Soapy Not Sudsy

Cable television has a newish movie out, Sudsy Smith and Something or Other—I can’t remember, I stopped watching after about ten minutes, the last five of which I spent wondering exactly what kind of head damage the director has suffered.  Surely, there was some point during the making of this turkey that someone sober watched a couple of minutes of daily rushes.

 

All of this was unnecessary, since creating some weak, fictionalized account of a make-believe Sudsy Smith, they should have just made a movie about the real-life Soapy Smith, one of the most creative and elusive con artists of the Wild West.

 

The son of a wealthy landowner who lost his fortune in the Civil War, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II became a specialist of the short con in Hell’s Half Acre, the wild red-light district of Fort Worth.  It is a matter of record that just about everyone of note in the West spent some time in the “Paris of the Prairies”.  Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, Doc Holiday, Wyatt Earp, Luke Short—everybody spent a little time in Panther City.  (Come to think of it, that includes the author.)

 

Slowly, Smith built up a gang of fellow bunco artists, card sharks, and grifters who didn’t specialize in just one con game like most grifters, and he gravitated to wherever the money was, creating new cons as he went.  Take, for example, the gold rush in Skagway.  Miners from everywhere rushed to the remote outpost and as they worked their claims, they were eager to send word to their families.  Smith opened up a telegraph office so the miners could send messages home.  If a response came, it was usually an emotional plea to “send money”, a service the telegraph office offered its clientele.

 

The sole problem (for the miners, anyway) was that those telegraph wires only went as far as the office walls—Skagway wasn’t actually connected to anywhere by telegraph for years.

 

Additionally, Smith and his gang were all con artists who specialized in short cons like the shell game, three card monte, and poker games where two or more players worked in tandem to snare an unsuspecting legitimate player.  Smith also collected expert pickpockets, muggers, and the occasional burglar.

The con that earned Soapy his nickname was his soap racket.  Soap would set up a table on a busy street corner, and begin wrapping bars of soap with blue tissue paper.  Inside with a few of the bars of soap, would be placed various bills of differing denominations, including a one hundred-dollar bill.  While wrapping the soap, the con man would give off a loud and entertaining spiel, gathering a crowd.  

Once the soap was all wrapped and shuffled around, Soapy would begin selling the bars for a dollar apiece.  Almost immediately, one of Soapy’s gang would purchase a bar and then loudly proclaim that he was a winner, prompting more sales.  When most of the pile of bars was gone, Soapy would suddenly announce that the big prize—the hundred-dollar bill—was still among the remaining bars.  Soapy would then divide the remaining bars into lots and auction them off to the highest bidder.  Naturally, if anyone other than one of Soapy’s gang actually won anything, it was a small prize.  The marks were left with just ordinary bars of soap that normally sold for a nickel. 

 

Smith and his gang made their way to Denver, where they set up a empire of crime, eventually bribing most of the city officials, including the fledgling police department.  Smith opened a combination gambling parlor and saloon called The Tivoli Club.  Smith only pretended to run honest games of chance, as a sign over the entrance proclaimed, “Caveat Emptor”. 

 

When a malcontent took Smith to court, claiming that he had been robbed in a dishonest game, Smith defended himself by claiming that his saloon was an institution of higher education, perfectly crafted to cure compulsive gamblers:

 

 “A gambler is one who teaches and illustrates the folly of avarice; he is a non-ordained preacher on the vagaries of fortune and how to make doubt a certainty.  He is one who, in his amusements, eliminates the element of chance; chance is merely the minister in his workshop of luck; money has no value except to back a good hand.”

 

After pointing out that the claimant had, under oath, claimed he had sworn never to gamble again, Smith was acquitted.

 

Next to the bar was a cigar store run by Soapy’s brother.  The store, of course, was a front for crooked poker games.  If you wandered the city, you could find other Smith enterprises that sold forged lottery tickets, stock brokerages that sold shares in nonexistent companies, bogus diamond auctions, and jewelry shops that sold knock-off watches. 

 

Eventually, Smith angered enough residents that complaints reached the governor, who was more or less forced to move in on the city.  This formed a pattern:  Smith would move into an area, take over the town’s illegal gambling operations, then eventually set up a criminal empire that would become so overtly corrupt that either outside authorities would arrive or a citizen’s vigilante mob would (lynch rope in hand) run Soapy out of town.

 

Just a few steps ahead of the state police, Smith ran from Denver to Creede, Colorado, where he charged people a dime to stare at the petrified remains of a ten-foot giant—actually a human skeleton carefully cut into sections and covered with cement.  From there, Smith fled back to Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, and briefly to St. Louis, before eventually ending up in Skagway in the midst of the Klondike Gold Rush. 

 

Despite all the legal problems Soapy was having, he somehow managed to find the time to offer Mexican President Porfirio Diaz the services of a “Foreign Legion” of American outlaws—for a price, of course—to help “support” his dictatorship.  When President Diaz didn’t accept the offer, Smith offered President William McKinley the services of the “Skagway Military Company” under the command of Captain Smith during the Spanish-American War.  Though the president extended official recognition of the unit, for some reason Captain Smith and his troops never served any official capacity other than a few parades in Skagway.

 

True to form, eventually the better citizens of Skagway formed a vigilante group, the Committee of 101.  Smith must have felt secure, because, instead of fleeing, he formed his own Committee of Public Safety, claiming 317 members.  When Smith heard the Committee of 101 was holding a meeting on the Juneau Wharf, he decided to confront the group.  When a guard stopped him, Smith argued with him, the argument turned into a gunfight, and both men were fatally wounded. 

 

Smith’s last words were, “My God!  Don’t Shoot!”  Evidently, Soapy realized a few seconds too late that you couldn’t con a Winchester.

 

It is a testament to the high regard the city held for the con man, that his grave was a few yards outside the local cemetery.