TOMBSTONE
>>If he had not had TB, as Lisa said, he might never have met the
>>Earps in the first place...which brings me to a question...LISA,
>>OUR HISTORICAL MAVEN....how did Doc and Wyatt hook up?
>>Wondering....Linda
A book called "The Encylopedia of Lawmen and Outlaws recounts the meeting of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday as follows:"......He (Wyatt Earp) returned to Dodge City on May 7, 1877, after James H. "Dog" Kelly, Dodge City's new mayour, wired him, asking him to help with the Texas cowboys who were shooting up the town [ LISA'S NOTE: by this point Wyatt had previously been a deputy in Dodge, and had served as a lawman in several towns in Kansas and the Dakota territories]. Kelley made Earp assistant city marshal.
" Only days after pinning another star on his chest, a group of drunken cowboys rode up to the marshal and pulled their guns, taunting him. At that moment, John Henry Holliday, a young dentist from Georgia who had rented an office on the second floor of the Dodge House, leaned out a window with a shotgun, which he trained on the cowboys as he shouted down to them:
'The marshal has put his gun away! Put yours away!" The cowboys nervously looked up to see a shotgun aimed at them and then holstered their weapons, all except the ringleader. Earp reached up and pulled the man from his saddle, knocking the gun out of his hand, and hitting him so hard he knocked him senseless. Before dragging the man off to jail, Earp looked up at Holliday and waved. The lawman and the deadly dentist were close friend ever after. Holliday would go on backing Earp's play, risking his life time and again for Wyatt Earp, especially on that fateful day when he walked with Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil Earp down to O.K. Corral in Tombstone in 1881 to face the roaring guns of the Clanton-McLowery gang."
How's that? :-D
Ever your huckleberry,
Lisa***********************************
The book I quoted from previously (the meeting --which dates, according to the Earp entry, to May of 1877-- anecdote ) has this to say about Doc's skill in the Doc Holliday entry:
"From 1873 to the late 1870's, Holliday demonstrated an apparently innate skill with firearms. His aim was deadly. Unlike most of the western gunslingers of his cay, Holliday was never impatient to pull his guns. He drew his weapons with dedicated calm and while his opponent was firing wildly at him, this beady eyed killer would carefully level his Colt and nervelessly fire, invariably inflicting a mortal wound upon his enemy...... Holliday's reputation in the West as a deadly gunslinger was earned in the boom towns of Dallas, Cheyenne, Denver, Pueblo, Leadville, Dodge City, Tuscon and Tombstone. ...Holliday befriended a man to whom he gave his undying loyalty, Wyatt Earp, the legendary lawman whose cool-headedness and gritty dedication Holliday sought to emulate.....That Holliday looked up to Earp there is no doubt; he openly admired Earp's nervy and decisive behavior with bad men......Holliday was more than content to be known as Earp's 'back-up' man, an unofficial peace officer who made it his responsibility to see that Earp was not shot in the back. Earp, in turn, paid oblique homage to ...Doc, spreading the gunman's reputation with surly strangers who came to town so they would quickly realize that to face Earp with guns was also to face Holliday....
According to this book, Earp stayed in Dodge City keeping the peace until 1879, when he and his brothers (including James and Warren Earp which "Tombstone" doesn't mention, but films DO have to make certain cuts to keep to budget and these two brothers were not central players in the drama in Tombstone to the extent that Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan were) moved to Tombstone --and Doc packed up and followed them (the film also compresses time--which is why it is so much more enjoyable to watch--Costner must have put everything in!)
I hope this helps with what you wanted to know about Wyatt and Doc!
Lisa
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Subject: Re: Doc Holliday and Ethics
I have been reading the Doc Holliday early years posts with interest. It seems that the biographies take a fairly benign line with the Earps and Holliday. I write this because I remember reading a bunch of stuff arguing that the Earps and the Clantons were really not particularly different, and Wyatt was mostly a hired thug for whoever wanted him-- the legendary lawman reputation came after the O.K. corral
fight was picked up by the media of the time, and glamourised. The same line of argument says that one of the reasons behind the O.K. corral fight is that the Clantons accused Doc Holliday of robbing a stagecoach, and Holliday in turn accused the Clantons--it was never cleared up who actually pulled the job! For some reason, this never makes it into any Earp/Holliday film.
Now what I want to know, is all of the above merely hogwash? I can't give any references--I just remember reading such things around the time Tombstone came out--and I know Wyatt had a reputation as a liar in regard to his own exploits. History is just a story someone is telling, so I guess I wondering (Lisa, are you there?) are there any other versions out there of this particualr story?
Jair
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I can't speak specifically about individual biographies, because I have been pulling my information from history references, rather than individual bios--but naturally in the writing of history, there is always bias. That was one of the reasons I DIDN'T major in history, and chose instead anthropology, because I KNEW that what I'd learn in history class had as much to do with the professor's (and his professors, and so on back) biases as it would the truth. As I've noted here and there, MY particular interest, and that which I have the most comprehensive collection of books on is NOT gunfighters/lawmen, but rather the frontier military. In my studies in that area, voluminous reading has taught me to put together my own individual composites from varying sources. The best is always the contemporary accounts of events and people, with the most attention being paid to eyewitness accounts, autobios (again you must allow for the fact that few people are going to be critical of themselves), official records, reports, etc.
That being said, my rule of thumb for approaching historical personages is to look at both the idealized "hero" bios, etc AND the virulently anti-heroic revisionist texts and look for the truth somewhere in the middle. So as to your question of the source you read which paints the Earps as identical to the Clantons, that is a balance to the early idolatry paid the name of Earp. Because Wyatt lived so long (he outlived everyone in his own birth family for example--and most if not all of his compatriots) and made the acquaintance of some of the early western film genre stars, for many years you saw him only as that upright and honorable person that showed up on a weekly tv series and in countless movies.
Wyatt had a very varied life--he tried to run off and join the army during the Civil War, but was dragged back by his father (Wyatt was only 15), he worked as a buffalo hunter (on the advice of Wild Bill Hickok it is said), and it is also said, was known to rustle cattle in his youth. In the Old West there were no police academies or standards of hiring for marshals and sheriffs--it was usually whoever was brave (or foolhardy) enough to want to face down the "criminal element". Wyatt is said to have gotten his first lawman experience by simply doing what Ellsworth Kansas's marshall and
his deputies refused to do, going after Ben Thompson who had aided his brother in escaping after Billy Thompson had inexplicably (while drinking with the poor guy), shot and killed his best friend (also a local lawman) . Wyatt overheard the town's major demanding that the brother Ben surrender his weapons and himself, and Ben refusing, approached the major, said something to the effect of "If it was me, I'd get me a gun and arrest Ben Thompson or kill him." Miller sent him to a local hardware to get a gun, Wyatt then went up to Ben Thompson, demanded he surrender his weapon. When Ben asked what he was going to do with him, and Wyatt replied "take you to jail or kill you", Thompson surrendered and Wyatt hauled him off to jail. The most successful lawmen were those who were probably bullies, and could cow most criminals into submission, and if they didn't cow, who would kill them in the ensuing gun confrontation. Earp used his fists as much as guns in apprehending miscreants, often whacking people over the head with a gun or other cudgel so hard they lost consciousness (not as easy to do in real life as it is in the movies!), he could be termed a bully. He also supplemented his income as Tombstone showed, by dealing faro, monte, poker and being a bouncer, all for a share of the profits.
The stagecoach robbery accusation is documented widely. The conventional wisdom is that Sheriff Behan, whose reputation was that of a pathological liar, made the charge in response to Wyatt claiming that Behan had allowed a small time thief who had held the robbers horses at the stagecoach job, walk out of the jail unchallenged while Behan looked the other way (because of his connections to the cowboy miscreants anyone on their "side" often took such dutch leave.) Behan had been embarrassed by Holliday in front of half the town by answering a charge of cheating with a challenge to meet him outside--Behan backed down while a crowd jeered. Behan went so far as to compel Big Nose Kate, Doc's gal, to say that Doc was involved--but she recanted that the next day, and became permanently estranged from Doc at that point.
Anyway, not to belabor a point, but the OK Corral fight was the outfall of a long history of bad blood between the Earps and Clantons of years duration (films always compress events). It had less to do with enforcing the law, than clearing up the feud. The fight did take on mythic proportions and is to this day probably the most studied event (non military anyway) in Western US History. It inarguably magnified the reputations of Wyatt (and Doc) (but they were NOT without experience in law enforcement prior to the fight, and had gotten as much police work as they did, by their reputations BEFORE the OK Corral Tombstone, while not accurate in every regard, is the first film I've seen that addressed the fact that the Earps were not shining knights wearing badges, and attempted to show the participants as three dimensional people--which is a step in the right direction, if not perfect.
>Now what I want to know, is all of the above merely hogwash?
To finally answer your question--NO the story you related is not complete HOGWASH, but like any controversial event, it is not simply stated. Again, the truth in events just as in the character of people involved in those events, rests somewhere in the middle of two extremes, and the fun part of history is discovering for yourself, just what can be documented and what can not. I've given you one alternate version of the event, and there are undoubtedly others in various shades of gray.
Well, am verbose once again, so will leave this at that. Hope that helped somewhat--if not, let me know!
Lisa
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Lisa,
Thanks a bunch for your most comprehensive answer--it's always nice to get as much detail as possible to decide on one's own story of history (there's really no way to get away from one's own storytelling bias, is there; you just have to be clear about where you are coming from and why, and wait for some interesting fallout from another reader!).
Re: my hired thug remark: I remember reading somewhere that Wyatt was just as happy to work either side of the law, as long as there was money in it, which was one of the reasons the writer gave as saying the mythology of the O.K. Corral fight and the Earps obscured the fact that this was really a type of skirmish between two feuding parties that one reads about regularly in the papers about the streets of New York City (or any other large city--sorry NYC residents!). I was wondering how many other histories gave such a version.
It seems to me Tombstone gives some hints about the Earps and Holliday's human flaws, but it pretty well drops them about half way through in relation to Wyatt--he becomes mythically heroic in direct opposition to the rascally Cowboys. Doc, however, retains his 3-D character--as previously discussed here, the resemblances between him and Ringo are not ignored, and his reasons for doing what he did remain interesting to discuss. Val is also quite happy to chat about Doc's duality: remember on the MTV interview when he said Doc was heroic but extremely demented? And though he says that to date, Doc is probably his favourite character to have played, because he liked the heroic aspect mixed with arrogance, he always mentions we mustn't forget how many people Doc killed!
So, I suppose what I am rabbiting on about is that it's probably too bad Wyatt's shades of grey were whitewashed through most of Tombstone as 3-D heroes are always facinating. Val's Doc certainly is!
Thanks again Lisa,
Jair
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>I have a question. Ok during the "Wyatt i am rolling" scene in Tombstone,
>what does Doc say after "No I said poker's an honest trade." It sounds like
>only suckers buck the tie and the odds are all on the house. is this
>correct?? please help me."Only suckers buck the tiger. The odds are all on the house."
"Bucking the tiger" was slang for playing faro (if you're not the dealer)- the game Wyatt runs later on. So, Doc was saying that it's a waste of time to play faro against a house dealer--- the odds aren't really fair. (In the book Doc also says "Just like in a gunfight, eh, Wyatt?"-- as if Wyatt always stacks the odds for himself in a gunfight...)
Here's the deal (hee hee) with faro for those of you who don't know, I looked this up in a "big book of games" (which is where I found out about "bucking the tiger"). There is a dealer, and he has a "tablet thingy" (What Doc is messing with when Wyatt says "Aaaawful lot of money. You're the doctor, pal. Sad news, friend, you lose.") The "tablet thingy" (sorry I forget the technical term) is used to keep track of what cards have been turned over.
Everyone bets on what cards they want to have turned over. They can also bet that certain cards WON'T be turned over. The dealer removes the top and bottom cards from the deck (so it'll be random) and then turns two cards over. The first wins, the second loses. I don't remember how the dealer bets--- I think he takes the opposite of everyone. That's why the odds are so high for the dealer- he'll win probably 48/50 times. :D
Hope this helps, if not I'll try to explain better!
Anjela