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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!

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Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly. We at eMoviePoster.com were just consigned a very special collection of 99 of these "personality" posters, which we are auctioning in separate auctions. They were collected starting in the mid 1980s, and the collector who assembled this collection tried to "upgrade" condition whenever possible over the years, so many of them are in excellent condition (sometimes likely the best surviving example), and on the ones where they are in lesser condition, it is because the collector never could find one in better condition! Now he has consigned them to us, and they will find new owners. If they were kept together, they would surely make an incredible display for the walls of any place where lots of people gather, like a museum, a restaurant, or any similar place. Of course, it is more likely that these will find many, many separate new homes, but we hope that they end up publicly displayed wherever they end up!

Note that MGM became a major studio after its creation (through merger) in 1924, and at some point in the 1920s, they created two different sets of personality posters to promote their stars, and in the 1930s, when they had "more stars than there are in Heaven", they created four more sets! You can tell the sets apart in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). The MGM sets were likely made every two to three years, and some major stars carried over from set to set, but with the passing years, some stars would be dropped and new stars added. These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that the high quality paper stock these posters were printed on does not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!

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Bruce Hershenson,
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