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Tim McCoy was born Timothy John Fitzgerald McCoy in Saginaw, Michigan in 1891. For someone so associated with cowboys one might think he grew up in the West, or around horses, but his father was police chief in Saginaw and he grew up there. But while at college, he saw a Wild West show, and he was so taken by it that he quit school and went to work on a Wyoming ranch. He not only became expert in roping, riding, and shooting, but he also learned much about the local Indians, including their language. He started competing in rodeos, but then WWI started and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He never saw combat, but he rose to the rank of Colonel. After the war, still in the Army, he returned to Wyoming, where he was the Adjutant General of Wyoming (perhaps the youngest general in the history of the Army!). He quit the Army in 1921, and bought a ranch in Wyoming, and was also the territorial Indian agent. He was 30, and still had never had anything to do with movies! But in 1922, Jesse Lasky was making The Covered Wagon and he asked McCoy to find hundreds of Indian extras to go to Hollywood and give the movie extra authenticity, and to also be technical advisor on the movie. When the Paramount people in Hollywood saw his authentic cowboy skills, they signed him to appear in The Thundering Herd after which MGM signed him to star in a series of westerns, where they billed him as Col. Tim McCoy. In 1930 after 17 movies for MGM he switched to Universal for two movies, and then went to Columbia, where he starred in some 30 westerns. In 1935, he left Columbia and started touring with the Ringling Brothers Circus and his success there led him to start his own Wild West show, but that was a disastrous move, for it failed badly, and McCoy lost a fortune. But he had continued making westerns for small studios, and in 1941 he started a series of westerns with Buck Jones for Monogram, where they were billed as the Rough Riders. They rapidly made eight movies, but Jones death in the infamous Coconut Grove nightclub fire ended the series, and McCoy retired from movies, and ran for Senator from Wyoming. The day after he lost in the primary, he went back on active duty in the Army, and served in WWII. Apparently losing in the primary soured him on Wyoming, because after the war he never returned there! He passed away in 1978 at the age of 86. Tim McCoy was one of the most authentic of cowboy stars, and he continued starring in westerns well into his forties, and he watched them taken over by the "pretty" singing cowboys of the 1930s and 1940s!

Important Added Info: Note that this REPRODUCTION photo has been personally autographed (signed) by Tim McCoy!

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 211 more items (mostly 8x10 stills and repro 8x10s, but also 58 other items like playbills and more)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775