Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
Wyatt Earp
Obituaries. I never read
them when I was younger. I don't read many of them now. Anyone who
does, though, soon realizes what an odd, rather grotesque type of
essay they are, part biography and part eulogy.
Most death notices also
provide a handy, if not dandy, summary of the times in which the
dearly departed lived. (In obituaries, almost all of the departed are
“dear,” regardless of the what they may or may not have done
during their lifetimes.)
Wyatt Earp's obituary.
The Internet Archives
website stores the Los Angeles Times's
January 14, 1929, obituary of Wyatt Earp. The death notice's headline
reads, “Tamer
of Wild West Dies.” The piece's subtitle offers a tad more
information, even as it further characterizes the decedent: “Wyatt
Earp, Picturesque Gun-Fighting Marshal of Frontier Days, Passes
Without Boots On.”
Wild Bill Hickok
The article begins with
name-dropping, as its anonymous author reminds the newspaper's
readers that Earp was friends and “colleagues” with the likes of
“Wild Bill” Hickok, Bill Tilghman, Ben Thompson, and “Bat”
Masterson. (No mention is made of Earp's greatest friend and
colleague, Doc Holliday.
Some of the information
the obituary reports isn't altogether reliable. Earp may have met
Hickok, but the marshal of Abilene, Kansas, wasn't a “friend” of
Earp's, and, although Earp knew Thompson on a casual basis, the
outlaw was far from one of Earp's pals.
Shootout at the OK Corral.
The obituary notes that
Earp helped to bring “law and order into the rough cow camps of
the West with .45-caliber bullets.” While it's true that Earp did
exchange bullets with his adversaries in the Shootout at the OK
Corral and during the equally famous vendetta ride that followed this
event, he more often buffaloed his adversaries than shot them.
However, it seems that the Times
author wanted to sell his readers on the image of Earp as a
“picturesque” figure; to do so, he apparently thought it
necessary to exaggerate the facts a bit.
Doc Holliday
In mentioning the OK
Corral gunfight, the writer makes no mention of Holliday, although
the other participants are named. Perhaps the author supposed that a
mention of Hickok would detract from the luster of Earp or would
tarnish the carefully contrived image of the deceased that the author
appears to have labored to depict.
Josephine ("Sadie") Earp
Another possibility might
be that allusions to Holliday were omitted in deference to Earp's
widow, who took pains to preserve a pristine, rather than a
picturesque, view of her late husband. References to his association
with a drunken, boozing gambler and gunfighter whose common-law wife
had been (like Earp's own second wife) a prostitute might not fit
with the idea that Earp was a heroic lawman who helped to “tame”
the Wild West.
Bob Fitzsimmons (left) and Tom Starkey
Other of Earp's endeavors
are cited, including his prospecting for gold in the Klondike;
his controversial refereeing of the Fitzsimmons-Starkey boxing match
in Oakland, California; his taming of Colton, California; and his
management of the copper mine and “four oil wells . . . near
Bakersfield,” California, that he owned and his “breeding of
horses.”
As much a
jack-of-all-trades in his advanced years as he'd been in his prime,
Earp also offered “technical advice” to early Hollywood
filmmakers concerning “their productions.”
William S. Hart
At the end of the
obituary, the writer again drops a few names: actor “Bill” Hart,
movie producer Wilson Mizner, boxing promoter Tex Rickard, Earp's
widow Josephine (“Sadie”) Earp, and his sister Mrs. W. Edwards.
Earp's “honorary pallbearers,” readers learn, included Hart and
Mizner.
Milton Mizner
Tex Rickard
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