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[{"type":"text","text":"\"And charge it to the Underhills....\""}]

Cinema 4 20 25

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Today In Cinema: Sunday, April 20, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

"And charge it to the Underhills...."

Today In Cinema: Sunday, April 20, 2025

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

CHEYENNE — A dad who once traded a black powder rifle for a rusted Model T decades ago left his four daughters and son with a lot of memories, and a lot of antique cars and parts.

That Model T acquired in the late 1950s began a hobby and series of antique cars that over nearly 70 years kept Alex Connell, who died on May 1, 2025 — and sometimes his kids — digging into Wyoming dirt for rusted treasure. 

They once scoured a national park as part of their dad’s effort to uncover car frames and find parts that would be transformed by the self-taught craftsman.

Now Connell’s legacy fills two garages and a barn on the north side of Cheyenne that contains three Packards mostly restored and nearly all the parts for an extremely rare 1907 American Underslung Roadster.

There also are scores of other parts for Packards, Model Ts and Model As.

“We had Bonhams come and look at them and they were so excited,” said Kathy Dillmon, Connell’s youngest daughter, referring to the international auction house. “We let them take a 1916 Studebaker, it wasn’t the best one.”

The price the car went for at an Arizona auction was well below the value the Bonham representative told the family it would likely bring. 

Their dad left them his estimates of the value of his cars. Now the heirs are looking at a long and winding road to determine next steps in selling their dad’s passion and collection.

The remaining nearly restored cars include a 1909 Packard Limo, 1909 Packard Touring Car, and 1929 Roadster.

Connell’s children — Kim Parker, 72; Kay Irwin, 70; Kris Connell-Johns, 67; Tom Connell, 65; and Dillmon, 67 — now have the cars listed with Horseless Carriage Club of America at reduced prices. 

They know that the older generation interested in antique models like these has given way to Baby Boomers more interested in Mopar muscle cars.

But they have stories to tell about family outings at Cheyenne Frontier Days parades, where they were all dressed in period clothes while riding in one of their dad’s restored machines.

Parker said both of their parents were born in Michigan, Alex Connell in Muskegon and Luann in Holland.

Connell enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduation from high school and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base for his technical school as a lineman.

After arriving on the base in 1952, one day her dad told his squadron’s leadership a story after mail call.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Story"}]

“Daddy told his commanding officer that he got a woman in trouble in Michigan and he had to get married right away,” she said. “That was a lie.”

The family story is that Connell hopped a train “like a hobo” and went back to Muskegon to knock on the door where Luann lived. 

Her mother answered on a Friday night and asked him what he was doing back in Michigan.

“I’m here to marry Lucy and we’re going to do it tomorrow,” Parker repeated her dad’s lines. “We’re going to get a train and go back to Cheyenne by Monday.”

The unsuspecting Luann, aka “Lucy,” agreed. 

Her mother and grandmother helped put together a Saturday wedding and they were married. She was 17, he was 19.

The couple caught a train back to Wyoming that had them sitting up in passenger seats for 24 hours, Parker said.

When they got to Cheyenne, they walked seven blocks from the depot to an apartment he had rented for them. 

Two years later, both his mother and Luann’s mother died of cancer, and Connell obtained a hardship discharge. They moved back to Michigan with 1-year-old Kim to help their families.

In Michigan, two more daughters (Kay Irwin and Kris Connell-Johns) were born. But the couple missed the West and the mountains. 

They moved back to Cheyenne in 1957 and Connell joined the pipefitters’ union and became an apprentice, and then journeyman, Parker said.

Connell’s children said that their dad’s career involved several construction projects that included schools, a water plant, hospitals and a lot of work for the Air Force on missile silo construction.

Kay Irwin remembers her dad one day being contacted by an F.E. Warren Air Force Base officer to do some welding at a missile site and how a helicopter was sent to pick him up and take him out there. He returned home at the end of the day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Car Hobby Begins"}]

Tom Connell said his dad’s love of antique cars and restoring began before he returned to Wyoming. 

He had been a aficionado of black powder rifles when he learned about an old Ford someone had in Marne, Michigan.

“He traded a black powder rifle for a Model T,” he said. 

Alex Connell went on to become a self-taught craftsman and expert restoring cars, graduating to Model As and more upscale Packards, American Underslung and Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars.

In an article written for the Horseless Carriage Gazette in 1983, Alex Connell described how he restored a 1910 American Underslung after a friend showed him a flexible brass tube that he found while antelope hunting next to what he thought were remnants of an old Ford.

Connell pestered the friend to take him to the location, and when he got there saw the potential for something special.

“There, in a wash, lay the entire body, fenders and hood from a 1910 American Underslung just as it had been left there during the first part of World War II,” he wrote. “I found the owner of the property and he told me how he wrote to a scrap metal dealer in Torrington and instructed him to go to the ranch … and scrap out the old cars and machinery there and buy war bonds in the name of the owner.”

Connell wrote that he began his effort to restore the car, which spanned several years of finding parts, learning to fabricate his own on a metal lathe or using wooden frames and sheet metal to fashion parts.

Over the decades, his children estimate their dad collected and restored dozens of antique cars, then traded and sold many of them.

As part of their dad’s restoration efforts, the Connell kids remember their mother finding and making period clothing for them all to wear and driving the cars in a succession of Cheyenne Frontier Days parades.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Movie Showcase"}]

Parker said when the movie “The Great Race” was released in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon,  the local theater recruited her dad to display the American Underslung at the theater.

“It was such a great movie that the Paramount Theater downtown asked dad if they could put his main Underslung in the theater, and it was all roped off with beautiful brass poles and red velvet,” she said. “It was a beautiful showcase car.”

The Connell children grew up in a home that their parents built that came mostly from recycled materials from an Air Force base warehouse that their dad contracted to tear down. 

It was part of several home showcase tours, they said.

All remember their father coming home from work and going to garage where there were metal lathes, saws, and tools for his restoration work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"There was always a project going on."}]

“I remember when I was, like, 10 years old, he had taken me in his truck and he was going to get this car frame out of Horse Creek that was kind of buried in the sand, and he dug and dug and couldn’t get it out,” Kay Irwin said. 

“And he put a two-by-four under the frame and he had me lean over on that two-by-four and bounce on it and try it get it out of the creek bed. We finally ended up getting it,” she added.

Parker said the only real family vacation they ever took involved their dad announcing they were going to go to Yellowstone. 

The family piled into a cab-over truck with a big trailer behind and instead drove to the south entrance of Grand Teton National Park.

Her dad parked the rig in the middle of a forest. 

That’s when Alex Connell broke the told his family that they weren’t going to vacation in Yellowstone and instead search for a Packard body that he heard was buried in a creek somewhere in Grand Teton.

“So, we spent days and days looking for that body in a creek,” Parker said. “I was walking in the woods and I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, and I walked up on an elk that was fully horns.

“I backed up, he just stayed there and watched me.”

After days of no luck finding the Packard, the family went to Yellowstone to visit Old Faithful, watched it erupt, then drove to Thermopolis to go swimming, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Restoring Pierce-Arrow"}]

Tom Connell tells the story of his dad meeting a man in a town east of Colorado Springs who owned an old Pierce Arrow Roadster that was identical to his dad’s Packard. 

The owner who was up in years told Alex Connell he bought the car when he was kid.

“He wanted to drive that some day before he died and he didn’t want to sell it,” Tom Connell said. “Right next to it was an old Lincoln Bus, and in the spur of the moment (dad) said, ‘I’ll take that car home and restore if for you in exchange for that Lincoln Bus.'”

Tom Connell said he and his dad hauled the Pierce Arrow back to Cheyenne and over a period restored it so that it was able to be driven and returned it to the Colorado owner. 

That man cried when they brought it back to him.

Alex Connell got the Lincoln Bus, but never got around the restoring it. It remains on the property as an item for his children to deal with.

Dillmon said her father sold and traded his restored cars and parts with people throughout the country and Europe, and she has boxes of his correspondence about parts and other facets of his restoration expertise.

Alex Connell also got into refurbishing big, old Minneapolis Steam Tractors and took a class to learn to drive them. 

The family story is that Luann Connell made him sell them because one day he drove a tractor into the house. The tractors were sold to a man in Argentina.

Working hard on his restoration efforts into his 70s, Alex Connell slowed down in the last two decades of life, but maintained his efforts in the garage for as long as he could. 

Luann Connell died in January 2025, and that same month Alex Connell fell and developed a brain bleed that required surgery.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Alex Connell died May 10, 2025. "}]

His children remain busy trying to find the right homes for his beloved antique vehicles and parts, but thankful for the memories he left behind.

“The goal is to find passionate buyers within the vintage car community who will drive, preserve, and enjoy them,” Dillmon said.

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<title>Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The children of a Cheyenne car restorer inherited a lifetime collection of antique Packards and car parts that include a nearly complete disassembled 1907 American Underslung Roadster. Their goal is to find a buyer who will preserve and enjoy them.

Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories

Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Occasionally it's a good idea to take your own advice....."}]

Darwin 6 14 26

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, June 14, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Occasionally it's a good idea to take your own advice.....

Daily Darwin: Sunday, June 14, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

[{"type":"text","text":"American artist Edward T. Grigware is renowned for his murals. "}]

By the time he died in Cody in 1960, his work was featured in banks, hospitals, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) chapels from Chicago to Los Angeles and as far as Hawaii.

Grigware’s most celebrated Wyoming mural depicting the history of the LDS church is on display in the Historic Cody Mural and Museum. 

It’s an excellent example of the painter’s commitment to realism in an age when the trendiest art was increasingly abstract.

However, there’s one painting in Grigware’s portfolio that’s full of realism — but a lot cheekier than anything else he ever did.

“Bottoms Up,” his 1940s painting of four curvaceous cowgirls wearing nothing by chaps from the waist down showing their bare bottoms, is Grigware’s only nude.

“It certainly made going into the lounge at the Holiday Inn worthwhile,” said Mack Frost, digital technician at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. “It was quite the topic of conversation.”

The painting is no longer hanging in the Holiday Inn and hasn’t been seen in years, which now has turned the conversation to whatever happened to “Bottoms Up?"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Accomplished Artist"}]

Grigware was already an accomplished artist when he moved to Cody in 1936. 

He got his education at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and his work had been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was wooed out to Wyoming by Mary Allen Jester, one of the founders of the Buffalo Bill Museum, now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Initially skeptical of living in Wyoming, Grigware quickly came to love the state's landscapes and lived the rest of his life in Cody. 

During that time, he was commissioned to do several murals in Cody and elsewhere.

“He did murals at the Cody Masonic Temple, the old Cody hospital, and the Cody Mural Chapel,” Frost said. “He wasn't a combat artist, but he replicated many of the naval battles that occurred during World War II.”

Grigware spent most of the 1940s working on commissions from the U.S. Navy, which were used for posters and other promotional material. 

In the late 1940s, the LDS Church commissioned him to paint a 360-degree mural depicting the church’s history in the 36-foot-wide, 18-foot-tall rotunda of its then-new Cody chapel. The finished mural was unveiled in 1951. 

, Grigware spent a year researching the church’s history, as he was not a member, and painted the mural on pure Irish linen, “the choicest of artists’ canvas,” which was hard to come by at the time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It's pretty fantastic,” Frost said."}]

It was around this time as well in the mid-to-late 1940s that Grigware finished an entirely different kind of commission.

[{"type":"text","text":"His work went from sacred to what some would consider sacrilegious."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Getting To The Bottom Of It"}]

The story of how “Bottoms Up” came to be is tricky to piece together. There are several accounts of dubious origin sharing those details.

, “Bottoms Up” was commissioned by “a wealthy Denver-area oilman.” He wanted Grigware to create an alluring painting of a Cody woman who was allegedly his mistress.

Cody historian Bob Richard could verify some of that information, while acknowledging there’s more fiction than fact in most accounts.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Several stories about that painting abound,” he said."}]

One thing he could confirm was that the model for “Bottoms Up” was, indeed, a Cody woman.

Dorothy “Dot” Morris managed the Lazy Bar H Ranch, now the Bill Cody Ranch, between Cody and Yellowstone National Park with her husband, Leonard.

“She was very beautiful and partied a lot with Leonard and other Cody families,” Richard said. “When Leonard took guests to fish for mackinaw, Dot was always there.”

Richard said Morris probably connected with Grigware through the Frontier School of Western Art, a short-lived complex of log cabin studios that drew Grigware and other artists to Cody between 1936 and 1941.

Technically, there’s only one cowgirl in “Bottoms Up.” All four women were modeled by Morris, posed and painted by Grigware four different times.

The final painting is of four cowgirls on a wooden fence, fully clothed in Western attire except for their bare derrieres.

The cowgirls are basking in the warm sun with the familiar silhouette of Heart Mountain in the distance.

The original painting had a pine pole frame made by another legendary Cody artist, Thomas Molesworth. It was delivered to its patron, who hung it in his home in Denver.

“I think the painting was done in the mid-1940s, after the end of the war,” Richard said. “But, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think Dot was anyone’s mistress.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bottoms Back"}]

“Bottoms Up” was eventually acquired by Quintin Blair, a renowned Cody businessman who brought the painting back to where it was created.

Blair served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, so it’s possible some of the battles Blair fought were painted by Grigware.

Blair went on to own several drug stores in Cody, managed the Pahaska Tepee Resort and Buffalo Bill Village, and established Quin Blair Enterprises, now Blair Hotels, which built the Holiday Inns in Cody, Laramie, and Riverton.

Blair was also a patron of the arts. There was no better example of that than his family home.

The Quintin Blair House, Wyoming’s only building by Frank Lloyd Wright, was built for the Blair family. 

Before his death in 2013, Blair was the only living person to have continuously resided in a home designed and built by the famous architect.

Blair was also friends with Grigware and the Denver patron who commissioned “Bottoms Up.” When the patron died, his wife sold the painting to Blair.

According to legend, Blair acquired the painting for $1, with some caveats. The patron's wife wanted the painting publicly displayed in Cody as a slight to “the model,” meaning Morris.

In that story, Morris and her husband moved to San Diego, California, in the 1960s, out of embarrassment that Morris’s bare bottom had returned to Cody.

[{"type":"text","text":"Richard has a much simpler explanation for the move."}]

“Dot and Leonard moved away for no other reason than Leonard retired and sold the ranch,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fact And Fiction"}]

Since the history of “Bottoms Up” is so intertwined with the Blair family, it's the best source of factual information on the painting.

Ted Blair is the CEO of Blair Hotels and Quintin Blair’s son. Like Richard, he’s amazed by the number of stories circulating around “Bottoms Up.”

“Most of what people have heard about it is made-up,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable.”

Blair confirmed the core history. “Bottoms Up” was painted by Grigware in the 1940s, with Morris modeling, for a Denver patron whose wife hated it.

“It hung behind red velvet curtains in the bar of their home,” he said. “When he'd have friends over, he'd open the curtains up. When there was nobody there, the curtains were closed, because his wife hated the painting.”

Quintin Blair bought the painting from the man’s widow, but there were no caveats with the purchase.

“Thomas Molesworth's son called my father and said, ‘Remember that nude of Grigware’s? It's for sale.’ My father got a hold of it, and that's how it ended up in Cody again,” he said.

Blair confirmed that his father didn’t acquire and display the painting out of obligation or spite.

“He knew Grigware, he knew the painting, and thought it was fun,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hanging Out"}]

When Blair opened Cody’s Holiday Inn in 1972, “Bottoms Up” was prominently placed in the hotel’s bar, the Daisy Bell Saloon. 

It would later be known as the Bottoms Up Lounge, where the painting was the centerpiece for decades.

Thousands of people dropped by to appreciate the painting, for various reasons. Even Holiday Inn capitalized on it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were selling posters of it at one point,” Richard said."}]

The painting made its way onto T-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards, and posters, eagerly acquired by fans of Grigware’s unique piece.

Frost was one of many Cody residents who regularly saw “Bottoms Up” when it hung in the Bottoms Up Lounge. He likened it to the famous pinup girls painted by Alberto Vargas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was very Vargasesque,” he said."}]

It’s a notable departure in Grigware’s extensive body of work. According to a blog post about the history of “Bottoms Up” from August 2009, Grigware accepted the commission as his one and only “tasteful nude.”

“It’s the only nude he ever did, as far as I’m aware,” Blair said.

However, tasteful or not, “Bottoms Up” was eventually deemed too distasteful for the public.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Much On Display"}]

When Cody’s Holiday Inn completed its most recent renovation, “Bottoms Up” was gone.

“It was in the lounge until a couple of years ago,” Frost said. “I don't know why they took it down. Maybe the Blairs decided that it was no longer relevant, maybe somebody complained about it.”

Richard thought the unique painting was removed at the request of Holiday Inn. Most chain-branded hotels have specific guidelines regarding what artwork can be displayed. 

Quintin Blair was, allegedly, granted a dispensation to display “Bottoms Up” because of its provenance and association with Grigware.

“I think their management decided it was unacceptable, so it was taken down,” he said.

Ted Blair was happy to set the record straight. The painting was taken down because it would have been too visible.

“When we turned the lounge into an open area of the dining room, children would have been able to see it,” he said. “That’s when and why we pulled it down. That’s the decision I made.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heirloom Or Museum Piece?"}]

As for its current whereabouts, Ted Blair confirmed that “Bottoms Up” still exists.

“I have it where nobody will know where it's at,” he said. “There’s a lot more to it than people realize."

Blair also has photos of Morris, who seemed to be even more free-spirited than her painted bottom in quadruplicate would suggest.

“There was a photography club in Cody that did nude photos of women (around that time), so I have photos, including nude photos, of the lady,” he said.

Many people, then and now, would say such a unique painting should be in a museum, such as the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. 

While he admittedly hadn’t considered the option, Blair doesn’t think “Bottoms Up” would have a home among the Whitneys’ collection.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don't see any nudes or Grigwares in there,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Art Actualized?"}]

Many of Grigware’s murals and other paintings can be seen in buildings, chapels, and museum collections today. Several, but not all, of his Cody murals are intact.

“Bottoms Up” has largely disappeared from public discussion. Even if its story contains more fact than fiction, the quirky painting is a notable work by one of the great American masters.

There’s one other story that abounds around the story of “Bottoms Up.” Morris was the only cowgirl depicted in the painting, but several people claim they’ve seen a mark-for-mark photograph recreating the painting with four bare-bottomed cowgirls.

“I saw a photographic rendition of that picture once, and I'm not sure who did it,” Frost said. “We certainly do not have that picture in the museum’s collection.”

Someone who called themself “Tippy” claimed to be one of those cowgirls. 

, she claimed the photo was taken by a Cody photographer in the summer of 1976.

“I had the privilege of working for Quin Blair as an entertainer at the famous Chuckwagon and Sarsaparilla Saloon,” she wrote. “After a great performance one night … the female members of the group made arrangements with an Old West photographer to oblige them out in the pasture (and) leaned over the fence overlooking the cowherd to take their picture in a remake of the original oil painting.”

Tippy said the women “mustered up the courage to slap that leather over their bare bottoms” with the assistance of several cocktails.

“They were shot at sunrise with a belly full of Tequila sunrises,” she wrote.

[{"type":"text","text":"Bottoms up, if you will."}]

Could this be a factual or fictional account? It seems the only consistent thing in the history of “Bottoms Up” is the way mystery and fantasy have become part of its legacy.

The reality of “Bottoms Up” is a “tasteful nude” painting from the 1940s by a renowned American artist best known for his murals in church chapels. 

It’s become hard to see, but even harder to forget for those who encountered it.

That's what happens when a realism artist doesn't leave enough to the imagination. It as intriguing in 2026 as it was in 1946.

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<title>What Happened To Racy ‘Bottoms Up’ Painting That Hung For Decades In Cody Hotel? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Whatever happened to the racy painting titled “Bottoms Up" that hung for decades in the Cody Holiday Inn hotel? "The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable,” said its owner, adding it’s “where nobody will know where it's at.”

What Happened To Racy ‘Bottoms Up’ Painting That Hung For Decades In Cody Hotel?

Outdoors

Public Lands

Finding treasure and beauty underwater does not require a trip to one of the nation’s coasts.

Divers in the Mountain West may not get to see sharks, colorful fish and coral reefs, but they pull out antique six-shooters or older Coors cans with no pop tops out of the Colorado River.

Divers who plunge the depths of the Colorado River and Flaming Gorge Reservoir find all kinds of treasure, from antique six-shooters to cellphones. One woman burst into tears when given her phone back that had her grandchild’s birth video on it.

Today In Cinema: Sunday, April 20, 2025

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