Thread by @DavidLambertArt

My Darling Clementine is the best Wyatt Earp film & among the least accurate, despite John Ford knowing Earp personally. Contrary to Ford's claims, his film wasn't based on Earp's own account of his Tombstone days, but rather an earlier film whose director also knew the lawman.

The OK Corral did not make Wyatt Earp famous throughout the US, only parts of AZ & CA. Earp's introduction to the rest of the nation wouldn't be as a lawman at all, but rather as the corrupt boxing referee who threw the fight for Heavyweight Champion of the World....

Fitzsimmons vs Sharkey was THE sporting event of 1896, w/ Fitzsimmons the favorite. He dominated Sharkey, dropping him in the 8th. Sharkey rolled around the mat clutching his groin & Earp stopped the fight, ruling Fitzsimmons hit below the belt. Earp declared Sharkey the winner

Fans were livid. Only Earp seemed to have seen this punch to the groin & Fitzsimmons sued to contest his decision. The trial was national news, papers said Earp fixed the fight & twisted his gunfighting past so much that one even claimed the Earp brothers were stage robbers...

The case was thrown out since the fight was held in San Francisco, where boxing was illegal. 8 yrs later it was proven the match was fixed, though historians debate the level of Earp's involvement. It's too much to get into here, but guilty or not Earp's reputation was sullied...

Earp, his wife & his bad reputation traveled the West from Alaska to the Mexico border. He opened saloons-gambling houses-brothels & got arrested a few times for minor offenses. In Seattle, the Daily Times called him 'a bad man' (rude). Eventually Los Angeles beckoned...

During his travels, Earp spent his time either running saloons, working as a lawman or getting arrested more than Tom Sizemore. In Los Angeles things weren't any different. He was arrested in 1910 & 1911. If that wasn't bad enough he got into some really shady shit: the movies

Earp started visiting film sets, then consulted on Westerns, free of charge. I doubt that he did it out of the kindness of his heart, or because it was fun. Earp wanted someone to make a movie on his life that would fix his reputation. And yeah, to make a lot of money too.

One day in 1916, 2 men crashed a set looking for Raoul Walsh. They were Jack London & Wyatt Earp, who met in Alaska. An Earp biopic like Walsh's Pancho Villa film was discussed over dinner & Charlie Chaplin stopped by to ask if Earp was that bloke from Arizona. Nothing came of it

Earp befriended William S. Hart, who prided himself on the authenticity of his Westerns. In March 1922, Hart alerted Earp to a LA Times article painting him & his bros as murderous bandits & claiming that Wyatt was dead. Attached is the article. Almost every detail wrong & insane

The article infuriated Earp & he pressed Hart to make his biopic & restore his rep. Hart met him halfway & added Earp as a small character (played by Bert Lindley) in 1923's Wild Bill Hickok. Though barely featured, the ad copy hyped Earp as 1 of the 3 best gunmen of all time

The part was small, but Wyatt Earp was finally a movie character. His biopic had to be just around the corner. Unfortunately, critics mocked the film & Hart's popularity was already in decline. The film was a box office failure & another nail in the coffin of Hart's film career

Word didn't seem to reach Wyatt & Sadie. For years they wrote Hart about their film, with Earp claiming a script was being written. Hart finally told them to just write a book & they thought that was a swell idea. Read the Earp/Hart correspondence here: scvhistory.com/scvhistory/har…

Now Earp needed to find a writer. He probably should've asked Jack London back when they met Raoul Walsh but he was long dead. His friend Wilson Mizner was a playwright & raconteur...& also a lazy opium fiend. He decided on John H. Flood, a mining engineer. He was free, after all

For 2 yrs Flood wrote stories Earp told him, but Sadie stopped any she thought unclean. She demanded a chapter claiming Earp saved 2 girls & a cripple from a fire & said the prose needed pep. Pep meant gunshots be written as CRACK! The chapter on the OK Corral had 109 CRACKS

They sent Flood's manuscript to various publishers & "We do not care particularly for the style in which it is written" was probably one of the nicer responses. They wasted 2 years writing 348 pages of unreadable shit, & during that time other people were writing books too...

Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest by Walter Noble Burns came out in 1927. His previous book made Billy the Kid a household name. Burns was interviewing numerous Tombstone old-timers while Sadie was insisting Flood write his 109th CRACK! Wyatt Earp got scooped on his own life

Billy Breakenridge was deputy sheriff under Johnny Behan during Earp's time in Tombstone, and a Cowboy Gang partisan. Earp didn't seem to bear a grudge against him though, because while visiting Tuscon in 1927, he & Billy met up to reminisce about old times...

A year later, Billy Breakenridge published Helldorado: Bringing the Law to the Mesquite, where he portrayed Earp as a pimp, thief, cheat & murderer. The Earps were appalled & the book became a huge success. Another CRACK! to Earp's reputation...

Wyatt Earp was in poor health. Attempts at redeeming his image failed. A few yrs before his death, he confided in a friend that the Fitzsimmons vs Sharkey infamy was the bane of his life. On January 13, 1929, at the age of 80, Wyatt Earp died of chronic cystitis in Los Angeles

Wyatt Earp died more famous for Fitzsimmons vs Sharkey than anything else. The city paper where Earp was born dedicated more to the match than any other single event in his life. Sports articles used slang like 'pulling an Earp' or 'Earping it up' when ref calls seemed fishy...

Before he died, Wyatt Earp gave a series of 8 interviews to a wrestling promoter with an interest in the Old West. The promoter expanded those interviews into a book with assistance from Sadie Earp... when she wasn't threatening legal action if the unsavory stuff wasn't cut...

The book was Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake. It was published in 1931 & was an instant smash, elevating the public's perception of Wyatt Earp beyond anything he could have imagined. It was also a complete hagiography. Hollywood soon came calling.

1932's Law & Order was the 1st Earp film, adapted from the novel St. Johnson. It's still the only Earp film that stands alongside My Darling Clementine in terms of quality. Only it's not technically an Earp film. All the names were changed. "Wyatt Earp" became "Frame Johnson"...

Fox purchased the rights to Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, excited to capitalize off being the 1st official Wyatt Earp film. Except Sadie Earp claimed it was an unauthorized portrayal & sued to have it shut down. The names got changed again. "Wyatt Earp" became "Michael Wyatt"...

Most likely due to the inability to capitalize off of Wyatt Earp's name, 1934's Frontier Marshal did middling business. I can't speak to its quality, or how much the other adaptations take from it, as I've never seen it (it's very rare). It's generally considered mediocre...

Fox tried again in 1939. Frontier Marshal's 1st treatment begins with Earp as a fugitive from justice, a likely reference to Wyatt Earp's 1871 indictment for horse theft, or just the shadier aspects of his character in general. Only this "Earp" is "David Earp" not "Wyatt Earp"...

Fox knew that there was no way Sadie would allow an official Wyatt Earp film to have references to his criminality, hence the name change. But what was the point in making a Wyatt Earp film without "Wyatt Earp" in it? Fugitive David Earp was rewritten as the upstanding Wyatt Earp

That's not to say Sadie didn't complain. She didn't think the script was close enough to Lake's book & she really didn't like that Doc Holliday was a main character. Speaking of Doc Holliday, Fox got worried his relatives were as litigious as Sadie, so they changed his name to...

...Doc Halliday. I mean, that could be based on anyone. They do change more about Doc than a single letter though. For example, instead of a dentist from the South, he's a surgeon from the East. This was carried over into My Darling Clementine but they were allowed to use the "o"

For being the 1st official Wyatt Earp film, some of the other changes to history might be surprising. There are no Earp Brothers, Wyatt just comes to Tombstone alone. There are no Clantons, just Curly Bill & some cronies. And the Gunfight at the OK Corral? Well...

...it starts because Curly Bill Brocious challenges Doc Halliday to a duel in the street and kills him. Later, Wyatt Earp, by himself, confronts Curly Bill and his men at the OK Corral and shoots them all down.

Frontier Marshal was a hit with critics & audiences, cementing Wyatt Earp in the minds of the public. Wanting to repeat its success, Fox suggested a remake to John Ford in order to fulfill his contract. He screened the film & said, "Shit, I can do better than that" & he did...

Make no mistake, My Darling Clementine is clearly a remake of Frontier Marshal, with only minor differences like Doc removing a bullet from an injured child instead of a saloon girl, or Wyatt pinning on a badge after being beaten rather than finding his brother murdered...

Which brings us back to my initial tweet (Jesus, I did not think it would go this long). John Ford spoke often (for John Ford, at least) about how he 1st met Wyatt Earp back when he was making his Silent Westerns. Interestingly, Frontier Marshal's director had a similar claim...

Frontier Marshal's director was Allan Dwan, whose many credits & innovations I'm just going to skip over entirely. What's interesting is that in addition to directing the "1st Wyatt Earp film" he might've directed the only film with Wyatt Earp in it. Let me explain...

In 1915, Dwan was directing Douglas Fairbanks in The Half-Breed. As Dwan tells it “Wyatt Earp was a visitor to the set. As was the custom in those days, he was invited to join the party and mingle with our background action..."

Dwan said, "I think there was a trial... A group of people demanded the half-breed be sent out of town. In that group was Earp; he only stood there & nodded his head" he added that at the sight of Fairbanks leaping across trees, Earp exclaimed, “Oh, no, I’d not like to do that!”

But Dwan's view of Earp differed from Ford's. According to Dwan, Earp “had been a real marshal in Tombstone, Arizona & was as crooked as a three-dollar bill. He & his brothers were racketeers, all of them. They shook people down; they did everything they could to get dough.”

Dwan's view of Earp is certainly harsh, but, despite an error or two, it's not completely out of line with the historical record. However, Dwan's physical description of Earp is all wrong. He says that Earp was "a one-eyed old man" but at no point did Earp ever lose an eye...

As for whether or not Earp is in the courtroom scene, judge for yourself below. I have to admit, when I planned this awhile ago, I couldn't find the film online anywhere. I just found this site a few minutes ago, so I've yet to watch it: cinematheque.fr/henri/film/320…

Earp historian Jeff Morey examined the courtroom scene & says there is no one who even remotely looks like Earp. Allen Barra, also an Earp historian, claims there's an extra who closely resembles Texas John Slaughter, a former Arizona sheriff who also worked in the movies...

Obviously Dwan got something mixed up. Is it possible Earp is an extra in a different scene, or even a different film? Or was Dwan thinking of one of the dozens of other Old West characters trying to get into the movies, & ended up conflating him with Earp?

If Earp *did* appear in The Half-Breed, clearly Dwan's idea of him as a corrupt racketeer didn't stem from Earp being an extra for a day. No, Dwan's dim view of Earp was from a time before his reputation had been publicly salvaged... by a Wyatt Earp film directed by Dwan himself

Congrats to those who made it this far. If you want more of me rambling on about Wyatt Earp & Wyatt Earp movies, listen to my old appearance on @WrongReel where @gknout & I go over Earp's life & rate the most significant Earp movies:
wrongreel.com/podcast/wr450-…

Supplemental material:
Earp was a last minute choice to judge Fitzsimmons vs Sharkey because each side couldn't agree on a ref. The Fitzsimmons side initially objected to Earp as he was friendly with the Sharkey camp. Earp offered to step down but the Fitzsimmons side relented

As Earp entered the ring, Police Capt George Whitman stopped him in front of 10000 fans & made him remove the revolver bulging from his coat. Since boxing was illegal, Whitman should've shut the entire event down, but I guess you have to draw the line somewhere...

Thus began the 1st of Earp's many indignities stemming from this match. This previously posted newspaper illustration depicts Whitman's disarming of Earp:

At the trial, doctors testified that Sharkey did in fact show signs of being struck in the groin. This did nothing to exonerate Wyatt Earp in the eyes of the public though.

As noted in the thread, since boxing was illegal in San Francisco, a judge couldn't rule in favor of Fitzsimmons for getting cheated out of illicitly earned money. The case was thrown out & no one was charged...except Wyatt Earp. He had to pay a $50 fine for carrying a firearm

If only that $50 was it. Earp's unpaid debts surfaced. A lien was put on 2 of his horses for a $170.45 debt owed in Stockton. The next day a suit for $1110.79 came from Tombstone for a 19 yr old debt. Then a $2,121 debt came in that he owed to a loan company.

It was also brought up in court that Earp's wife Josephine "Sadie" Earp was a "degenerate horseplayer" & that she had a habit of taking loans out against her jewelry.

Embarrassing.

The press dug into Earp's past, ignoring the positive, amplifying the negative & just plain making shit up. Reporters tracked down men he'd arrested & printed their word as gospel. The gun he was fined for was described as "murderous-looking" (as opposed to the pacifist guns?)

Papers from coast to coast reprinted an article about Wyatt Earp's time in Tombstone. It says he ran a stagerobbing operation with the 3 other Earp brothers: Virgil, Warren & Julian

Julian???

It added that they divvied the loot with their cousin, Curly Bill. Cousin???

Just in case people aren't familiar with the Earps, there was no brother named Julian

And Curly Bill was not their cousin, but their mortal enemy. Wyatt killed Curly Bill in self-defense

Speaking of killing, the article threw in that they killed a bunch of innocent people too

Here's one paper's nice, neutral profile of Earp:

His past mode of making a livelihood by the use of his 'gun' has been told. He has shot down people innumerable, wiped the smoke from off the barrel of his shotgun & cut another notch in the butt, & said 'What a great man am I.'

So yeah, they went a bit beyond simple accusations of Wyatt Earp being corrupt. It was not a good idea to fuck with 19th century boxing fans.

Oh, the doctors who said Sharkey showed signs of being hit in the groin? They testified that they were barred from seeing him until a day after the fight. The only doctor permitted to immediately examine Sharkey was one B. Brookes Lee...

And the thing about B. Brookes Lee is that he didn't have a license to practice medicine. He did have an arrest record though

Sharkey's trainer also admitted to seeing a bottle of potassium iodide (which causes swelling) in his dressing room after the fight.

Plenty more signs pointed to a fix, but once again, they weren't supposed to be boxing in San Francisco in the first place. Sharkey won his case but the court kept 15% of his $10,000 prize money due to an injunction.

Few accepted him as the heavyweight title holder.

8 years later, B Brookes Lee was arrested in Portland for fixing the fight (people were NOT letting it go). He admitted he was paid $1000 to make it look like Sharkey was hit in the groin, but didn't reveal how.

He was later charged with murder after stabbing a man in the eye