ROUGH RIDERS: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill by Mark Lee Gardner

REMEMBER THE MAINE!

"The day that Roosevelt can go into battle with [the Rough Riders] will likely be the happiest of his life." -- Chicago Tribune

Mark Gardner writes early in his thoroughly researched and lively account of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, “This war with Spain was no surprise to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. For months, he had been doing everything in his power – not always with the direct knowledge or approval of the secretary – to make the navy ready for the great conflict he was certain was coming. And he also let it be known that he had no intention of observing the war from afar. Crazy as it sounded – and more than a few did think Roosevelt was crazy – this lighting-rod bureaucrat intended to go where the bullets were flying. He had been waiting for a war, any war, his entire adult life, and now that it was here, nothing was going to keep him from the battlefield.” 

Gardner adds, “But Roosevelt’s war fever was actually due to America’s fever for war, or at least its long glorification of all things military.”
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In 1898, the USS Maine was dispatched to Cuba to protect American interests and property due to reported riots by Cuban insurrectionists who were in rebellion against their Spanish rulers. On February 15, the ship exploded in the Havana harbor; two hundred and sixty-six sailors were killed.

A court of inquiry called by President William McKinley ruled that the explosion had been caused by an underwater mine, but did not place the blame on the Spaniards. It didn’t matter. The Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers did not hesitate to name the Spaniards as the perpetrators.

McKinley was the last U.S. president to serve during the Civil War. He knew war wasn’t all glory and adventure for he had experienced it firsthand. Reluctant to plunge his nation into another conflict, he hoped to avoid war by negotiating independence for the Cubans. When his efforts failed, Congress declared war on Spain. “Remember the Maine; and to Hell with Spain” became the rallying call for battle.

THE ROUGH RIDERS

Thirty-nine year old Theodore Roosevelt resigned his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and began using personal and political contacts to lobby Russell Alger, the Secretary of War, to allow him to raise a volunteer cavalry regiment. One of the personal contacts he called on was Colonel Leonard Wood, and through their combined efforts they were successful in getting the secretary’s consent.

While Wood was named commander of the regiment, Roosevelt received a commission as lt. colonel and was named second in command. Roosevelt was impressed by the fact that Wood had won a Medal of Honor during the campaign against Geronimo in the American southwest and he fervently desired to win one of his own.

As long as there is a war, Roosevelt wrote his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, “the only thing I want to do is command this regiment and get into all the fighting I can.” 

Since cowboys were regarded as natural born horsemen, the two officers decided to recruit from among their ranks. And it worked. Cowboys from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona readily volunteered to serve in the regiment. Although it was sometimes called the “cowboy regiment,” it also included “Oklahoma Indians, Ivy League football stars, and champion polo players,” -- and more than one fugitive from justice.

The official name of the unit was the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, but it quickly became known by the press and the public as the “Rough Riders,” or more specifically, “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders,” despite the fact that he was second in command.

But Colonel Wood didn’t mind that his subordinate was getting all the attention. And what could he do about it if he had minded? One newspaper observed “this only goes to show that wherever Roosevelt rides is the head of the parade.” It was not meant as a compliment.

The Rough Riders were “riders” in name only. In fact, due to a shortage of transports needed to ship the horses to the island all the cavalry units were dismounted. The only horses to make it to Cuba were pack animals and the horses belonging to the officers. As a result, the natural born horsemen of the American West fought the war on foot as infantrymen.

And it wasn’t long before Roosevelt did command the regiment. It happened when Colonel Wood was given the command of a brigade and Roosevelt received a promotion to full colonel and command of the Rough Riders.

KETTLE AND SAN JUAN HILLS

"I put myself in the way of things happening, and they happened." – Theodore Roosevelt

The war’s final decisive battles were fought on two hills located in the San Juan Heights: Kettle and San Juan. Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were in the thick of those battles and were instrumental in the victorious outcome. That is not to say that they didn’t have a lot of support from other cavalry units. But as Gardner writes, “It was no surprise that the news reports gave the Rough Riders much of the glory, even though the First and Tenth Cavalries fought equally as hard.”

Col. Roosevelt and Rough Riders pose for camera atop San Juan Hill

The Tenth Cavalry, it should be noted, was one of two cavalry regiments made up of African American troopers. They were the so-called “Buffalo Soldiers” that fought in the Indian wars in the years following the Civil War. 

"There can be no better soldiers in the world, and yet I used to doubt whether the negro could fight with as much dash as the white man." – Rough Rider

MEDAL OF HONOR?

"I don’t ask this as a favor, I ask it as a right….I am entitled to the Medal of Honor, and I want it." – Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

Theodore Roosevelt was courageous and bold to the point of foolhardiness. Throughout the campaign he exposed himself to enemy fire. Since he was often mounted on horseback he represented an inviting target for enemy bullets. But by some miracle he didn’t receive a scratch even though men who were charging into enemy fire near him were killed or wounded.

In his desire to achieve glory he reminds one of another soldier, George Armstrong Custer. They differed, however, in one important respect. Custer was primarily interested in his own welfare, while Roosevelt never failed to look out for the well-being of his men. His men were fiercely loyal to him and he returned that loyalty by looking out for their interests.

"Our general is poor; he is too unwieldy to get to the front. I commanded my regiment, I think I may say, with honor. We lost a quarter of our men." – Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

Roosevelt’s commanders recommended him for a Medal of Honor, but to no avail. Gardner speculates that Roosevelt’s comments to the press about the conduct of the war and a critical letter that was published by the Associated Press so infuriated Secretary Alger that he personally blocked the award. And though the war was a logistical nightmare and in some respects a comedy of errors, his public criticisms did constitute insubordination. He was fortunate that a president like Harry Truman was not the commander-in-chief or he might have experienced the same fate as General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

Roosevelt and the Rough Riders had become the darlings of the press and the public. And Regulars were justified in resenting the situation, for believing that the Rough Riders – and their commander – had received media attention all out of proportion to their actual contribution to the war effort. This also became a factor militating against Roosevelt and his desire to receive a Medal of Honor.

In fact, the tempest in a teapot that their commander had initiated worked against not only him, but also his regiment. When the final names of the war’s Medal of Honor recipients were named – twenty-five in all – not only was Roosevelt not one of them, no member of the Rough Riders was named.

Two Rough Riders did eventually receive a Medal of Honor at a later date. The first was Captain James Robb Church, who had served as assistant surgeon under Roosevelt. The medal was presented to Church in 1906 by his old commander, and now President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. It must have been a bittersweet moment for the president.

In 1996, Congress passed a bill that waived time restrictions for awarding the Medal of Honor. After some debate, Congress voted to award Theodore Roosevelt the medal. On January 16, 2001 President Bill Clinton presented the medal to Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Tweed Roosevelt. Thus, Theodore Roosevelt became the second Rough Rider, and the only president, to win a Medal of Honor.

As Roosevelt would have said: “Bully! Dee-lighted!”

The Colonel

The Author

DOWN THE SANTA FE TRAIL AND INTO MEXICO: The Diary of Susan Magoffin

“My journal tells a story tonight different from what it has ever done before.” – Susan Shelby Magoffin

In November 1845, Susan Shelby, age 18, married Samuel Magoffin, age 45. Eight months after their marriage they embarked on a journey down the Santa Fe Trail that would conclude fifteen months later in Chihuahua, Mexico. On her journey she kept a journal which began with the above quote.

Susan had been born into a wealthy and influential family on a Kentucky plantation. In fact, her grandfather had been the first governor of the state. Her husband was a prosperous trader who had accumulated a sizeable fortune while engaging in the Santa Fe trade.

To protect against marauding bands of Indians, especially the feared Comanche, the traders traveled in large caravans, and the Magoffin entourage made up a large part of this particular caravan.

Susan described it this way:

“We now numbered, ourselves only, quite a force. Fourteen big waggons, with six yoke [oxen] each, one baggage waggon with two yoke, one Dearborn with two mules (this concern carries my maid), our own carriage with two more mules and two men on mules driving the loose stock, consisting of nine and a half yoke of oxen, our riding horses two, and three mules….we number twenty men, three are our tent servants (Mexicans). Jane, my attendant [maid], two horses, nine mules, some two hundred oxen, and last, though not least our dog Ring.” 

A carriage, servants, an attendant? Well, that isn’t the whole picture. One of the servants was a cook. The other tent servants’ jobs included staking out a large tent at the end of each day in which the Magoffins would spend their evenings. Luxuries inside the tent included a bed and mattress, table and chairs, even a carpet to spread on the floor.

Pretty cushy, eh? But have you ever traveled through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, across the Rio Grande, and deep into Chihuahua, Mexico? Riding in a carriage pulled by a team of mules? I have made that trip – at least as far as the Rio Grande – not in a carriage pulled by mules but in a vehicle equipped with a heater and an air conditioner. I ate my meals in restaurants and spent my evenings in a motel. I made it to the Rio Grande in three days.

My point is that despite servants and all the accouterments Susan possessed, her journey was no cakewalk. And instead of three days, it lasted fifteen months.

Susan Shelby Magoffin

Adding to the drama of the venture was the fact that war had broken out between the United States and Mexico. In fact, the Magoffin caravan traveled west in the wake of the invading American army.

One day after her nineteenth birthday she suffered a miscarriage at Bent’s Fort in southeastern Colorado. From that point on her health forced the Magoffins to spend lengthy stays along the way in order to allow her to recover from various ailments.

Despite the travails of the trail and her illnesses, Susan’s natural curiosity led her to faithfully write in her journal almost every day, in which she described everything: hardships, land and climate, flora and fauna, and people, including the Indians and Mexicans that she encountered.

In addition to her writing about her miscarriage at Bent’s Fort, she had this to say about her stay there:

“There is no place on Earth I believe where man lives and gambling in some form or other is not carried on. Here in the Fort, and who could have supposed such a thing, they have a regularly established billiard room! They have a regular race track. And I hear the cackling of chickens at such a rate some times I shall not be surprised to hear of a cock-pit.”

Her journal ends abruptly due to the fact that she contracted yellow fever in Matamoras, a time in which she gave birth to a son who did not survive.

The Magoffins returned to Kentucky in 1848 and later moved near St. Louis where Samuel purchased a large estate. Susan gave birth to two daughters, but her health further deteriorated and she died in 1855 at age twenty-eight. She is buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

Historians of the western movement will be forever indebted to this bold and adventurous young woman and her colorful journal, originally published in 1926, that provides them with a first person account of life on the Santa Fe Trail.

In commemoration of her journey, a seven-foot high bronze statue of Susan Magoffin holding her journal was unveiled in El Paso, Texas in 2012.  At her side is Ring, her faithful dog.  

TO HELL ON A FAST HORSE: BILLY THE KID, PAT GARRETT, AND THE EPIC CHASE TO JUSTICE IN THE OLD WEST by Mark Lee Gardner

Let’s begin with a movie question. What historical individual has been the subject of more films than any other individual?

Yep, that would be Henry McCarty aka Henry Antrim aka “Kid” Antrim aka Billy Bonney aka “The Kid” aka “Billy the Kid.” Beginning in 1911, more than fifty films have been produced with him as a character – and nearly always as the principal character. It is difficult to pinpoint the best of the lot, but the bottom of the barrel is Billy the Kid vs. Dracula(1966), brought to you that same year by the same folks who made Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Do I need to say that that they were both fictional? But all the movies dealing with these two most famous of all Western outlaws were fictional to some degree or the other.

There was even a B-Western series in the ‘40s, first starring Bob Steele and later Buster Crabbe, in which Billy was the hero. In these films he was a wanted outlaw, but he had been falsely accused, you see, and roamed the frontier doing good deeds, winning over people, and attempting to clear his name. Since he had no visible means of support, I’m not sure how he and his sidekick (they were required in B-Westerns, you know) survived financially, but they did.

There were four stage productions, one written by Gore Vidal, featuring the Kid and one TV series, The Tall Man, starring Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett and Clu Gulagher as Billy. The series further advanced the myth that the two were best pals. They weren’t.

People as diverse as Woody Guthrie and Billy Joel have written and sung songs about the young outlaw, who died at age twenty-one. Unlike most outlaws, however, he did not die with his boots on; he had removed them shortly before being shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Billy

And books? There have been as many books – maybe more – about Billy than there have been movies. Some are no more than purveyors of the myth without regard for the truth; some are works of historical fiction; and a few have been serious works of history and biography.

Mark Lee Gardner’s To Hell on a Fast Horse falls into the last category. The subtitle, The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West, informs us that it is a dual biography, which to my knowledge no writer has heretofore attempted.

However, I do take issue with the subtitle, at least the “Untold Story” part of it. Personally, I don’t think that I learned anything about Billy from reading the book, if so it would have to be a minor detail or two. What I did learn, however, and it was certainly “Untold” as far as I was concerned, is what Pat Garrett’s life was like after he shot and killed Billy at Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1881. 

I knew that he continued his career as a respected lawman for a number of years and that he died ignominiously on a lonely road near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was shot from behind while urinating on the side of the road. There has been much speculation about what happened, but the mystery of his murder has never been officially solved.

Pat

What I didn’t know is that he was a rotten businessman, who made many poor decisions. Although he was a successful lawman, the job didn’t pay much – and he had a wife and eight children to support. So he dabbled in ranching and other business sidelines without much, if any, success. His efforts were hampered by his penchant for breeding race horses – slow ones, apparently – and placing bets on horses at race tracks – slow ones, apparently.

Gardner’s book is a thorough look at both men’s lives. If you don’t know the details about Billy’s life – and would like to – or if you aren’t familiar with Garrett’s post-Billy years – and would like to be – this is the book for you. Unlike many who write about Western lawmen and outlaws, Gardner has no ax to grind. He doesn’t take sides. His book is a quest for the truth and is probably as close to it as we will ever come. 

****** 
“The double-helix relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett is one of the abiding fascinations of the West. No one has come closer than Mark Lee Gardner to capturing their twin destinies, and their inevitable final collision. Gardner’s research is so richly detailed, you can almost smell the gun smoke and the sweat of the saddles.” – Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder

Mark

WYATT EARP: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, The Final Chapter

Part I can be read here and Part II here.  


Stuart Lake's best-selling "biography" of Wyatt Earp spawned four Hollywood movies, all produced and/or distributed by Fox studios, as well as a hit TV series.

FRONTIER MARSHAL (Fox, 1934)

DIRECTOR: Lew Seiler;  PRODUCER: Sol M. Wurtzel;  WRITERS: screenplay by William Counselman and Stuart Anthony based on Stuart Lake's book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal; CINEMATOGRAPER: Robert Planck

CAST: George O'Brien, Irene Bentley, George E. Stone, Alan Edwards, Ruth Gillette, Berton Churchill, Ward Bond, Russell Simpson



Wyatt's widow Josephine threatened to sue Fox for $50,000 charging the studio with producing an unauthorized portrayal of her late husband.  The studio responded by changing the name of the main character to "Michael Wyatt."

George O'Brien, who had been an important leading man during the silent era, starring in a number of films directed by the young John Ford, became one of the more talented actors to specialize in B-western series during the 1930's. In fact, leading up to his starring role in FRONTIER MARSHAL, he was Fox's reigning B-western star and had been starring in that studio's B-western series since the beginning of the sound era.  

FRONTIER MARSHAL was much like the films O'Brien had been starring in and was very much a B-western.  Despite the film's source material it wasn't given any special treatment and was simply considered to be just another entry in the O'Brien series. After all, most of the scripts for the superior series were based on stories by Zane Grey and Max Brand, two writers who were a lot more famous than Stuart Lake.            

Doc Holliday, portrayed by Alan Edwards, had to also undergo a name change and thus became "Doc Warren."  His illness was changed from tuberculosis to a heart condition.  As per usual in the four films there is a "good" girl (Irene Bentley) and a "bad" girl (Ruth Gillette; but with a heart of gold, of course).

Ward Bond has a role in three of the four films, playing decidedly different characters in each.  Here he is hardnosed troublemaker that Wyatt must corral. 

The chief villain is portrayed by Berton Churchill, who is not only a crooked mayor, but also a crooked banker.  That's not a good combination.  Churchill would play a similar character five years later by attempting to abscond with his bank's deposits in John Ford's STAGECOACH (UA).
  

George O'Brien

******

REVIEWS:

"'Frontier marshal,' being a frank melodrama, does not bother about plausibility, and one gathers that it was produced with the adapter and the director having their tongues in their cheeks." -- Mordaunt Hall, New York Times

"Fox gave it a fair budget but it was inferior to the earlier, and similar, 'Law and Order.'"* -- Brian Garfield, Western Films: A Complete Guide

*You can read my review of LAW AND ORDER here.

FRONTIER MARSHAL (Fox, 1939)

DIRECTOR: Allan Dwan;  PRODUCER: Sol M. Wurtzel; WRITERS: screenplay by Sam Hellman based on Stuart N. Lake's book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Charles G. Clarke

CAST:  Randolph Scott, Nancy Kelly, Cesar Romero, Binnie Barnes, John Carradine, Edward Norris, Ward Bond, Lon Chaney, Jr., Chris Pin-Martin, Joe Sawyer, Charles Stevens, Hank Bell, Si Jenks, Tom Tyler, Harry Woods


Once again Josephine Earp threatened to sue Fox, but settled for $5,000 when the producer agreed to remove Wyatt's name from the title of the film; as though that made any real difference since Scott's character in the film would still be called Wyatt Earp. But $5,000 did make a difference when it came to soothing Josie's proprietary concern about how Wyatt was to be portrayed on the screen.  Besides, as Wyatt himself complained during the couple's years in California, Josie was seriously addicted to gambling -- horses being her weakness -- and, unlike Wyatt, she wasn't very good at it, and $5,000 would surely come in handy.

The film is a step up from the 1934 version in that it had a longer running time, a more competent director, and a bigger and overall better cast, and a more adult script.  It was an ideal vehicle for Randolph Scott and represented the kind of medium-budget western that he would specialize in for the rest of his career, films that filled in the space between the B-western series films and the bigger budget A-westerns.

This time Wyatt is an ex-army scout who is given the job of Tombstone's marshal when he subdues drunken Indian Charlie (Charles Stevens) who is shooting up the town.  (The scene would be repeated in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE [Fox, 1946] with Stevens portraying the same character and with Henry Fonda doing the honors.)  And on this occasion, Ward Bond is the cowardly marshal who refuses to confront Charlie and consequently loses his job.  (Unlike poor Charlie, Bond would finally be given a sympathetic character to portray in CLEMENTINE.)      

Even though Wyatt's name is retained in this one, for some unfathomable reason (to me anyway) Doc Holliday (Cesar Romero) becomes "Doc Halliday."  Did the Holliday family include someone who threatened to sue the filmmakers?  If so, somebody forgot to tell whoever was responsible for editing the trailer.

The narrator of the trailer clearly identifies Doc as Doc Holliday.  But in the scene shown here that follows, in which the marshal and the mayor are discussing Doc, he is called Doc Halliday.  That is also the way he is listed in the credits.

And once more, Doc is a surgeon, rather than a dentist, from Illinois (instead of Georgia), who must operate on a young Mexican boy who is accidentally shot during a street fight.  I should also add that Romero is surprisingly good in the film. Personally, I rank his performance above that of Victor Mature in the more celebrated MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.

The chief villain is a crooked saloon owner (weren't they all?) and is portrayed by the wonderful John Carradine who never disappoints.  Josie, as in Stuart's book, makes no appearance in the film since its setting is in Tombstone and Josie did her best to keep that part of her history hidden.  But there is the inevitable "saloon" girl (Binnie Barnes), who possesses a heart of gold, but one she does her best to hide beneath a rough exterior.  Her main competition in the romantic sweepstakes is the obligatory "good girl" portrayed by Nancy Kelly.

I'm going to give Brain Garfield the last word.  Here is what he said about the film in his book, Western Films: A Complete Guide:

"...filmed on the tenth anniversary of Wyatt's death, it began the movies' love affair with the Earps, and it's still highly satisfactory with all the traditional myths solidly in place.  At the time of its release it suffered from competition with the slew of blockbuster westerns that brought the genre out of the doldrums in 1939....But in retrospect FRONTIER MARSHAL stands up well against all of them.  It's still heartily entertaining."

Nancy Kelly and Cesar Romero  

Wyatt and Doc "Halliday" meet for the first time.

Fox's big-budget, blockbuster western of 1939 was the outlaw biopic, JESSE JAMES, starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as Jesse and Frank James, respectively.  Besides starring in FRONTIER MARSHAL that year, Nancy Kelly, as Jesse's wife Zee and Randolph Scott, as the family's fictitious lawman friend, had important supporting roles.  And so did John Carradine.  He played "the dirty little coward," Bob Ford.

 






MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (Fox, 1946)

This is the most highly acclaimed Wyatt Earp movie ever produced.  But, no, it isn't any more historically accurate than those that preceded it.  It is, however, a classic western and one that I rank at the number 7 spot on my hit parade of favorite western films.

Rather than me having to repeat myself you can mosey over and read my review of the film here.

But in case you don't want to do that, I must repeat my favorite line from the movie, which is my favorite line from any western movie, and one of my favorite lines from any movie:

Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda): "Mac, you ever been in love?"

Mac (J. Farrell MacDonald): "No, I've been a bartender all my life."

POWDER RIVER (Fox, 1953)

DIRECTOR: Louis King;  PRODUCER: Andre Hakim; WRITERS: screenplay by Geoffrey Holmes (Daniel Mainwaring) from a story by Sam Hellman based on Stuart Lake's book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Edward Cronjager

CAST: Rory Calhoun, Corinne Calvet, Cameron Mitchell, Penny Edwards, Carl Betz, John Dehner, Raymond Greenleaf, Victor Sutherland, Ethan Laidlaw, Bob Wilke, Frank Ferguson, Hank Worden, James Griffith, Eddy Waller, Mae Marsh

For some reason the names were changed again.  It couldn't be because of any interference by Josie because she had died in December 1944 and thus had not been able to create problems for this film or the earlier MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.  Maybe the names were changed to protect the innocent.  

Even screenwriter Mainwaring got into the act by adopting the high-falutin' nom de plume Geoffrey Holmes.  He even went further by giving the Earp character the name of Chino Bull (!), while Doc Holliday became Mitch Hardin.

Or maybe the names were changed so that the setting could be shifted from the southwest to the Powder River country in Montana in order to allow for some beautiful location shots in Glacier National Park, a land far removed from Tombstone and the desert southwest.

At any rate, it is a big step down from MY DARLING CLEMENTINE or even the 1939 production of FRONTIER MARSHAL.  That isn't to say that it is a terribly bad film, but that it doesn't come up to the high standards set by the other two films.

Rory Calhoun made a boatload of westerns, all of them, much like FRONTIER MARSHAL (1939), falling into that space occupied by films that were characterized by budgets and production values that surpassed the B-western series film, but weren't quite comparable with the A-westerns.  However, this is not a put down, because some of the most entertaining and enjoyable westerns ever made fall into that category.

Calhoun is Marshal Chino Bull and Cameron Mitchell is Mitch Hardin, a surgeon who gave up his practice when an untreatable brain tumor caused him to blackout during a surgery.  As a result he left his home in Connecticut to travel to the West where he became a gunfighting gambler.  Of course, he has to redeem himself when he is forced to perform an operation -- this time on the good girl who is accidentally shot and seriously wounded.  That would be Penny Edwards. She had just finished a tour of duty as the stand-in for the pregnant Dale Evans in several entries in the Roy Rogers B-series at Republic.  

Corinne Calvet owns a saloon and by default that makes her the "bad" girl.

Calvet and Calhoun

The villains are a crooked saloon owner (I told you; they all are), portrayed by John Dehner, who was always a welcome presence in westerns, and his outlaw brother played by Carl Betz.  As far as I can tell, Betz only appeared in one other Western, that being CITY OF BAD MEN, made the same year and by the same studio. Betz would later become best known for his role as Donna Reed's husband on TV's The Donna Reed Show.

Mitchell and Calhoun

Calhoun, Edwards, and Glacier National Park

******
REVIEWS:

"...the dull contrivances of the story extend to the acting in general, and the entire mess has been slung together under Louis King's direction with a smart-alecky indifference to   conviction....the scenario...is as bad as it is baffling." -- H.H.T., New York Times
     



"A taut town western....Minor but enjoyable." -- Phil Hardy, The Western

"Cliches, standard character types, uninspired script and direction add up to a routine horse opera with an adequate cast." -- Brian Garfield, Western Films: A Complete Guide

  
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (ABC-TV, 1955-1961)



Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp
Brave and courageous and bold
Long live his fame and long live his glory
And long may his story be told
-- Wyatt Earp TV show theme song

The TV western entered adulthood in 1955.  Prior to that year TV westerns had been geared primarily for a juvenile audience.  But that year two new series debuted that were written for adults. Ironically, both were about lawmen who were employed to enforce the law in Kansas cowtowns.

Gunsmoke starred James Arness as a fictional U.S. marshal named Matt Dillion who combined his duties as a federal peace officer with those of county sheriff and town marshal.  How he did it, I'm not sure, but with only one part-time deputy he enforced federal, state, and local law.  But if TV viewers realized that that would have been an impossible burden, they didn't mind. The show was a big winner in the ratings and enjoyed one of the longest tenures of any program in television history.

For the 1957-58 season the program shot to the top of the Nielsen ratings and remained there for four consecutive years and for most of its long run it remained near the top.

The show originated on radio, starring William Conrad as Matt Dillion, and continued in that medium for some years after the TV series began.  Earlier I wrote about the radio show and you can read about it here.

Debuting four days earlier than Gunsmoke was The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, based on Stuart Lake's book, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal.

Lake really hit the jackpot with this series.  Until her death in 1942, he had been forced to share the book's royalties 50-50 with Josie.  True, he had made money off the four Hollywood films, but nothing like what he would reap from the success of the TV show. Not only was it based on his book, but he served as an "expert" consultant and wrote a number of the scripts.  He even had final approval when it came time to cast the actor who would portray Wyatt.

The choice for the starring role was Hugh J. Krampe, Jr., who was born in Rochester, New York in 1925.  Well, it comes as no surprise that the actor is not known by his birth name but as Hugh O'Brian, the name he adopted when he began his acting career.

He first broke into the movies in 1950 when he won a supporting role in a Gene Autry B-western.  In the next five years he appeared in a variety of films, but primarily westerns.  He played John Ireland's brother in VENGEANCE VALLEY (MGM) in 1951 and one of the Devereaux brothers (Robert Wagner, Richard Widmark, Earl Holliman, O'Brien) in BROKEN LANCE (Fox).  That same year he signed with Universal and was featured in eighteen of their films during a three year period.  Two of those represented director Budd Boetticher's earliest efforts in the western genre: THE CIMARRON KID (1952) and THE MAN FROM THE ALAMO (1953). 

The character of Matt Dillion was strictly a fictional creation while Wyatt Earp was -- well -- in the TV series he was largely a fictional creation, too.  Of course the people in charge of the program -- including the star -- didn't want to think that or at least didn't want the viewer to think it.

The producer didn't lie when he said that the show's scripts stuck closely to the biographical details -- which were taken from Lake's book.  That was true enough, but begs the question of how accurate the biographical details in Lake's book might have been.  The word legend doesn't appear in the title of the series for no reason.

Hugh O'Brian and guest star Adele Mara

The series was a well-crafted, well-acted series and O'Brian was quite good in the role of the mythical Wyatt Earp.  The series was also characterized by a number of excellent character actors who had continuing roles in the series: Douglas Fowley (Doc Holliday); Paul Brinnegar (Jim 'Dog' Kelly, saloon owner and mayor of Dodge, before leaving the show to portray the cook, Wishbone, on Rawhide); and Morgan Woodward ('Shotgun' Gibbs, a fictional Earp deputy).

Morgan Woodward as "Shotgun" Gibbs

Douglas Fowley as Doc Holliday

But it is hard to swallow what the star had to say about the character he portrayed:

"With the exception of Stuart Lake, who wrote the book upon which our story is based, I don't think anybody is closer to Wyatt than I am.  Lake lived with Wyatt for four years [!!??] before Earp died, but I know a lot about Wyatt too.  I don't just mean facts, I mean what he stood for and what he'd do under certain circumstances."

Well, to begin with Lake never lived with Wyatt.  He only conducted a few interviews with him and they also exchanged some correspondence.  And if O'Brian did know a lot about Earp he never showed it, particularly when he claimed that Wyatt was in two hundred gunfights, but nevertheless killed only four men. The number of killings is close, but 200 gunfights?

Either O'Brian was making this stuff up or he had been duped by Mr. Lake. One indication that the latter was true is the fact that O'Brian carried not one, but two Buntline Specials, which he thought were replicas of what Wyatt had carried.  In fact, the special weapons were not created by Ned Buntline and the Colt Company, but by Lake's imagination.

The series moved Wyatt from one town to another over the course of its run -- from Ellsworth to Wichita to Dodge City to Tombstone -- which is a true picture of Wyatt's migrations.  However, the show made him the marshal who cleaned up each town, thus precipitating his move to the next wide-open boom town.

To repeat: Wyatt Earp was never the marshal of any town.  He was never on the police force in Ellsworth at all, and he was the assistant marshal (chief deputy) in Wichita and Dodge.  He served briefly as a deputy marshal in Tombstone when the town marshal, his brother Virgil, deputized him and brother Morgan just before the confrontation at the O.K. Corral.

The show did not last as long as Gunsmoke, but neither did the other westerns that proliferated in its wake.  But it did okay in the ratings.  It finished in the top 20 Nielsen ratings during its four middle years, with its highest rating coming during its third season when it finished sixth.  

Ordinarily, I don't get on my soapbox when filmmakers and TV producers fail to adhere to the facts when they films stories based on actual historical figures and events.  It is only when the word "true" appears in the title or the producers claim that the story is based on "actual" events that I take issue.  Or in the case of Stuart Lake, when a writer says that he has not only written an authentic biography, but one that is based on countless interviews that he has conducted with his subject and the people who knew him -- and then proceeds to make up stuff.

I would have no complaint if the show's title had been The Legend of Wyatt Earp.  And, if so, this post would have been much briefer.