Book Review: Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal By Stuart Lake

My series dealing with the 125th Anniversary of the Gunfight at the OK Corral continues with a review of Wyatt Earp's authorized biography, supplemented by the detailed mention of three other books, two of which were published during Wyatt Earp's lifetime.

The book that started the whole Wyatt Earp craze was Stuart Lake’s authorized biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, published in 1931. It became an overnight success and propelled Lake from a writer who was just surviving into a franchise.  

The 1955 television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was based on the book and made Lake into one of the first television moguls. It became one of the first television series to spawn tie-in merchandising such as lunch boxes, children's books, comic books, action figures, guns, costumes, tableware and mugs. (I still have my mug).

Naturally, success breeds contempt, followers, or critics. Frank Waters, who wrote The Earp Brothers of Tombstone in 1976, was one such critic. The Earp Brothers was born in an era when heroes should have feet of clay. Cops had become Pigs. The military was evil. The United States was the bastion of all that was unholy. His portrayal of Wyatt Earp fit perfectly into such a world.

During the next 40 years, books, writers, and researchers came and went. (That’s another story). Some were good, some were bad, and a few were horrid. But a new breed of researcher/writer was being born. Stuart Lake deserves much criticism. He sensationalized Wyatt Earp, turning him into a cellulose hero.

Lake was writing during the first years of the Great Depression. The world did not need black and white reality; it needed heroes. Lake took the life story of a man, a real honest to goodness man with feet of clay, and propelled him into the pantheon of the gods. Had he been alive, Wyatt Earp would have been Lake’s greatest critic. All Earp wanted was “to set the record straight.”

Wyatt Earp was very unhappy with Walter Noble Burns and his sensational Tombstone, an Iliad of the Southwest. Burns turned Earp into a superhero, which he was not. To begin with, Burns just showed up on the Earp’s doorstep one afternoon, unannounced. Wyatt and his wife Josie had just returned from some time out in the desert up around Vidal, California where they had a little house and Wyatt could look after his mining properties.

Article Author: SJ Reidhead

SJ Reidhead is the author of two western novels, and several non-fiction books about Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. She blogs at The Pink Flamingo. While she is highly critical of the influence of far right conservatives on her beloved Republican Party, …

Visit SJ Reidhead's author page — SJ Reidhead's Blog