Leading Lady

cultures across the globe. After all, what's higher stakes than thousands of dollars floating around the table on the whims of a set of fifty two cards assigned randomly, where the challengers attempt to bluff one another into thinking that

they have the best assortment of said cards. It's really something, of course, given the high stakes nature of it all, poker has also led to its fair share of memorable characters, although perhaps none more fascinating than one woman, Alice Iver's Duffield tubs hockerts and if you don't mind, I'm just

gonna call her Alice. Alice was an Irish immigrant born in eighteen fifty one who found herself in the Colorado Territory by the time she was a teenager after her first husband died in a mining accident, and she lost her job as a teacher. Alice turned to another form of financial support, poker. It turns out she was really good, like really good. Before long, she had earned the name Poker Alice, and large crowds would gather to watch her play.

Yet through it all she never lost her values. She dressed like a respectable woman and refused to play poker on Sunday, the Lord's Day. Of course, she kept the thirty eight revolver with her at all times too, just in case God wasn't paying attention. Gambling in the wild West could, after all, get a little dicey. Through her exploits at the table, Alice began to live the good life.

She earned as much as six thousand dollars some nights, equal to roughly two hundred thousand dollars today, and that's when she began to indulge a bit. She'd take her earnings to New York, invest in high fashion, and build the image of a celebrity about her, a celebrity of humble beginnings who had more than earned her stay in

an unforgiving world. You might say she became something of a rags to riches hero, someone that defied all the odds, all the cultural and gender norms, and really became something of herself. She used her newfound sense of high fashion against the men so eager to draw cards with her, and even when she was in her fifties, she was regarded for her good looks and her charming demeanor. Although she was no stranger to the thick cigar either, and was frequently found puffing on one as she raked in

the money of many an unworthy adversary. Given how much of her professional life was tied to the cards, her personal life became tied to the game as well. While working as a dealer at Bedrock Tom's Saloon in Deadwoods, off Dakota, a drunken miner tried to attack her fellow dealer, Warren Tubbs. She chased the attacker off with her handy thirty eight revolver, and she and Tubbs struck up a

relationship on the backs of this brush with death. They were married just before the turn of the twentieth century and had four sons together. Unfortunately, Tubbs died of tuberculosis and she had to turn back to poker tables to pay for the funeral. However, the life of a poker player in the wild West was rarely complete without a trip or two to jail. For Alice. That came when she had opened up her very own establishment, the Poker Palace.

She still upheld the Lord's Day, though refusing all attempts at poker on Sunday, so when a few rowdy soldiers decided to defile the Lord's Day, Alice called her thirty eight revolver back into action and killed one belligerent soldier as well as injuring another, and she passed her time in jail by doing two of her favorite things, reading the Bible and smoking cigars. At the trial, she claimed

self defense and was acquitted. In her sixties, Alice was arrested several more times for her role as a bootlegger, a madam, and a gambler, but she never stayed long,

now receiving pardons due to her old age. When Poker Alice died on February, she had amassed upwards of two dollars roughly three million by today's standards, and all because she knew just what to do when the cards hit her hands and how to use the weaknesses and let's call them dated beliefs of her adversaries, so long as she had her latest dress, her thirty eight revolver, and a cigar, and of course her Bible. We have such a short amount of time on this earth before we leave.

Our lives are made up of memories of birthday parties and cris miss of work days and weekends, and before we know, it's the time we thought we had had all run its course. Yet one word runs through our lives like a thread, tying everything together for when we finally go. And that word is legacy. What do we leave behind for those who loved us and who will remember us when we're gone? And how the creatively minded

might publish a book or record a song. Actors make movies, so do directors, and one director it turned an entire genre on its head, changing it forever. He'll forever be remembered as the creator of the spaghetti western, with its grittier and more realistic visual style. Maybe too realistic, but let me explain what I mean. Sergio Leone started working in Italian cinema, assisting on films made in his native country during the nineteen forties, before writing his own scripts

in the nineteen fifties. As he continued to establish credibility in the industry. He found himself assisting on American backed productions that were filming internationally, like nineteen fifty nine Ben Her. In nineteen sixty four, though he got a chance to direct a film all his own. It was a Western, one unlike any that had come before it. It was called A Fistful of Dollars, and it started a relatively

unknown actor named Clint Eastwood. Based on Akira Kurasawa's nineteen sixty three samurai film You Know Jimbo, A Fistful of Dollars told the story of a stranger who comes to a small border town and gets involved with the two rival families trying to control it. Leone's picture set itself apart from the westerns that had come before. Movies like Rio Bravo starring John Wayne had clean, somewhat colorful costumes and looked like a stage musical compared to Leone's tougher style.

His characters entered the scenes dirty and unshaven. Their brown, dust covered clothes weren't flashy or tailored. The good guys didn't wear white, and the bad guys didn't wear black. In fact, the idea of good and bad wasn't as cut and dried in these new westerns. There was a real nonus to Leon's films, and that added texture was

reflected in more than just the costumes. The landscapes themselves felt three dimensional compared to the studio sets of older pictures, mainly because he didn't shoot on a back lot much of the time. Leon filmed many of his early films in Spain. The backgrounds were rich with mountains and hills that seemed to go on forever, and the buildings looked

like they'd been there for fifty years. In nineteen sixty six, Leone extended that realism into what perhaps became the most iconic Western film ever made, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Also starring Clint Eastwood, the film tells the story of three men on the search for two hundred thousand dollars in stolen Confederate gold back in eighteen sixty two. The movie, like Leon's previous pictures, was filmed mostly in Spain.

Its ragged scenery filled in nicely for the Civil War era southwestern US, and towards the end of the film, the trio played by Eastwood, Lee Van Cliffe, and Eli Wallack suddenly tracked down what they believe is the final resting place of the gold in sad Hill Cemetery, buried in someone's grave. Walak makes it to the grave side first and starts digging until he's caught up by the others. Eventually, the dirt is cleared away and Eastwood's character kicks the

lid off the coffin. Looking down, the men see that they have been fooled. There's no gold, just a skeleton. Now, most other directors would have had a prop department make a skeleton for the production, but Leone wasn't like other directors. He originally had a prop skeleton in the grave, but after some fiddling with it, still couldn't get it to look right on film. To him, it looked fake, no

matter how much dirt he threw on it. Assistant art director Carlo Leva did some digging no pun intended, I swear, and discovered that a woman from Madrid had exactly what they were looking for. She was in possession of a skeleton that belonged to her mother. Actually, the skeleton was her mother. The daughter allowed the production crew to use her late mother's remains in the film, which is who the characters and the viewers see inside the coffin in

that scene. But don't worry, she wasn't desecrating the dead in lending them her mom. The deceased woman had been an actor when she was alive, and her dying wish was to have her skeleton used in movies so that she could act even in death. Her time on earth may have been short, but her legacy will live on forever, immortalized in celluloid in a classic Western film. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, reason television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah h