Mark Warren's Blog: Mark Warren Blog - Posts Tagged "bat-masterson"

With the first book of my new historical fiction trilogy on Wyatt Earp spreading out into the world, I am meeting a lot of people at author events, many of these folks with questions about the real story of the Earps vs. the movie versions. These questions are pretty easily answered, and it surprises the public at large that movie makers feel no particular allegiance to the absolute truth. After all, screenwriters, producers, and directors are creating entertainment . . . not giving a history seminar. What surprises the public most is the revelation that the so-called O.K. Corral fight was spawned by a clandestine deal brokered by Wyatt to Ike Clanton and a few of his crooked cronies. In short, Wyatt offered Clanton the reward money if Ike gave up the location of a group of stage robbers who had killed two men on the coach.

I suppose a movie maker cannot bring himself to let Wyatt stoop so low. How can the heroic protagonist get away with talking terms in the dark of a Tombstone alley with the likes of Ike Clanton? Such a shadowy contract would destroy the intended image for a “movie Wyatt.”

Yet, in our time, a police detective might be praised for using a confidential informant. It’s a case of the ends justifying the means.

The Earp-Clanton deal was portrayed once – and only once, as far as I know – in the movie Doc. But this movie’s agenda was all about exposing Wyatt Earp as an opportunist politician and an unsavory lawman without ethics. Try to imagine any of the other Earp films showing such a scene and getting away with it. Kevin Costner? Kurt Russell? Randolph Scott? James Garner? This is probably why, in Doc, a relatively unknown actor (at the time) was chosen to play Wyatt. We, the movie-goers could allow ourselves to see a stranger lower himself in such a manner. Poor Harris Yulin. He’s a very fine actor and, in my opinion, did an excellent job with the material he was given in Doc. But the result was our first villainous Wyatt . . . and a script, no doubt, influenced by Frank Waters’ book, which also contrived to embarrass Wyatt and dismantle the Earp legend.

Perhaps the more interesting question I get is this: Which actor best played Wyatt? Or Doc? Or Bat Masterson?

No actor, in my opinion, has nailed Wyatt’s demeanor. I did admire Kevin Costner’s approach. There was a lot he got right . . . after Lamar, Missouri. (Before Lamar, Costner’s Wyatt showed hints of a wide-eyed, “golly-gee,” gangling youth. Never was Wyatt a “golly-gee” kind of guy.) But after his wife’s death, we see Costner’s Wyatt turn grim, bluntly honest, and terse to the point of being asocial. This true to life performance is probably what sank the movie. (Which might illustrate the prudence of a screenwriter’s tweaking of the truth.) This movie used Wyatt’s Lamar tragedy as the springboard for his personality change. In fact, this pivotal point is intended to apologize for Wyatt’s annealing into the stoic persona that follows.

I don’t believe it happened that way. Wyatt was always Wyatt.

James Garner’s Wyatt in Hour of the Gun was tough and determined, two legitimate qualities well-portrayed. But the distortion of the Earp-Holliday relationship dominated the movie. It was a good device for a script, but it was far from history. We have a dissolute Doc serving as Wyatt’s conscience, constantly appraising Wyatt’s motives and feelings. This interaction put Wyatt’s image off balance, always defending himself against Doc’s barbs.

Kurt Russell’s Wyatt was, for my money, too expressive, emotional, and lively. The real Wyatt couldn’t claim creativity as an asset. He was too straight-ahead. Kurt’s roller-coaster performance made for a great movie character; it just wasn’t Wyatt’s character.

The BBC production of The Wild West includes a feature-length Wyatt Earp segment. Liam Cunningham presents a chillingly good representation of Wyatt, though the actor’s physical appearance is so far off the mark that it is difficult to sustain the image as one of Wyatt. (A similar reaction is experienced watching robust Victor Mature play consumptive Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine.) Mr. Cunningham traded some of Wyatt’s toughness for sophistication. Perhaps not accurate, but this may be what makes the film so watchable.

The PBS American Experience program, Wyatt Earp, though a documentary and not a feature film, must be mentioned. Here we don’t have an actor to appraise, but we hear in the first ten minutes one of the best character sketches of Wyatt ever recorded on celluloid.

For a Wyatt portrayal, I’ll have to give my nod to Mr. Costner, at least for the second half of Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp. I fervently wish that the epic story they tried for had succeeded. It had almost everything: freight hauling, laying down the rail lines, buffalo hunting, the emergence of the cowtowns, the search for a better life in Tombstone, and the Shakespearean tragedy that followed. It could be argued that the movie Tombstone excelled in the last two items on that list, but the ending was hyped up into an Earp revenge ride that bordered on Armageddon, if judged by the body count. Rambo goes West.

For Doc Holliday portrayals, it’s an easy rating for me. Val Kilmer gave us one of the most delightful and charismatic characters of any Western. It didn’t hurt that he had some of the best lines of any Western, too. He won over a lot of movie-goers, who would later be curious about the real Doc. (This is a big plus for Tombstone.) However, Mr. Kilmer’s Doc was not history’s Doc. Dennis Quaid, in Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, probably gave us our best look at the man. Seldom have I seen a portrayal that made me completely forget who was playing the role. I never thought about Dennis during the movie. I thought about Doc.

As for Bat Masterson . . . we’re still waiting on that one. No actor has made a serious attempt at that role. Either that or he was terribly miscast and had no prayer in the endeavor. Bat had a lot of personality. Perhaps Kurt Russell should have tackled that role.

Who should have been given the chance at playing Wyatt? I remember mulling over that decades ago and coming up with a very stoic Jeff Bridges. The next year Wild Bill came out. I knew that after playing Hickok, Mr. Bridges would never accept an Earp role. Too déjà vu.

But imagine this: a thirty year old Jeff Bridges adopting the demeanor of Nick Nolte in Extreme Prejudice, and there you have it – the consummate Wyatt Earp on film.

Mark Warren

By the time I was nine years old, my collections of magazine and newspaper articles about Wyatt Earp had grown to 3 boxes. My bookshelves had become a beginner’s library of the Old West. Books now outnumbered comic books.

I never stopped to ask myself why I was so passionate about this research, but that passion for history only escalated. It became obvious to those around me, and that was an asset. People began to supply me with articles they had run across. Everyone knew that I was the “Wyatt Earp kid.” Most adults thought it the typical infatuation with a TV idol, but my closest friends knew better. They understood that this was something deeper.

One particular exchange between my mother and me became a repeatable regular. She would see me busy at work, which usually involved me sitting at my desk making pen and ink drawings for my ambitious anthology of illustrations depicting every notable event in the life of Wyatt Earp.

My mother would smile and watch me for a time before saying, “You were just born in the wrong time, weren’t you, Mark?”

Without hesitation I always answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

At that time I never realized that such a scenario would have meant I’d never have met this good woman. But she never felt hurt by my answer. She got it.

By the way, those drawings (a stack of papers the size of an unabridged dictionary) they were rendered on the oldest yellowed paper I could find. Rough-textured stuff without a hint of smoothness. My drawing implement was an old-fashioned dipping pen with a split nib that I lowered carefully into a well of India ink. I deemed this to be authentic. So crude was the process that, physically, it felt like trying to move the point of a straight pin across the surface of a carpet. Hundreds and hundreds of tortured scratchings. A passion. All these illustrations … all my boxes of papers … my entire library … decades down the road it would all go up in flames in a house fire.

In the winter of my 13th year, when most of my friends were discovering sports, girls, and the not too distant dream of owning a car, they must have been a little confused about my birthday party. For the occasion I invited 7 males with instructions to bring cap guns and holsters. I handed out scripts and coached them in a reenactment of the Gunfight Behind the O.K. Corral, informing each of his assigned shots, wounds, or death scene. It was easily the high point of my year. And as I look back on it from seventy, that unique birthday may have been my best.
Adobe Moon

For the first two-thirds of my 60+ years of research into the life of Wyatt Earp, I made an assumption about his personality that I now consider to be inaccurate. Based upon the accounts of his actions in crisis moments, it was easy to assign to Mr. Earp the word “courageous.” In fact, this was the very character trait that reached out to me as a child and hooked me for life. All through my youth, courage fascinated me. It still does.

Once I had read my first book about Wyatt Earp, I looked for another. Eventually I discovered library files, micro-films of old newspapers, and stacks of dusty magazines. Later I sought out interviews with historians. And so it went.

Though different researchers and authors have, over the 90 years since Wyatt died, depicted him as either a stalwart frontier lawman or as a sly opportunist who often blurred the lines of ethics, no one has convincingly challenged his grit. He was a very deliberate man. His quiet strength and determined approach to problems earned him either loyal allies or desperate enemies with little else remaining in between. As a young boy it was easy for me to catalogue Wyatt’s man-of-action qualities under the mantle of “courage,” but now I believe it was something else.

Bat Masterson and Jimmy Cairns—both Kansas lawmen who worked with Wyatt—had named it long ago, when they remarked that Wyatt operated as an officer of the law with an “utter lack of fear.” Wyatt took a straight-ahead approach to problems. Once he knew what he needed to do, little could stop him. Entering into a confrontation without fear . . . and entering such a scenario with courage . . . are two very different things.

To exercise courage one must overcome fear. To be fearless is just that—without fear. In this latter case there is nothing to overcome. Though the two approaches might appear identical to an observer, they are not.

One end result of conquering fear is a boost to self-esteem. A person who bravely surmounts his anxieties earns a certain validation of his ideal character. He lives up to his own code of behavior, even when consequences loom. I suspect that Wyatt Earp did not experience such revelatory surges of pride. Perhaps his pride was a permanent fixture that resulted from his fearlessness. Perhaps it served as a driving momentum for his “straight-ahead” personality.

We don’t often meet fearless individuals. They are uncommon. To complicate the issue, some people are fearless at certain points in their lives but at other times they feel the vulnerability of being afraid. If ever you ask someone “Have you never felt fear?” and he/she truthfully answers “Never” . . . you are talking to a rare human being. A conversation with such a person might prove educational. Perhaps that person’s personality might share some common ground with Wyatt Earp’s demeanor.

How does a person acquire such an unusual trait as fearlessness? Certainly some of it is the result of genetics. Wyatt’s father, Nicholas, was domineering, blustery, bossy, and intolerant of dissension. Another way to look at those qualities is to call the man “extremely confident” about his opinions. While Nicholas was noisy and bombastic about his beliefs, Wyatt was quiet, a man of few words. All of this begs a few questions: 1.) Did Wyatt acquire his confidence from his father’s DNA? 2.) Did the clannishness of the Earps promote feelings of superiority over others? 3.) Did Wyatt develop an internal confidence as a way to survive his father’s rule?

I believe the answers to all the above should be woven together and considered. But a definitive answer is more complicated than choosing one reasonable answer. It must have been quite a lesson as a youngster for Wyatt to see the way that Nicholas treated other people in order to get what Nick wanted, because, even though the elder Earp lacked tact, he generally came out on top.

Life on an Iowa farm among five brothers undoubtedly spawned a sense of solidarity for the Earp boys. Together they solved whatever problems arose in agrarian life. Plus, each brother knew that his kin would back him up against outsiders. The Earp boys would have experienced the typical competitions between brothers, but overshadowing any inner turmoil in the family was the need to show a common front against a Dutch-dominated community.

We can surmise and theorize over such matters of the psyche and never know the absolute truth. But, for my two cents, I believe that genetics weighs in heavily in this equation. It appears that Nicholas’s domineering character passed to Wyatt as an Earp legacy, but Wyatt carried it with reserve and containment. To illustrate my point, I imagine someone asking Nicholas about an altercation he had on the street with a political rival. The elder Earp would have delivered a blow by blow accounting of the affair, giving himself the better of it, no doubt. On the other hand, whenever Wyatt was asked about the famous gunfight in Tombstone (the one the world would call “the O.K. Corral fight”), his reply was always to say: “I suppose we can find something better than that to talk about.”

To compare photographs of Nicholas and Wyatt, one sees the same glowering eyes . . . more so with Wyatt than for any other Earp brother. Each time these two men faced a camera, they looked as if they were “staring a man down.” Even into his old age, Wyatt “called out” the camera with his all-business eyes. I know of only one photograph that shows him smiling, and each time I show it to someone I get the same question: “How can you tell he’s smiling?” People ask this because Wyatt’s head is tilted down, making it difficult to see his mouth below his moustache. His eyes are looking down at his dog, and so the observer sees only Wyatt’s eyelids. But I know he’s smiling. It shows in the subtle shadows of his face.

Unlike today’s spate of cell phone selfies and snap shots, photographic images of people from the 19th century West almost never show a smile. That might tell us something about the hardships of making a life on the frontier in the 1800’s. Or perhaps about the pride of surviving it. Still it’s interesting to study the old images, to see what a person chose to wear for the occasion of a photograph. Or to see what prop the poser borrowed from the photographer’s supply of studio accoutrements.” Many young men in these centuries-old images, for example, clutched rifles and stuffed revolvers and knives in waistbands, belts, and boot tops until they bristled with artillery. Such a tintype would be carried home to show friends how one decks out for a life of adventure. Their portraits seem to say: “If you’ve got the sand to follow my footsteps (to ‘see the elephant’) you’d better be prepared for anything . . . just like I am.” All that Colt, Remington, Winchester, and Smith & Wesson hardware in a photo might be likened to a varsity letter on a school jacket in my high school days.

To my knowledge, Wyatt never brandished a pistol in a photo. He probably never felt the need.

Personally, I have known fear. But I’ve also known courage . . . its costs . . . and the benefits that come from employing it. So, doesn’t that mean that I, as an author, should not know how to write about someone who is fearless . . . someone like Wyatt Earp? What, you might ask, gives me the author-ity to describe Earp’s feelings, motives, and mindset?

For half a century I couldn’t do it. I could detail what he did, where and when he did it, and with whom, but not always the “whys” and “hows.” But here’s what I have learned. As all of us get older, we come closer to a kind of fearlessness. Not in dare-devil feats. I’m talking about a quieter demeanor in facing the challenges that come our way. We gain a larger perspective about what is important and what is not, and this view can sometimes dwarf threats from menacing to laughable. This territory of fearlessness grows with every year. This is why I waited 60 years to write about a fearless man. It took me that long to understand what made Wyatt Earp tick.

In the long haul, Wyatt’s fearlessness served him well in his years wearing a badge but did little to further him toward his ambitions. This is why I have evoked the Mexican adage of the “adobe moon” in my first book of his story. It’s a moon the color of mud, reminding one who gazes at it and dreams of his future that, inevitably, he must eventually settle for what he has . . . like a home made of mud.

If you enjoyed Adobe Moon, the first book in the trilogy Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey, the second book debuts November 21. This one is called Born to the Badge and covers the Kansas years, 1874 – 1879. This is the period in which Wyatt’s formative years in lawing turn professional, and the reader watches Earp unknowingly prepare for the trials of Arizona Territory that await him. The final book covering the Tombstone years is called Promised Land and comes out in September of 2019.

Here are a few remarks about Born to the Badge by several renowned researchers:

“Mark Warren is the first writer to illuminate the Earp story from the inside. Adobe Moon and Born to the Badge show you why Wyatt Earp became a legend and what that legend was born out of.” ~ Allen Barra, author of Inventing Wyatt Earp, his Life and Many Legends

“They still talk about Wyatt Earp in Wichita and Dodge City. After reading Mark Warren’s Born to the Badge, you’ll understand why.” ~ Jeff Morey, historical consultant for the movie Tombstone

“Warren’s intensive research uncovers layers beyond the legend as Wyatt Earp follows the sun westward in pursuit of another opportunity. Accurate discourse unites with historical truth to produce a thrilling read that is really tough to put down.” ~ Eddie Lanham, historical researcher

“Historian Mark Warren’s second volume in his trilogy on the life and times of Wyatt Earp (presents) dialogue that is virtually true to life and gives the feeling the author must have been present when the words were originally spoken. This volume has been anticipated and meets all expectations.” ~ Roy B. Young, Wild West History Association