  Speaker 1: might publish a book or record a song. Actors make movies,
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  Speaker 1: so do directors, and one director it turned an entire
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  Speaker 1: genre on its head, changing it forever. He'll forever be
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  Speaker 1: remembered as the creator of the spaghetti western, with its
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  Speaker 1: grittier and more realistic visual style. Maybe too realistic, but
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  Speaker 1: let me explain what I mean. Sergio Leone started working
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  Speaker 1: in Italian cinema, assisting on films made in his native
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  Speaker 1: country during the nineteen forties, before writing his own scripts
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. As he continued to establish credibility
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  Speaker 1: in the industry. He found himself assisting on American backed
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  Speaker 1: productions that were filming internationally, like nineteen fifty nine Ben Her.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, though he got a chance to
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  Speaker 1: direct a film all his own. It was a Western,
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  Speaker 1: one unlike any that had come before it. It was
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  Speaker 1: called A Fistful of Dollars, and it started a relatively
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  Speaker 1: unknown actor named Clint Eastwood. Based on Akira Kurasawa's nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty three samurai film You Know Jimbo, A Fistful of
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  Speaker 1: Dollars told the story of a stranger who comes to
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  Speaker 1: a small border town and gets involved with the two
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  Speaker 1: rival families trying to control it. Leone's picture set itself
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  Speaker 1: apart from the westerns that had come before. Movies like
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  Speaker 1: Rio Bravo starring John Wayne had clean, somewhat colorful costumes
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  Speaker 1: and looked like a stage musical compared to Leone's tougher style.
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  Speaker 1: His characters entered the scenes dirty and unshaven. Their brown,
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  Speaker 1: dust covered clothes weren't flashy or tailored. The good guys
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  Speaker 1: didn't wear white, and the bad guys didn't wear black.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the idea of good and bad wasn't as
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  Speaker 1: cut and dried in these new westerns. There was a
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  Speaker 1: real nonus to Leon's films, and that added texture was
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  Speaker 1: reflected in more than just the costumes. The landscapes themselves
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  Speaker 1: felt three dimensional compared to the studio sets of older pictures,
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  Speaker 1: mainly because he didn't shoot on a back lot much
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  Speaker 1: of the time. Leon filmed many of his early films
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  Speaker 1: in Spain. The backgrounds were rich with mountains and hills
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  Speaker 1: that seemed to go on forever, and the buildings looked
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  Speaker 1: like they'd been there for fifty years. In nineteen sixty six,
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  Speaker 1: Leone extended that realism into what perhaps became the most
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  Speaker 1: iconic Western film ever made, The Good, the Bad, and
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  Speaker 1: the Ugly. Also starring Clint Eastwood, the film tells the
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  Speaker 1: story of three men on the search for two hundred
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars in stolen Confederate gold back in eighteen sixty two.
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  Speaker 1: The movie, like Leon's previous pictures, was filmed mostly in Spain.
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  Speaker 1: Its ragged scenery filled in nicely for the Civil War
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  Speaker 1: era southwestern US, and towards the end of the film,
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  Speaker 1: the trio played by Eastwood, Lee Van Cliffe, and Eli
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  Speaker 1: Wallack suddenly tracked down what they believe is the final
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  Speaker 1: resting place of the gold in sad Hill Cemetery, buried
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  Speaker 1: in someone's grave. Walak makes it to the grave side
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  Speaker 1: first and starts digging until he's caught up by the others. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: the dirt is cleared away and Eastwood's character kicks the
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  Speaker 1: lid off the coffin. Looking down, the men see that
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  Speaker 1: they have been fooled. There's no gold, just a skeleton. Now,
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  Speaker 1: most other directors would have had a prop department make
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  Speaker 1: a skeleton for the production, but Leone wasn't like other directors.
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  Speaker 1: He originally had a prop skeleton in the grave, but
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  Speaker 1: after some fiddling with it, still couldn't get it to
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  Speaker 1: look right on film. To him, it looked fake, no
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  Speaker 1: matter how much dirt he threw on it. Assistant art
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  Speaker 1: director Carlo Leva did some digging no pun intended, I swear,
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  Speaker 1: and discovered that a woman from Madrid had exactly what
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  Speaker 1: they were looking for. She was in possession of a
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  Speaker 1: skeleton that belonged to her mother. Actually, the skeleton was
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  Speaker 1: her mother. The daughter allowed the production crew to use
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  Speaker 1: her late mother's remains in the film, which is who
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  Speaker 1: the characters and the viewers see inside the coffin in
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  Speaker 1: that scene. But don't worry, she wasn't desecrating the dead
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  Speaker 1: in lending them her mom. The deceased woman had been
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  Speaker 1: an actor when she was alive, and her dying wish
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  Speaker 1: was to have her skeleton used in movies so that
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  Speaker 1: she could act even in death. Her time on earth
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  Speaker 1: may have been short, but her legacy will live on forever,
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  Speaker 1: immortalized in celluloid in a classic Western film. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, reason television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah h