Key Takeaways
In the canyon of the Wild West , you ca n’t separateWyatt Earpfrom " Doc " Holliday . They go together like gun and holsters . Whiskeyand shot glasses . Cowboys and horses .
" Wyatt Earp is the hero , the sturdy lawman , the primary figure , " says Gary Roberts , the author of " Doc Holliday : The Life and Legend , " a 1997 biography of the actual - life John Henry Holliday . " But Doc is the individual who tot people of color . People like the hombre who tells it like it is and does n’t back down and endure up for rightfield . But the person who is the most intriguing is the charming , surly , quick - temper , firm , educated one . "
We talked to Roberts about some of the lesser - known aspects of one of the West ’s best - know second banana .
1. Doc Was a Real Doctor
Holliday was bear in Griffin , Georgia , spend some of his childhood in Valdosta , Georgia , and was educated in the classics . He locomote to Philadelphia at 19 to enroll in the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery , and later practiced odontology in stops that include St. Louis , Atlanta and Dallas . He pass on it up as he strike about , his health declined and he found more success as a gambler .
Holliday ’s reputation — as a fast accelerator , a Orcinus orca and as perhaps someone with a death wish — was probably more fearful than the humans himself . He ’s believed to have killed fewer than a handful of adult male in his life .
2. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday Weren’t That Close
It ’s dependable that Holliday and Earp were friends . The two fought side by side in Tombstone , Arizona , in 1881 ’s famousgunfight at the O.K. Corral . But they ’d met only four year earlier , while passing through Texas . In between , they had crossed paths , but it ’s not as if they drop dead everywhere together .
" Doc is frequently portrayed as if he ’s kind of Wyatt Earp ’s crony , almost a lapdog who was there on hand to always help Wyatt out , and that Wyatt was indebted to him , " Roberts says from his home in Tifton , Georgia . " Which was true . He was . Holliday did help to save his life in Dodge City [ Kansas ] . "
After the gunfight in Tombstone , though , and once they fill out a flaming blood feud against those who lurk Earp ’s brothers after the O.K. Corral , Holliday and Earp drifted apart . They may have even had a falling out in Albuquerque a few year later .
" They did n’t need each other any longer , " Roberts suppose . " I do n’t mean that their friendly relationship was over , necessarily . They just went their different shipway . "
3. Earp Wasn’t Doc’s Only Friend
Holliday was an oddity in many parts of the West . He was an develop Southerner who made his money gaming , so he could rub people the wrong way .
" There were a number of hoi polloi who did not wish Doc , for a variety of reasons , I suppose . He was a person who could be glowering , " Roberts say . " [ But ] he had friends in every place that he went . "
Holliday ’s moodiness , a mathematical product perhaps of tolerate for years with tuberculosis , often was compounded by drinking and , subsequently , by the drug laudanum he took for annoyance . That added to his reputation as a loner . But he was longtime friends with a Colorado newswriter and saloon keepers all over the West . He maintain in touch with people he grow up with in Georgia . And as Holliday lay buy the farm in a Colorado hotel elbow room in 1887 , much penniless , fellow gamblersand saloon keepers helped pay his bills .
Unlike the conniption in the motion-picture show " Tombstone , " Earp was not there when Holliday died , at eld 36 .
4. Doc Didn’t Have a Death Wish
Holliday contracted tuberculosis , then screw as white plague , at an early historic period . He probably flummox it from his mother , who pass away of it . He fought with it for much of his adult life sentence , often traveling to stead that he thought would help ease the symptom .
Holliday ’s movement alone makes Roberts bristle at the suggestion that he yearn for an early destruction .
" He is portrayed in most invoice as a fatalist . Somebody who knew he was go to die from the disease and in a sense , gave up on life , so that he did n’t worry whether he lived or die , " Roberts says . " I think it was certain that he knew that he was going to conk out finally from it … he knew enough about consumption that he recognise he would not have a long liveliness . I gestate that explains some of the black bile and some of the cynicism that you see from him .
" But there ’s too much grounds , too many instances where it becomes very clear that he need to live . "
His travels — getting out of Georgia , give out to Dodge City , Kansas ; to Las Vegas , New Mexico ; to Leadville , Colorado ; to Arizona and , even later , to Butte , Montana — all show that he was count for a space to live more comfortably . Before a shootout in Leadville , Roberts says , Holliday pray law officers and friends to maltreat in to turn back things , bear witness his desire to live .
His last trip was to Glenwood Springs , Colorado , far-famed then for its purportedly restorative hot spring . That ’s where he give way .
5. ‘I’m Your Huckleberry’ and ‘You’re a Daisy’
The 1993 movie " Tombstone " has gone a prospicient way toward stoking Holliday ’s picture as an oddball , thanks to an iconic carrying out by Val Kilmer as Doc . At least two lines in it are memorable . One of them might even be historically accurate .
When Kilmer , as Holliday , meet up with bad guyJohnny Ringo(played by Michael Biehn ) in the moving picture , he declares , " I ’m your huckleberry . " The musical phrase , Roberts says , was popular at the prison term , significance , " I ’m the one you ’re looking for , " or " I ’m the serviceman for the job . " In a vital showdown recently in the film , Holliday again announce his presence with the phrase , although Roberts enjoin there ’s no historic foundation for the shot .
" I ’m Your Huckleberry " is the title of Kilmer ’s recent memoir .
At the O.K. Corral , witnesses say regretful guy Frank McLaury got a late vantage on Holliday during the 30 - second fight , and announce " I got you now , you son of a gripe , " as he pull down a gun at him . Holliday serve — historically , this is faithful to exact — " You ’re a daisy if you do . " ( Some version say it was , " You ’re a daisy if you have [ got me ] . " ) The import , Roberts order , is fundamentally , " Good for you if you do . "
McLaury did n’t have the driblet on him . Holliday hightail it unharmed . McLaury was killed .
Still , Doc Holliday ’s reputation as one of the worst of the Wild West ’s lives on . Holliday has been play in movies by a dapper , solid Kirk Douglas ( 1957 ’s " Gunfight at the O.K. Corral " ) , Stacy Keach ( 1971 ’s " Doc , " ) , Kilmer , Dennis Quaid ( in 1994 ’s " Wyatt Earp " ) and many others .
" In most , " Roberts says , " Doc Holliday steals the show . "
