Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal

Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931) was a best-selling but largely fictional biography of Wyatt Earp written by Stuart N. Lake and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. It was the first biography of Earp, supposedly written with his input. It established the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the public consciousness and concocted a story about Wyatt Earp as a fearless lawman in the American Old West. Earp and his wife Josephine Earp tried to persuade Lake to leave her and Earp's second wife out of the book, even threatening legal action. When the book was published, both were not mentioned.

Lake's story was the basis for at least three movies—Frontier Marshall, made in 1934; Frontier Marshall, made in 1939; and My Darling Clementine, made in 1946—based on the book. The 1955 television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was also based on his book and made Lake into one of the first television moguls. A number of writers and researchers have been unable to document many of the stories found in the book and it is now considered "largely fictional".

Read more about Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal:  Establishes Earp's Reputation, Book Development, Publication, Film Adaptations

Famous quotes containing the words wyatt earp:, wyatt and/or frontier:

    Tom Mix: Wyatt, is that really the way it was?
    Wyatt Earp: Absolutely. Well, give or take a lie or two.
    Blake Edwards (b. 1922)

    Patience, do what they will
    To work me woe or spite,
    —Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)

    It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.
    Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)