Good Golly, Is It Molly? California Man Says Photo Is Of Legendary Madam Molly B’Dam

Her legend is the stuff of books. She’s a prostitute praised in song.

There’s an annual festival in her honor. And the man who wrote the screenplay for “Roots” even is working on a script about her life.

Until now, they would have had a tough time casting the part of Molly B’Dam - Idaho’s favorite madam. Her true visage has remained a mystery for a century. But a California man has restored a yellowed, shattered picture of a woman some say is Molly.

A historian is skeptical. An author is ecstatic. And the man who restored the alleged Molly? Glen Almquist is a believer - he says her mug is as good as the gold in the mountains around Murray, Idaho. T-shirts, logos - they’re all in the works.

“I want to take Molly into the 21st century,” announced Almquist.

He got the picture from his 87-year-old uncle, Walt Almquist, owner of Murray’s Spragpole Inn and Museum.

Almquist said he’s had the picture for 40 years; it was torn to pieces when the glass frame it was glued onto shattered. On a visit, the younger Almquist talked to his uncle about how to drum up tourism for Murray’s Molly B’Dam Days.

If only they had a photo, Almquist pined. Walt said “Well, I do.”

Almquist returned to Orange County with the shards. He took them to a graphics company and had the picture pieced together, scanned and digitally restored.

Why all the madness over a madame? In Shoshone County, Molly is loved the way Texans revere the Alamo.

Her story goes like this: Irish immigrant Maggie Hall came to America and fell in love with a rich playboy. They married; his parents disowned him over it. So he forced her into prostitution to earn both their keep, said Idaho author Anne Seagraves.

“She became very proficient in her vocation,” Seagraves said.

Molly dumped her hubby and turned solo. She went West and wound up in Murray in 1884 - where she was dubbed Molly B’Dam. “There she was accepted and loved,” said Seagraves.

She cursed up a sewer. She cooed like a dove. Molly was a Murray sensation.

“She quoted Shakespeare, Milton, Dante,” wrote William Stoll, who lived in Murray back then. “…with one hand she would rob the unwary; with the other she would give liberally to charity or nurse the sick.”

Once, Molly swiped a buckskin bag of gold from a drunken miner named Lightnin’. But when Lightnin’ came down with typhoid fever months later, Molly nursed him to health.

“She worked day and night,” Seagraves said. “Saving people, she and her prostitutes. Her girls.”

Another yarn has her hauling a bathtub out in the middle of a street, telling fellas that if they’d fill it with gold dust, she’d take a plunge in the buff.

Historian John Amonson, who runs the Wallace District Mining Museum, believes much of the lore. But he’s leery of the photo. “There was no picture of Molly B’Dam that existed,” Amonson said. “If they came up with something, it may be conjecture.”

When Seagraves wrote her book “Soiled Doves,” she combed the countryside looking for a picture of Molly. Museums didn’t have it. Universities told her there was no such thing.

The Almquists say theirs is the real thing, alright. Walt got it from a saloon keeper; Molly was a frequent customer. The bartender willed the photo to Walt saying yup, it’s Molly.

Seagraves hasn’t seen the photo yet. Screenwriter William Blinn is writing a Molly movie based on Seagraves’ book.

“People have guessed what she looked like, nobody really knows,” she said. “I would say she was blond, medium height, with blond hair she wore in piles on her head.”

It’s hard to tell with that hat. But Seagraves is excited nonetheless.

“I just hope it’s true.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo