A legend of the Old West who influenced how the Old West was presented on the Silver Screen.
Earp lived to be 80 dying in 1929. He became involved in the infant film industry, often being called upon as an expert to lend greater realism to the countless Westerns being made. He became friends with many current and future stars, perhaps including John Wayne, the evidence either way being sketchy. Earp had a formidable presence, a man from another time who had lived the experience that the filmmakers and actors were trying to recreate, and he made an indelible impression on them. Earp was also a fabulist, to be polite, and lovingly embroidered tales of derring-do about himself and his friends, including Doc Holliday. In 1946 in My Darling Clementine, John Ford made a fact free homage to Earp, with Victor Mature giving a haunting performance as the doomed Doc Holliday:
After the success of that film, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday became giants in American popular culture, their almost completely fictional exploits becoming ingrained in the American psyche.
Earp’s main claim to fame was his participation in the shootout at the OK corral. The melee lasted 30 seconds and was fought not at the OK corral, but rather took place at a narrow lot adjacent to a photography studio. (I guess that the shootout at the photography studio lacks resonance.) This was a culmination of a bitter feud between the Earps, Virgil Earp being the town Marshal, and a loosely organized group of outlaws calling themselves the Cowboys. Three Cowboys died that day, one being accounted for by Doc Holliday who was deputized. The Earps were held by the local Sheriff, but released after a thirty day preliminary hearing, the court finding that Holliday and the Earps had been acting in their capacity as lawmen. Why so much attention to a fairly brief engagement? Perhaps it was because it was fought on October 26, 1881 and the Old West was manifestly dying by that time, a victim of encroaching civilization, technology and law replacing the rule of guns with the rule of courts. From the start there was a nostalgic feel to the myth making that sprung up around that deadly brawl, just waiting for 20th century technology to make it, and Earp and his associates, the symbol of the West.
