TCM Schedule for Thursday, March 18 -- The Legend of Wyatt Earp

A morning of star of the month Ginger Rogers, and an afternoon of birthday boy Edward Everett Horton, born March 18, 1886. And this evening, we celebrate Wyatt Earp, who was born 162 years ago tomorrow. Enjoy!


5:00am -- Chance At Heaven (1934)
A society girl steals a simple gas station attendant from his working-class girlfriend.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Marion Nixon, Andy Devine
Dir: William Seiter
BW-71 mins, TV-G

Ann Shoemaker, who played Ginger's mother in this film, was known for playing everyone's mother, including FDR's in Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and Harry Truman's in Collision Course: Truman vs. MacArthur (1976).


6:15am -- The Tenderfoot (1932)
An innocent cowboy sets out to back a Broadway play.
Cast: Joe E. Brown, Ginger Rogers, Lew Cody, Vivian Oakland
Dir: Ray Enright
BW-69 mins, TV-G

The play,"The Butter and Egg Man" by George S. Kaufman, opened at the Longacre Theatre in New York on 23 September 1925 and closed in April 1926 after 243 performances.


7:30am -- You Said A Mouthful (1932)
To sell his unsinkable bathing suit, an inventor passes himself off as a championship swimmer.
Cast: Joe E. Brown, Ginger Rogers, Preston S. Foster, Farina
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
BW-70 mins, TV-G

In December 1939, Joe E. Brown's daughter Kathryn suffered a skull fracture when she was thrown from a horse. Three days later, Brown was in a car accident in where his car rolled over several times and fell down a 35 foot embankment. He ended up breaking his back and collapsing a lung. His heart stopped during surgery and he was clinically dead for 40 seconds.


9:00am -- The Tip-Off (1932)
A dim-witted boxer helps a naive friend romance a gangster's girl.
Cast: Eddie Quillan, Robert Armstrong, Ginger Rogers, Joan Peers
Dir: Albert Rogell
BW-71 mins, TV-G

Ginger Rogers brought her first cousin Helen Nichols to Hollywood, renamed her Phyllis Fraser, and guided her through a few films. Phyllis Fraser later married Random House publishing wizard Bennett Cerf and collaborated with Dr. Seuss on a series of children's learn-to-read books, including 'The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" and "Green Eggs and Ham".


10:15am -- Finishing School (1934)
A boarding-school girl has to cope with family problems and puppy love.
Cast: Frances Dee, Billie Burke, Ginger Rogers, Bruce Cabot
Dir: George Nicholls Jr.
BW-73 mins, TV-PG

This movie was placed on the Catholic Church's "condemned" film list in 1934.


11:30am -- Everybody's Hobby (1939)
A hobby-mad family makes their obsessions pay off.
Cast: Irene Rich, Henry O'Neill, Jackie Moran, Aldrich Bowker
Dir: William McCann
BW-54 mins, TV-G

The first (and last) in an intended series about 'The Hobby Fmily", in which every family member was immersed in a hobby-pursuit of some kind.


12:30pm -- The Body Disappears (1941)
A scientist's invisibility formula gets him in trouble with the police.
Cast: Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman, Edward Everett Horton, Herbert Anderson
Dir: D. Ross Lederman
BW-72 mins, TV-G

The first credited film performance by Natalie Schafer -- Mrs. Lovey Howell, the millionaire's wife from Gilligan's Island.


1:45pm -- I Married An Angel (1942)
A playboy drops his many girlfriends when he falls in love with a grounded angel.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Edward Everett Horton, Binnie Barnes
Dir: Roy Del Ruth
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Originally planned as a vehicle for Jeanette MacDonald 10 years earlier, but the somewhat racy content put the musical on hold at MGM, until it was a hit on Broadway in 1938. Because the Hays Code had taken effect in the years since this project was first suggested to MGM, the show's "racy" content (the idea of an angel having sex with a mortal) had to be considerably toned down for the film.


3:15pm -- Faithful In My Fashion (1946)
A sailor on leave causes problems at the department store his girlfriend manages.
Cast: Donna Reed, Tom Drake, Edward Everett Horton, Spring Byington
Dir: Sidney Salkow
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Donna Reed as a character named Chunky?!?


4:45pm -- Down to Earth (1947)
The goddess of the dance comes to Earth to take over a musical lampooning the gods.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, Marc Platt, Roland Culver
Dir: Alexander Hall
C-101 mins, TV-G

After Kitty (Rita Hayworth) and Danny (Larry Parks) finish their fight about how the information in the play is all wrong, Hayworth picks up a snow globe from a table and throws it at a mirror. It is the same snow globe that Charles Foster Kane drops when he dies in Citizen Kane (1941). Charles Foster Kane was played by Orson Welles, who was Hayworth's husband at the time.


6:30pm -- Her Husband's Affairs (1947)
An ad man fights off his wife's attempts to help him market an embalming fluid that doubles as a hair remover.
Cast: Lucille Ball, Franchot Tone, Edward Everett Horton, Mikhail Rasumny
Dir: S. Sylvan Simon
BW-85 mins, TV-G

"Screen Director's Playhouse" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on May 22, 1949 with Lucille Ball reprising her film role.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: THE LEGEND OF WYATT EARP


8:00pm -- My Darling Clementine (1946)
When the Clantons steal his family's cattle and kill his brother, Wyatt Earp signs on as sheriff of Tombstone and vows to bring them in.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs
Dir: John Ford
BW-97 mins, TV-PG

Director John Ford, who in his youth had known the real Wyatt Earp, claimed the way the OK Corral gunfight was staged in this film was the way it was explained to him by Earp himself, with a few exceptions.


10:00pm -- Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Dramatization of the legendary battle between Wyatt Earp and the Clanton Gang.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Jo Van Fleet
Dir: John Sturges
C-123 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Warren Low, and Best Sound, Recording -- George Dutton (Paramount SSD)

Much of this film was shot at the famous "Old Tucson" facility, not far from the real Tombstone. However, its "town street" set was used surprisingly as Fort Griffin, Texas, in the opening reels, while later Tombstone street scenes were shot in southern California, on the same Paramount Ranch set that was later used as Virginia City, Nevada, on TV's "Bonanza" (1959).


12:15am -- Hour Of The Gun (1967)
Wyatt Earp tracks down the survivors of the Clanton Gang after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Cast: James Garner, Jason Robards Jr., Robert Ryan, Albert Salmi
Dir: John Sturges
C-101 mins, TV-14

Prior to production, United Artists had made it quite clear to director John Sturges that none of the primary roles were to be filled by the actors who played the same characters in Sturges' previous Wyatt Earp film, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Wanting to distinguish this film from the previous one, they demanded different actors be cast in the roles. However, Sturges believed that the roles of Virgil and Morgan Earp from the previous film were small enough that the same actors who played them could do it again without harming the film's uniqueness. The studio agreed and allowed Sturges to cast John Hudson (Virgil Earp) and DeForest Kelley (Morgan Earp). Unfortunately, Hudson had retired from acting in the early '60s and was unwilling to do the role. Kelley, on the other hand, was currently working on the TV series "Star Trek" (1966) and was unable to break away to play Morgan Earp. Thus, both Earp brothers were recast.


2:00am -- Masterson of Kansas (1954)
Sheriff Bat Masterson joins forces with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to save a rancher framed for murder.
Cast: George Montgomery, Nancy Gates, James Griffith, Jean Willes
Dir: William Castle
C-73 mins, TV-PG

This film focuses on Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson, during his time as sheriff of Ford County, Kansas. Wyatt Earp was a city marshall in Dodge City at the same time.


3:30am -- Dodge City (1939)
A soldier of fortune takes on the corrupt boss of a Western town.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, Bruce Cabot
Dir: Michael Curtiz
C-104 mins, TV-PG

Country rock band Pure Prairie League, who had a mid '70s hit called "Amie" and later employed future country star Vince Gill as lead singer for hits like "Let Me Love You Tonight" and "I'm Almost Ready," took their name from a temperance union portrayed in this film.

Though his stock has dropped precipitously over the last twenty years, Wyatt Earp enjoyed an extended tenure as an archetypal hero for the edification of American boys. The long-running Desilu television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O’Brian as the “flawless” lawman, ran for six seasons on ABC and sustained the brand through the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. A discovery of Ida Lupino, the dark-eyed, perpetually pomaded and clean-shaven O’Brian would have looked more at home in an Italian sword-and-sandal film; he bore little resemblance to the actual Wyatt Earp, who is remembered as much for his walrus-style moustache as his trademark Colt “Buntline Special” revolver. A greater departure from the known facts was the rebooting of Tombstone’s dastard peacemaker as a wholesome TV do-gooder. Writing about the gap between legend and truth in the example of Wyatt Earp, historian William B. Shillingberg noted in 1976 that “what eventually confronts serious historians is not a man but a grim-visaged caricature into which has been poured all the ingredients of a super myth. The emerging figure bears little if any resemblance to anyone. Wyatt Earp is made to embody all the spirit of boldness and self-reliance that most modern audiences find secretly satisfying.”

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was born in Monmouth, Illinois, on March 19, 1848. The fourth son of Nicholas Porter Earp was named in honor of his father’s commanding officer during the Mexican War. While his older brother Virgil fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War, 16 year-old Wyatt shepherded his family across the Great Plains as part of a 40-wagon convoy to California, even defending the settlers against two attacks by indigenous natives. The prospect of a life tilling the sandy soil of San Bernardino County turned Wyatt against farming. He worked a number of menial jobs away from home but dutifully followed his family when they pointed themselves eastward. In Lamar, Missouri, Nicholas worked as a constable, a position he abdicated in favor of Wyatt. (When Wyatt ran for reelection, he was opposed by his half-brother Newton, Nicholas’ son from a previous marriage.) Earp’s early days as a lawman were undistinguished, marked by allegations of embezzlement and the premature death of his first wife. Leaving Lamar with a spotty reputation, Earp enjoyed the picaresque life of a wanderer and made the acquaintance of another future peace officer, William Barclay “Bat” Masterson. In his own writings, Masterson characterized Wyatt Earp as “destitute of fear,” an assessment with which even Earp’s harshest critics would concur.

The trajectory of Wyatt Earp’s intermittent early career as an officer of the law took him from the cow towns of Ellsworth, Kansas, to Wichita (where he first pinned on a Marshall’s star) to Dodge City. While breaking up a saloon fracas in 1878, Earp’s life was saved by the intervention of John Henry “Doc” Holliday, a former dentist who had abandoned his practice for the life of a professional gambler. Though various histories and film treatments would portray Earp as a gunfighter he was better known in his day as a scrapper, more likely to quell a disruption of the peace with his fists than with a bullet. When he rode with Bat Masterson and three others to bring to ground the killer of stage actress Dora Hand (fatally shot with a bullet meant for the mayor of Dodge City), news reports spread to the east and west coasts. The Earp brothers moved on to Tombstone, Arizona, where Virgil established himself as a deputy U.S. Marshall. Wyatt served briefly as a Pima County deputy sheriff but was also employed as a faro dealer and later bought an interest in a gambling concession in a local saloon. Long-standing enmity between the Earps and the sons and friends of rancher Joseph Isaac “Ike” Clanton, prime suspects in a string of stagecoach robberies, escalated into a brief but deadly shoot-out between the two factions on October 26, 1881.

The “Gunfight at the OK Corral” is literally the stuff of legend, as the thirty-second exchange of fire did not occur in that particular location but rather in a vacant lot behind it. Nevertheless, the sexy spin of Arizona lawmen (the Earps) restoring order from the sirocco of bestial lawlessness (represented by the Clantons and their associates, three of whom perished in the shoot-out) was too attractive a tale not to tell...and retell. The original faceoff and its deadly consequences (the subsequent murder of Morgan Earp, the ambush and crippling of Virgil Earp and the banishment of the entire family from Pima County) has been the subject of countless broadsheets, tabloid and police gazette articles, novels, stage plays, films and television shows.

In 1932, Walter Huston played a thinly veiled Wyatt Earp in Universal’s Law and Order, adapted by John Huston from W. R. Burnett’s novel Saint Johnson. Two years later, the Fox Film Corporation’s Frontier Marshal was an adaptation of the purported facts as told by Earp to novelist Stuart Lake. Though Earp was at this point deceased and unlikely to sue for damages, the film’s protagonist (George O’Brien, star of John Ford’s The Iron Horse <1924>) was renamed Michael Wyatt. The property was again adapted for the big screen five years later by Allan Dwan, with Randolph Scott starring as Wyatt Earp and Cesar Romero playing Doc Halliday, whose assassination in the film occurs seven years before the real Doc Holliday died of natural causes. Such is the stuff of legends.

One might have difficulty imagining Richard Dix, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Burt Lancaster, Will Geer, James Garner, Stacy Keach, Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner all vying for one role and yet each of these actors played Wyatt Earp at some point in their careers. Fonda was arguably the best physical match for Earp, tall and rangy and underfed and haunted; Fonda even opted for a mustache, albeit not an authentic one. Yet My Darling Clementine (1946) swung wide of the known facts, oversimplifying the social and political dynamics that sparked the Gunfight at the OK Corral in favor of frontier myth-making characteristic of director John Ford. In Columbia’s Masterson of Kansas (1954), directed by a pre-gimmick William Castle, dimpled Bruce Cowling played Earp as a devoted wingman of George Montgomery’s eponymous town tamer; relegated to third banana status, Earp is also upstaged by James Griffith’s Doc Holliday and is at one point unheroically knocked senseless by a tossed stone. Earp and Holliday were depicted as symbiotic soul mates in Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) and Hour of the Gun (1967), directed a decade apart by John Sturges. In the former, Kirk Douglas’ highly stylized take on Doc Holliday eclipsed Lancaster’s robustly dour Wyatt Earp but James Garner was more successful in the latter at dimming down the star wattage to channel Earp’s singular variety of vengeful civil service.

As revisionist history took the wind out of the sails of the Old West mythos, Wyatt Earp began to be seen as a significantly less than heroic figure, despite his proven accomplishments in the law and order racket. In the third season episode of Gene Roddenberry’s landmark science fiction series Star Trek, entitled “Spectre of the Gun” (broadcast close to the 87th anniversary of the so-called OK Corral melee), the Earps are presented as villains, with the crew of the S.S. Enterprise forced through alien meddling to fill the boots of the doomed Clantons. (Series regular DeForest Kelley had played Morgan Earp in Gunfight at the OK Corral.)

Shot in Spain, Frank Perry’s grimy, downbeat ’Doc’ (1971) cast New York stage actor Harris Yulin as a Machiavellian Wyatt Earp (to Stacy Keach’s dead-eyed but sympathetic Doc Holliday), a slimy schemer prone to speechifying about making Tombstone a better place even as he doles out the hot lead to his political rivals. Pete Hamill’s script has Earp turn his rout of the Clantons into a stump speech while a broken Doc Holliday saddles up and rides out to meet his own doom. It would be nearly twenty years before Wyatt Earp was seen again on the big screen. In Blake Edwards’ Sunset (1988), James Garner returned to the character as an elderly man, seeking a shot at redemption by helping cowboy actor Tom Mix (Bruce Willis) solve a Hollywood murder. Between 1993 and 1994, Earp was played with varying degrees of authenticity by Kurt Russell in Tombstone and Kevin Costner in Wyatt Earp. Both films were well received and remain well regarded but it remains highly unlikely that Wyatt Earp has any real place in the cinema of the 21st Century.

Post-Tombstone, the real Wyatt Earp wound up back in California, where he bent himself mostly to back-breaking manual labor. For a time he owned an oil field in Bakersfield but the returns from that investment were scant. Growing older and in declining health, Earp accepted the offer from a friend to move into the top floor of his apartment building on 17th Street in Los Angeles, where he resided for the rest of his days with his third wife, Josephine (known alternatively as Josie and Sadie). Starting in 1920, Earp took occasional work as a technical advisor on the sets of western films, visiting the studios and becoming an intimate and confidante of such established and rising western stars and filmmakers as William S. Hart, John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Tom Mix and a young prop man named Marion Morrison, who found fame in oaters under the stage name John Wayne. Largely eschewing notoriety, Earp lived quietly in Hollywood. He died from complications of cystitis on January 13, 1929, two months before his 81st birthday. Present at his funeral were Hopalong Cassidy, William S. Hart and Tom Mix, who is said to have wept openly.

Even if that last part isn’t true, it makes a great story.

by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend by David Taleteller
Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends by Allen Barra
“Wyatt Earp, Tombstonian,” by Tim Fattig, Tombstone Times
Profile of Wyatt Earp by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, The People's Almanac
“Wyatt Earp and the ‘Buntline Special’ Myth” by William B. Shillingberg, Kansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1976 (Vol. 42, No. 2)