New Wyatt Earp Photo Discovered!

[Bob Boze Bell]

April 13, 2012

Well, just when I thought I have seen it all, in comes a new photograph of Wyatt Earp that I have never seen before. Nicholas Narog contacted me and asked me if I wanted to see a photo of Earp from the John Flood collection. I thought, yeh, sure, whatever (I get so many requests like this I have become rather jaded). Anyway, it's definitely hm. No mistake about that. Here is a sneak peek at a sketch I did of it this afternoon. I noticed something rather amazing about the photo:

 

 

I'll post the real photo on Monday. Stay tuned!

 

"Why you little p----k tease!"

—Squibe Nish

[anthony martin]

  Bob,

    Wow!Thanks for the sneak peek-looking forward to the real McCoy come Monday.Whenever someone tells me about an amazing ,rare find I too am somewhat skeptical But I do know that there are so many great rare items of real historic significance that stay unrecognized or undocumented for ages until the right person comes along.

[Kevin Hogge]

This is exciting!  From your sketch, it appears to be early 1920s ??

[Bob Boze Bell]

Hard to say, Kevin, but yes, I would guess mid-twenties. There is what appears to be a church behind him and a city square of sorts. Can't believe this photo got by me. I think it was up for auction several years ago and Nicholas bought it. He said Bob McCubbin helped him so I assume it was known in the circles I travel in, but nobody told me! The real shocker to me is that we have no photos of John Flood, Earp's writing partner and the guy who supposedly took this photo. We have Flood's maps, the ones he asked Wyatt to draw of the O.K. Corral fight location and the map of the Curly Bill killing and the John Ringo death site (and ironically, all three are incorrect!). Ha.

[Bob Boze Bell]

It turns out Bob McCubbin did not help Nick with the photo in question and Bob also has some doubts about the veracity of the image. Stay tuned.

[Nicholas Narog]

To be fair- Bob helped me out early in my collecting days. This statement was never meant to be misleading. Also- the provenance of the image is pretty clear. A direct line can be made from today all the way back to when it was in John Flood's possession.

[Nicholas Narog]

BTW Bob- you're kind of making it sound like I was being deceptive. In regards to McCubbin all I really said was that he helped me out in my early collecting days. And I am currently e-mailing McCubbin to answer many of his questions- I am sure he will soon see this is an image of Wyatt Earp- especially once he gets an image that is bigger than a postal stamp.

[Bob 'Buckshot' Bradley]

In True West, August 1993 Glenn G. Boyer's first part to his fourteen part biography "Wyatt Earp Legendary American" was published. It was continued in the next thirteen issues. There were two photographs of John Flood shown. The first is from November 93's issue and the second one is from September 93's issue.

[Bob Boze Bell]

Thanks for the John Flood pics! Also, I am more concerned that I had given Bob McCubbin's seal of approval for the photograph when, in fact, he had not. This was my misunderstanding of what went down with the photo, originally. McCubbin has weighed in on it and I am stil waiting for him to approve running his comments here. No matter what McCubbin says, I still think it's a great photo and as soon as I get into work, it's going up for all of us to consider.