The irony is that the idealization of Earp as a good guy with a gun, an unswerving servant of law and order, is a myth. As a young man, Earp was arrested for horse theft and consorting with prostitutes. He was run out of a Texas town for trying to sell a rock painted yellow as a gold brick. He was drawn to police work not because of a devotion to the law but because, during the Gilded Age when public corruption was rampant, it was an easy source of cash. He went to court in 1896 for having refereed a fixed heavyweight championship prizefight, and as late as 1911, at age 63, he was arrested by the Los Angeles police for running a crooked card game.
The Earp myth originated not in Hollywood, but with Earp himself. Particularly following the 1896 scandal (which was the biggest sports gambling controversy until the fixed 1919 World Series) he became nationally renowned as a flim-flam man. Casting around for a way to remake his reputation, Earp stumbled upon Owen Wister’s popular 1901 Western novel, The Virginian, in which the hero participates in a gunfight and, reluctantly though necessarily, according to the author, in a vigilante hanging for horse theft. Earp seized on the interpretation. He became a fixture at Hollywood studios, befriended the early Western silent-film stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix, and dictated his Wister-inflected memoirs—with the arrest record expunged—several times over the last decades of his life. Like Jay Gatsby or Don Draper, Earp reinvented himself—and he used the newly created film industry as his tool.
Earp’s story is thus fundamental to American culture, but it is not the story with which we are familiar. It is not about the redemptive power of violence, but the redemptive power of the media. That we know Earp not as a confidence man but as a duty-bound law officer was his most enduring and successful confidence game. Somebody should make a movie about that.
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The Kevin Costner movie did touch on his dark side. From being a drunk bum who gets arrested for stealing a horse. To a stubborn, cocky, law man who gets fired for police brutality. His best bud, in the movie, was a drunk, woman beating, card shark, degenerate gambler, murderer, thief. His common law wife was a junkie ex prostitute. Not very flattering.
The ending also touched on how a lot of his exploits were fabricated or at least exaggerated.
If it wasn't for his participation in the shootout at the OK Corral, he would probably be just a small foot note in western history.
Its pretty fascinating if you read about the history of the American old west. The rampant gun fighters really didn't happen in the same way. Mostly because the law enforcement especially in the small towns drew heavily from Civil war vets and they were tough no nonsense men who didn't mess around.
But the dueling pistols in the streets were a big exaggeration.
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I used to really love the movie Young Guns. I know its BS. But I loved the end when they are surrounded in the house in Lincoln, NM. And they shoot their way out of town. Killing all the "bad guys" in the process.
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I used to really love the movie Young Guns. I know its BS. But I loved the end when they are surrounded in the house in Lincoln, NM. And they shoot their way out of town. Killing all the "bad guys" in the process.
I loved those movies. There was actual a lot of truth in both of them if you read the Billy the Kid legend. The bar scene in the first one where he asks the guy if he can see his gun and then whistles was pretty accurate for example.
However Billy's saying "reap the whirlwind" was probably not accurate but I think it was one of the cooler sayings in the movie.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Its pretty fascinating if you read about the history of the American old west. The rampant gun fighters really didn't happen in the same way. Mostly because the law enforcement especially in the small towns drew heavily from Civil war vets and they were tough no nonsense men who didn't mess around.
But the dueling pistols in the streets were a big exaggeration.
Pretty well all the old wild west stuff was wildly exaggerated. Billy the Kid for example didn't kill half the men he was credited with killing.
When I was younger I went to Tombestone. I collected all the papers from the day after the, "Gunfight at the O.K. Coral" and by every eye witnesses account the Earp's and Holliday killed the Clanton's and McLaureys in cold blood. Pretty disturbing to read about the one crawing towards Earp crying "i'm unarmed, don't kill me!" just before being shot...
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I only recently started to become fascinated with Wild West history. But I actually find it kind of weird to hear that Earp was considered a good guy. I always thought he was bad guy.
(As a side note, I recently just got finished watching Deadwood and it was pretty cool to see an appearance from Wyatt Earp)
I only recently started to become fascinated with Wild West history. But I actually find it kind of weird to hear that Earp was considered a good guy. I always thought he was bad guy.
(As a side note, I recently just got finished watching Deadwood and it was pretty cool to see an appearance from Wyatt Earp)
Wyatt Earp actually went to Deadwood to catch his fortune... But he didn't find it.
I'm a huge western lover. I'll watch a B western and enjoy it and I could never review them without bias.
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Originally Posted by Hessen
When I was younger I went to Tombestone. I collected all the papers from the day after the, "Gunfight at the O.K. Coral" and by every eye witnesses account the Earp's and Holliday killed the Clanton's and McLaureys in cold blood. Pretty disturbing to read about the one crawing towards Earp crying "i'm unarmed, don't kill me!" just before being shot...
Wasn't that Ike Clanton? Who Wyatt told to take a hike when he claimed he was unarmed. Then Ike went into the photographer studio and started shooting at the Earp's through the window?
Wyatt Earp America's most famous vigilante, that wasn't..
