There were a bunch of false starts and fizzled efforts, but when the Wyatt Earp legend finally took hold in the 1930s it hit like an explosion.
"Daily Whip Out: "Wyatt Earp Super Marshal."
And as the thirties gave way to the forties and World War II, the Earp legend hit a new high with "My Darling Clementine" in 1946, but the pop phenom still had higher to go. In the fifties we get "Gunfight at The O.K. Corral" and then the hit TV series "The Life And Legend of Wyatt Earp." That was the top of the roller coaster and in the early sixites the blow back began with the publication of "The Earp Brothers of Tombstone" by Frank Waters and then we get "Doc," an anti-war flick that implies Doc and Wyatt were gay and by the eighties we get the remake of "The Lone Ranger" (no, the earlier one that was just as bad as the latest one with Johnny Depp) and if you'll remember the crooked lawman was named "Earp." But, of course, the legend got a big rebound in 1993 with "Tombstone" and then "Wyatt Earp" in 1994, so quite a bumpy ride for the old frontiersman who never could sell his life story. In fact, I think I know what his last words were in reference to:
"Suppose, suppose, I actually got paid for my life story?"
—Wyatt Earp as quoted by BBB in a moment of wild speculation
"Suppose, suppose, I actually got paid for my life story?"
ReplyDelete—Wyatt Earp as quoted by BBB in a moment of wild speculation
Too funny!
JDK
I have always wondered it Wyatt actually told Burns all the tall tales or if he told the real stories of Wichita and Dodge and Burns changed the hero to Wyatt. If Burns actually talked to people in Wichita and Dodge or did any research he would have seen Wyatt did not participate in these stories. If so why did he leave them in the book?
ReplyDeleteI also read not to long ago, that he would talk to people about the possibilities he passed on or missed by some other means, and how that would have effected his life to a better ending. reflecting on a better out come , that was to late for him anyway.
ReplyDelete