怀亚特厄普：边疆法警 (1931)

Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal is a 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp written by Stuart N. Lake and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. It was the first biography of Earp, written with his contributions. It established the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the public consciousness and conveyed an extraordinary story about Wyatt Earp as a fearless lawman in the American Old West. Earp and his wife Josephine Earp tried to control the account, threatening legal action to persuade Lake to exclude Earp's second wife from the book. When the book was published, neither woman was mentioned.

Lake's biography was adapted as the basis for at least three movies: Frontier Marshal (1934); Frontier Marshal (1939); and My Darling Clementine (1946). The 1955 television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, was also based on Lake's book; its success 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.

Establishes Earp's reputation

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp were relatively unknown to the American public until 1931 when Lake published his book two years after Earp's death. Lake wrote that the Earps stood for law and order and that the lawmen justifiably arrested some of the Cowboys, and when they resisted, fought the outlaws to a final finish. Lake described a showdown between Earp and Ben Thompson, who had killed Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney in Ellsworth, Kansas. According to Lake, the remaining local lawmen were too afraid to arrest him, but Earp stepped up and intimidated Ben into surrendering. But the Ellsworth Reporter's story and Thompson's own account do not mention Earp. The newspaper reported that Deputy Sheriff Ed Hogue was the only officer remaining to make arrests. Earp's name was absent. When the first episode of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp aired on ABC on September 6, 1955, it retold Lake's version of the Ben Thompson incident.

Lake wrote, "Whatever else may be said of Wyatt Earp, against or for him, and no matter what his motives, the greatest gunfighter that the Old West knew cleaned up Tombstone, the toughest camp in the world." Lake turned Wyatt Earp into a "Western superman".

Lake's creative biography and later Hollywood portrayals exaggerated Wyatt's profile as a western lawman. Although his brother Virgil had far more experience as a sheriff, constable, and marshal, Wyatt, who outlived Virgil, was made famous by Lake's largely fictionalized biography, and Wyatt became the subject of and model for a large number of films, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction that continue to exaggerate his reputation and magnify his mystique.

Book development

Before he wrote the book, Lake specialized in stories about the Old West. He knew Bat Masterson, who was then writing for the New York Morning Telegraph. Masterson told Lake to contact Earp for true stories about the American Old West. He sought Earp out, initially hoping to write a magazine article about him. Then in his 80s, Earp was concerned that his vantage point into history had not been captured, and he was seeking a biographer. He may also have been financially motivated as he had little income in his last years of life. Although the book is written in Earp's voice, Lake interviewed him only eight times, during which Earp sketched out the "barest facts" of his life. In this period, Josephine was trying to get her own life story published.

Concealed history

In the course of his writing, Stuart Lake learned of some aspects of Josephine's and Wyatt Earp's life that Josephine wanted to keep private. Before meeting Earp, she had been the common-law wife of Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan. She may have worked as a "sporting lady" or prostitute before that. Wyatt Earp arrived in Tombstone on December 1, 1879, and Josephine and Behan arrived from Tip Top, Arizona Territory in September 1880. By April 1881, Josephine had kicked Behan out for infidelity. She had built a house with money her father sent her, and in mid-1881 rented it to Dr. George Goodfellow. There are no contemporary records in Tombstone of a relationship between Josephine and Earp, but Behan and Earp both had offices above the Crystal Palace Saloon, competed for the same jobs, and were loyal to opposing social groups. Behan played a role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, telling the Earps that he had disarmed the Cowboys. (Behan testified afterward that he'd only said he'd gone down to the Cowboys "for the purpose of disarming them," not that he had actually done so.)

Josephine Earp told Earp's biographers and others that Earp never owned gambling saloons and that he never offered prostitutes upstairs, but both these facts were otherwise documented. When pressed for details on her life before and during her time in Tombstone, Josephine was continually evasive.

Josephine also wanted to suppress information on Wyatt's previous common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock, a former prostitute with whom Wyatt was living until he left Tombstone in April 1882. Blaylock suffered from severe headaches and was addicted to laudanum, an opiate-based pain reliever in common use at the time. After Earp left her, she returned to prostitution and later committed suicide. During the interviews with Lake and in later correspondence, Josephine went to great lengths to keep Blaylock's and her own name out of his book. When Lake wrote Earp that he planned to send portions of the book to his New York agent, Earp objected because he wanted to read it first. Wyatt was already critically ill and died three days later on January 13, 1929.