Wyatt Earp - Seattle days

Much has been written about Wyatt Earp's time in both Dodge City and Tombstone, but it is seldom that one comes across an article looking at the period Earp spent in Seattle during the dying days of the century that had seen both the birth and taming of the Wild West.

The Seattle Star, on November 25th 1899 ran the following headline:

SHERIFF FROM ARIZONA TO OPEN A GAMBLING HOUSE.

The newspaper article went onto to praise Earp, making  reference to his past as a lawman in the tough frontier towns, but rival paper, The Seattle Daily Times only made brief mention of the story but did state that Earp had a reputation as a bad man, Both newspapers mentioned the Bob Fitzsimmons/Tom Sharkey prize fight of 1896 in which Wyatt, as referee was accused of cheating. Earp had even ended up in court accused of fraud over the fight but although no charges stuck against him, he had been smeared in the newspapers of the time.

SEATTLE 1899

Now Gambling was illegal in Seattle but there were three gambling houses in town which were run by a combine owned by John Cosindine. The gambling houses would pay off police, make good any fines to the city and were prepared to crush anyone who tried to step on their toes.

Into this mix came the famed lawman of the West, a man known for his prowess with guns, a man considered a killer by just as many people as those who saw him as a hero of the olden days. Once more Wyatt Earp was putting himself on the firing line for potential violence.

Earp with his partner, a local man named Thomas Urquhart opened their gambling den, The Union Club on Second Avenue. But when Cosindine heard about the club he sent a man around to inform Earp that he should take his gambling interests to another town. Wyatt was told that he would have to pay protection money to Police Chief C.S. Reed which Earp refused, saying, "you fellows are paying enough. Why should I add any? If Reed closes me down he'll have to close you all up too." The irascible Old West lawman was once again sticking to his guns and preparing himself for anything anyone cared to throw at him.


Trouble though didn't come in the shape of mobsters but in the form of summons and court orders - and these were not only aimed at Wyatt's interests but Cosindine's also. A crackdown on vice and corruption in the city saw all of the gambling houses served with court papers but although Urquhart's name appears on historical court papers Earp's name is nowhere to be seen, suggesting he somehow escaped all the legal troubles of the period. Earp grew bored of Seattle and moved back to San Francisco where the gambling laws were far more relaxed.

Sunset

The previous POST relating to the myths of the Old West got me to thinking of  a movie I watched recently - Sunset, which was directed by Blake Edwards and released in 1988, didn't do too well at the box office and seems to appeal to neither western nor comedy fans. And yet it's not a bad movie and the novelty of seeing Wyatt Earp operating in 1920's Hollywood is worth the price of admission alone.

The film opens with a wonderfully clichéd mini-western movie – a stagecoach, beautiful blonde passenger, flees a group of desperate gunmen. Suddenly amidst sweeping music Bruce Willis, star spangled tunic and ten-gallon hat, appears to save the day.

Willis is playing B-movie western legend, Tom Mix and he’s none too happy that he’s been asked to play famed lawman, Wyatt Earp in his next movie.

“I didn’t get number one at the box office by playing other people,’ Mix tells his manager played with extreme sleaze by Malcolm McDowell.

James Garner here plays Earp for the second time, but this time he plays the character much lighter though when things get nasty we are reminded of his Earp from John Sturges’ excellent  1967 Hour of the Gun. And although it was Willis who was given top billing it is actually Garner who is given the most to do as the frontier marshal  uncovering murder and vice in 1920’s Hollywood. And understanding that this is a black comedy Garner plays Earp as a darker Maverick.

The film becomes something of a buddy movie as Earp and Mix become involved in all manner of mayhem – at times it’s a western and at other times it’s a noir-comedy but it surely us an unappreciated gem.

How much of it is true – well all of it, give or take a lie or two.

THE OK CORRAL

For anyone who missed my radio appearance today regarding the discovery of documents relating to the OK Corral you can listen to it here.

BLACK HATS BY PATRICK CULHANE

Harper Collins
$7.99
Import £6.99

Patrick Culhane is actually a pen name for Archive fave, Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition and co-author of the last Mickey Spillane novel, The Goliath Bone.

Black Hats, although marketed as Suspense would be just as comfortable with the Western tag. It is a western really, only one set in the 1920's and featuring a young Al Capone and an aged Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Yep, this unique premise sees Earp operating as a private detective in the Jazz age and such is the authenticity of the author's voice that one gets sucked into the fiction and almost believes the clever deceit as fact.

The first chapter is self contained and would work separated from the rest of the book as a short story. In this opening we find Wyatt trailing a young woman who is due to marry his close friend, the western actor William Hart. The actor wants out of the marriage without too much scandal and so when Wyatt discovers that the young starlet is actually a gold digger and having a sexual affair with her agent, he confronts them. Wyatt ends up pistol whipping the agent and proves that even at 70 years of age he is as tough as he ever was. It's a great opening to the book and mixes in many facts with the fiction so that by the end of that chapter the world within the novel is very real to the reader.

The novel begins proper when Wyatt is visited by Big Nosed Kate, Doc Holliday's widow. She reveals that she had a son with Doc and that he is in trouble. Grieving the loss of his own wife and child, which is something Earp can identify with, the young man is running a speakeasy in New York and seems to have crossed an upcoming gangster named Alphonse Capone. Wyatt agrees to go to the Big Apple where he will meet up with Bat Masterson, now a successful sports writer, and together they will try and save their late friend's son from himself as well as the bloodthirsty mobsters he has crossed.

Black Hats is a great read that will please fans of both the mystery and western genres - the author clearly knows Wyatt Earp's life well enough to set this novel in a period where it could have actually happened. And boy does it all pack a punch - it moves with the speed of a bullet from one of Earp's old six shooters.

Excellent stuff. I, for one, would like to see more of this kind of mesh up of historical fact and fiction.

THE MAKING OF A BADMAN - JOHNNY RINGO

Nature of nurture - that's a question asked these days by those trying to understand the motivation of criminals. Can a person be born bad? Or is the seed of their destruction sown in their formative years? Johnny Ringo, famed after his confrontations with the Earps certainly had a rough time of it as a youngster.

John was born on May 3rd 1850 in Wayne County, Indiana. In 1864 the young boy was excited at the first real adventure of his life when his parents Martin and Mary Ringo decided that the family's future lay in California. They packed up their five children John, Martin, Fanny,Mary and Mattie and set off on the trip West.

They set out on the Fort Leavenworth Military Road with 68 other wagons and headed for Fort Kearny.

The trip was to be full of hardships. On June 7th the fourteen year old John was involved in an accident when a wagon rolled over his foot, severely injuring it. And then that same day he witnessed another young boy fall under a wagon which killed him. They say troubles come in threes and they certainly did that day, for later a wagon master accidentally shot one of his teamsters through the head, killing him outright.

John witnessed both accidents and his mother Mary (pictured) recorded it in her journal. The following day John, still hobbling due to his broken foot, went along with several men on a buffalo hunt and participated in killing several of the creatures.

On June 13th, the Ringos picked up the Great Platte River Road. The next day Mary wrote that John had a chill and was severely ill throughout the night and for the next few days. But he recovered by the time they reached The Cottonwood Springs military post. Here soldiers stopped the wagon train and searched for horses containing the US brand but none were found and so the wagons continued on their journey.

June 25th saw the wagons halt on The South Platte Crossing where they were forced to stay for two weeks while hard rains and strong winds struck them. Mary wrote that during the stay several Indians came into camp and that one carried a sabre that he said he's taken from a soldier he'd killed. Independence Day passed without celebration and it was July 9th before it was deemed safe to cross the river which led them onwards to the North Platte.

On July 16th several of the cattle in the wagon train became sick from the alkali in the water they had been drinking and died. And later two of the oxen also died from the sickness. By now there was a very real threat of hostile Indians and soon the wagon train came across the scalped corpse of a white man who had been half eaten by vultures.

On July 30th John's father, Martin was standing on one of the wagons, looking for Indians when he accidentally set off his shotgun, sending the load into his own head. John and fellow traveller William Davenport witnessed the grisly event.

"At the report of the gun, I saw his hat blown up 20 feet in the air and his brains were scattered every which way." Davenport wrote.

John helped dig a grave and his father was buried and left at the wayside. Mary's journal contain details of this fateful day and she recorded that her own heart was bleeding as the wagon train rolled on, leaving the grave behind them.

On August 1st the wagon train arrived in Platte Bridge Station but further misfortune was to strike the Ringo clan when the eldest girl Fanny suffered an attack of what Mary called, "cholremorbus." The term cholera morbus was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to describe both non-epidemic cholera and other gastrointestinal diseases.

On October 7th the Ringo clan were in Austin, Nevada and Mary gave birth to a stillborn son with a deformed face. It was said that the shock of her husband's death had traumatised her and caused both the deformity and the still birth. John looked onto the dead baby's hideous face and turned away in disgust.

On the last day of October the family reached the Sacramento Valley just ahead of the first snows and stayed with relatives for some time. A year later Mary moved her family into a house on Second Street in San Jose. The youngest Ringo - Martin died in 1873 of tuberculosis, he was only 19. Fanny and Mattie grew up and were married. Mary the younger became a schoolteacher and mother Mary died in 1876.

It was been said that John Ringo was forever affected by seeing his father blow his own brains out and that the sight of his deformed stillborn brother pushed him over the edge. He began drinking heavily when he was 15 and ran off to Texas and eventually ended up in Arizona Territory where he fell in with the Clanton faction and became the infamous Johnny Ringo.

He was murdered, as we all know, in July 1882.

The Gunfight at the OK Corral - what happened?

A week this coming Monday I'll be going to see a reenactment of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral by the Wyoming Wild Bunch, so I thought I'd do a post looking at what we really know about that day in October 1881.


At the end of the gunfight, which lasted only seconds, three men were left dead and three more wounded. There is still much controversy surrounding the gunfight. Did Ike Clanton spark the gunfight? Was Tom McLaury, the man the Earp's claimed fired first, actually armed? Did the presence of Doc Holliday actually make violence inevitable?

On the morning of October 26th 1881 Ike Clanton was involved in a poker game at the Occidental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona. The game had been going on all night, which wasn't unusual and four of the five participants in the game would be involved in the famous gunfight later that day. The players were Sheriff Johnny Behan, Virgil Earp, Tom McLaury, Ike Clanton and a fifth man whose name has been lost to history.
As the game went on and Clanton started losing heavily he became irritated and started mouthing off about earlier run ins with Doc Holliday and Virgil's brother, Wyatt. When the game ended and Ike found out that Virgil had kept a six shooter in his lap for the entire game, he hit the roof. He claimed that this was proof that Virgil was involved with his brother and Doc in a conspiracy against him. He demanded that Virgil take a message to Holliday, insisting that the time had come for a fight. Virgil refused and Ike said - "You may have to fight before you know it."
Ike left with Tom McLaury - the previous day he had already threatened Wyatt and Doc and now he added Virgil to his list.

Trouble between the Earp's and Clanton had been brewing for more than a year. Virgil Earp had risen to cheif of police and it was no secret that Wyatt was planning to run for Cochise County Sheriff. The Earps had become a threat to the Clanton rustling operation. Ike was also in a panic over a deal he had made with Wyatt in which he informed on friends of his who had robbed the Benson stage near Drew's Station in March 1881. Wyatt was hoping cracking the case would help him secure the position of sheriff and Ike would collect the $1,200 reward money for each of the men involved in the hold up.

After the poker game Ike went to the West End Corral to pick up his guns which he had surrended upon entering town under Ordinance 9 which forbid the carrying of firearms within town limits. At this point Ike should have been leaving town but he had no intention of doing so and he was determined to finish of the Earps before the news of his dealings with Wyatt became public knowledge.
"I had those guns around my person for self-defense.' He would later tell the courts.

Not long after picking up his guns Ike ran into Ned Boyle, a bartender from The Oriental and friend of the Earps and told him he was going to bed.

"As soon as those Earps make a show on the street today,' he told the bartender. "The ball will open. We are here to make a fight. We are looking for the sons-of-bitches."

Ned Boyle was worried enough by Ike's words to rouse Wyatt from bed and deliver the threatening message.
At about 9am, police officer A.G. Bronk of Virgil's force woke Virgil and told him Ike had threatened to kill Doc Holliday on sight.

Around 10am Ike was chatting with miner Joe Stump at the Kelly Wine House and Ike grumbled that when he had been insulted previously by Earp and Doc he had been unarmed but now he was well heeled and that he would fight on sight.
Later that day Virgil and Morgan Earp came across the armed Ike and took him by surprise, arresting him for being in violation of Ordinance 9. Ike was fined $25 and Virgil took Ike's weapons over to the Grand Hotel to be collected later. During the time that Ike was facing the judge an angry Wyatt had a minor confrontaion with Tom McLaury in which Wyatt pistol whipped the man about the head and then cooly walked over to Halford's Corner Saloon.

A short time later Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury came into town and heard of the fight brewing - Frank in particular wanted to know why Wyatt had hit his brother Tom but no one seemed to know the reason. When walking down Allen Street they met up with Billy Claiborne,a friend of the Clantons and they were soon joined by Ike who was still unarmed.
At 2.30 pm Sheriif Johnny Behan noticed the armed cowboys and he tried to disarm them but they refused. Frank McLaury told him that, "As long as the people of Tombstone act in this way towards us we will not give up our arms."

By this time Virgil Earp had learned of the armed cowboys and he decided they must be disarmed. Along with his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and Doc Holliday he went outside to make a date with destiny.

Official records show that at this point there were three armed cowboys - Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury - though to this day there is still speculation that Tom was actually unarmd. Ike was with them but his guns were still at The Grand Hotel.

The cowboys were at a vacant lot close to the OK Corral and the Earps and Doc Holliday made their way directly there, intending to disarm the cowboys but ready for a fight should one start.

'We have come to disarm you," Virgil told the cowboys."Throw up your arms."

This is where reports differ. Some say it was Tom McLaury that drew first, others claim it was actually Frank but whatever happened a thirty second gunfight started after which three men lay dead and three more were wounded. Ike Clanton, unarmed, had run off during the first round of fire leaving his younger brother and friends to face the full wrath of the Earps.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were the only two men not wounded at all in the brief fight which has become a legend of the West - perhaps only third in name reconition next to Custer's Last Stand and The Alamo.

10 WESTERNS YOU MUST WATCH - Five

THE DILEMMA OF WYATT EARP

In any list of essential westerns there has to be a Wyatt Earp movie - problem is which one? Do you go for the most historically accurate? Or do you go for the most suspenseful, the one with the best gunfight? And what happens when more than one of the films are essential?

My Darling Clementine (1946) would be a good choice. It's an excellent movie and Fonda makes for a great Earp. But then the historical facts are completely ignored and instead Ford concentrates on creating a superbly entertaining melodramas. Walter Brennan gives a great turn as Old Man Clanton who in truth was killed before the famous gunfight.

Then maybe Tombstone (1993) which is superb on historical detail and was actually filmed where the real events took place. It also has Val Kilmer as a brilliant scene stealing Doc Holliday and Kurt Russel as a brilliantly hard Earp. The gunfight, which in fact only lasted thirty seconds, is very well done.

Then again Wyatt Earp (1994) is a sprawling flawed masterpiece from Kevin Costner. The actor also makes a great Earp and Dennis Quaid's Holliday is strikingly real. This film also concentrates on far more than the events leading up to the famous gunfight.


Then again James Garner was a brilliant Earp in 1967's Hour of the Gun. This movie concentrates largely on the vendetta following the gunfight and was a sequel to John Sturges's Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) which is a very famous version with two great stars but is rather turgid and of course completely inaccurate. Lancaster makes a great Earp, though.


So which one to go with?

Ahh... choices