The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp
Encyclopedia
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp is a Western
television
series loosely based on the adventures of frontier marshal Wyatt Earp
. The half-hour black and white series ran on ABC
-TV from 1955 to 1961 and featured Hugh O'Brian
as Earp. An off-camera barbershop quartet sang the theme song and hummed the background music in early episodes. Incidental music was composed by Herman Stein
. The series was produced by Desilu Productions
and filmed at the Desilu-Cahuenga Studio.
later played Earp
in the movies Hour of the Gun
and Sunset
for the same reason. On the series, Earp carried a Buntline Special
, a pistol with a twelve-inch barrel, triggering a mild toy craze at the time of the series' original broadcasts. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that the real Earp ever owned such a gun, however; the myth of Earp's Buntline Special traces back to Stuart N. Lake
's spurious 1931 Earp biography Frontier Marshal
, purported upon publication to be based on actual interviews but later admitted by the author to be highly fictionalized.
O'Brian recreated the role of Earp in two episodes of the television series Guns of Paradise
(1990), alongside Gene Barry
as Bat Masterson
, and again in 1991 in The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, also with Barry as Masterson
. An independent movie called Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone was released in 1994 featuring new footage of O'Brian as Earp mixed with flashbacks consisting of colorized scenes from the original series. The new sequences co-starred Bruce Boxleitner
, Paul Brinegar
(Rawhide
), Harry Carey, Jr.
, and Bo Hopkins
.
A major actor from the silent era with a similar name was the first man to play the character in a film version of the book upon which the television series was based. George O'Brien, star of F.W. Murnau's 1927 masterpiece Sunrise
, played the title role in 1934's Frontier Marshal
three years after Stuart N. Lake's book first appeared. Other actors to fill Earp's boots on film include James Stewart
, Henry Fonda
, Kevin Costner
, Randolph Scott
, Joel McCrea
, Richard Dix
, Will Geer
, Kurt Russell
, and Leo Gordon
.
appeared eleven times in the 1959-1960 season in the role of Nellie Cashman
. Other notable performers appearing on the series include Francis De Sales
(three times), James Coburn
, Ron Foster
(as Johnny in "Arizona Lottery"), Ron Hagerthy
, Robert Harland
, Brad Johnson (twice, including the role of Ed Masterson
), Ed Hinton
, I. Stanford Jolley
(six times, including "A Papa for Butch and Ginger"), Tyler McVey
(four times), Gregg Palmer
(five times as Tom McLowery), John M. Pickard
(three times), Anna May Wong
, and John Vivyan
. Walter Coy
appeared twice on Wyatt Earp, as Ben Thompson in "Dodge Is Civilized" (1959) and as Henry Mason in "The Doctor" (1960).
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series loosely based on the adventures of frontier marshal Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
. The half-hour black and white series ran on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
-TV from 1955 to 1961 and featured Hugh O'Brian
Hugh O'Brian
Hugh O'Brian is an American actor, known for his starring role in the ABC television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp .-Early years and career:...
as Earp. An off-camera barbershop quartet sang the theme song and hummed the background music in early episodes. Incidental music was composed by Herman Stein
Herman Stein
Herman Stein was an American composer who wrote music for many of the 1950s science-fiction and horror films from Universal Studios...
. The series was produced by Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions was a Los Angeles, California-based company jointly owned by actors Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who were married to each other from 1940 to 1960....
and filmed at the Desilu-Cahuenga Studio.
Overview
O'Brian was chosen for the role due to a resemblance to early photographs of the actual Earp; James GarnerJames Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...
later played Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
in the movies Hour of the Gun
Hour of the Gun
Hour of the Gun is 1967 Western film starring James Garner and depicting Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday during their 1881 battles against Ike Clanton and his brothers in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and the gunfight's aftermath in and around Tombstone, Arizona.The film is based on the non fiction...
and Sunset
Sunset (film)
Sunset is a 1988 film released by TriStar Pictures. Written and directed by Blake Edwards, the movie stars Bruce Willis as legendary western actor Tom Mix and James Garner as legendary lawman Wyatt Earp....
for the same reason. On the series, Earp carried a Buntline Special
Colt Buntline
The Colt Buntline Special is a variant of long-barreled Colt Single Action Army revolver that author Stuart N. Lake created while writing his 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp. According to Lake's biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal published in 1931, dime novelist Ned Buntline had five Buntline...
, a pistol with a twelve-inch barrel, triggering a mild toy craze at the time of the series' original broadcasts. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that the real Earp ever owned such a gun, however; the myth of Earp's Buntline Special traces back to Stuart N. Lake
Stuart N. Lake
Stuart N. Lake was a writer whose material dealt largely with the American Old West...
's spurious 1931 Earp biography Frontier Marshal
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal is a book authored by Stuart N. Lake and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. The book was supposedly written with Wyatt Earp's collaboration and portrays Earp as a fearless lawman...
, purported upon publication to be based on actual interviews but later admitted by the author to be highly fictionalized.
O'Brian recreated the role of Earp in two episodes of the television series Guns of Paradise
Paradise (TV series)
Paradise is an American Western family television series, broadcast by CBS from 1988 to 1991. Created by David Jacobs and Robert Porter, the series presents the adventures of fictitious gunfighter Ethan Allen Cord, whose sister left her four children in his custody when she died.-Synopsis:Paradise...
(1990), alongside Gene Barry
Gene Barry
Gene Barry was an American stage, screen, and television actor. Barry is best remembered for his leading roles in the films The Atomic City and The War of The Worlds and for his portrayal of the title character in the TV series Bat Masterson, among many roles.-Personal life:Barry was born...
as Bat Masterson
Bat Masterson (TV series)
Bat Masterson is an American Western television series which showed a fictionalized account of the life of real-life marshal/gambler/dandy Bat Masterson. The title character was played by Gene Barry and the half-hour black and white shows ran on NBC from 1958 to 1961...
, and again in 1991 in The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, also with Barry as Masterson
Bat Masterson
William Barclay "Bat" Masterson was a figure of the American Old West known as a buffalo hunter, U.S. Marshal and Army scout, avid fisherman, gambler, frontier lawman, and sports editor and columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph...
. An independent movie called Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone was released in 1994 featuring new footage of O'Brian as Earp mixed with flashbacks consisting of colorized scenes from the original series. The new sequences co-starred Bruce Boxleitner
Bruce Boxleitner
Bruce William Boxleitner is an American actor, and science fiction and suspense writer. He is known for his leading roles in the television series How the West Was Won, Bring 'Em Back Alive, Scarecrow and Mrs. King , and Babylon 5...
, Paul Brinegar
Paul Brinegar
Paul Brinegar was an American character actor.Brinegar made over 100 appearances between 1946 and 1994, appearing in many western films, and played the barman in Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter in 1973...
(Rawhide
Rawhide (TV series)
Rawhide is an American Western series that aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights, from January 9, 1959 to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965 until January 4, 1966, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes...
), Harry Carey, Jr.
Harry Carey, Jr.
Harry Carey, Jr. is an American film actor. He appeared in over 90 films. He is mostly remembered for appearing in Western films — notably those by his friend John Ford — and in television programs.-Early life:...
, and Bo Hopkins
Bo Hopkins
Bo Hopkins is an American actor.-Career:Hopkins has appeared in more than one hundred film and television roles in a career of more than forty years, including The Bridge at Remagen, The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, American Graffiti, White Lightning, Radioland Murders, The Killer Elite, Midnight...
.
A major actor from the silent era with a similar name was the first man to play the character in a film version of the book upon which the television series was based. George O'Brien, star of F.W. Murnau's 1927 masterpiece Sunrise
Sunrise (film)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, also known as Sunrise, is a 1927 American silent film directed by German film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "Die Reise nach Tilsit" by Hermann Sudermann.Sunrise won an Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production...
, played the title role in 1934's Frontier Marshal
Frontier Marshal (1934 film)
Frontier Marshal is a 1934 western film directed by Lewis Seiler. Produced by Fox Film and Sol M. Wurtzel, the film is the first based on Stuart N. Lake's enormously popular but largely fictitious "biography" of Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal...
three years after Stuart N. Lake's book first appeared. Other actors to fill Earp's boots on film include James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
, Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
, Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals , adventure tales, war films, and even a few...
, Joel McCrea
Joel McCrea
Joel Albert McCrea was an American actor whose career spanned 50 years and appearances in over 90 films.-Early life:...
, Richard Dix
Richard Dix
Richard Dix was an American motion picture actor who achieved popularity in both silent and sound film. His standard on-screen image was that of the rugged and stalwart hero.-Early life:...
, Will Geer
Will Geer
Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons....
, Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell
Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...
, and Leo Gordon
Leo Gordon
Leo Vincent Gordon was an American movie and television character actor as well as a screenplay writer and novelist. He specialized in playing brutish bad guys during more than forty years in film and television....
.
Notable guest stars
Randy StuartRandy Stuart
Randy Stuart, born as Elizabeth Shaubell , was an American actress whose longest running role was as Louise Baker, the wife of the Cold War spy in the 26-episode adventure television series, Biff Baker, U.S.A., which aired on CBS, with Alan Hale, Jr., as the title character...
appeared eleven times in the 1959-1960 season in the role of Nellie Cashman
Nellie Cashman
Ellen Cashman , better known as Nellie Cashman, was a native of County Cork, Ireland, who became famous across the American and Canadian west as a nurse and gold prospector.-Early years:...
. Other notable performers appearing on the series include Francis De Sales
Francis De Sales (actor)
Francis A. De Sales was an American actor. He was known for his roles on two early television series: as police Lieutenant Bill Weigand on the CBS and then NBC drama Mr. and Mrs. North and as Sheriff Maddox in the syndicated western Two Faces West...
(three times), James Coburn
James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.A capable,...
, Ron Foster
Ron Foster (actor)
Ronald R. Foster, known as Ron Foster , is an American actor, whose longest-running role was as Dr. Charles Grant from 1991-1995 in the defunct CBS soap opera The Guiding Light....
(as Johnny in "Arizona Lottery"), Ron Hagerthy
Ron Hagerthy
Ronald F. "Ron" Hagerthy is a former American actor known primarily for his guest-starring and supporting roles on television westerns. In 1952, he portrayed Clipper King in the modern western series, Sky King, with Kirby Grant in the title role of Clipper's uncle, Schuyler "Sky" King, pilot of...
, Robert Harland
Robert Harland
Robert "Bob" Harland is a retired American actor whose principal work was done on television in the late 1950s and 1960s...
, Brad Johnson (twice, including the role of Ed Masterson
Ed Masterson
Ed Masterson was a lawman and the brother of the American West gunfighters Bat Masterson and James Masterson.-Lawman career:...
), Ed Hinton
Ed Hinton (actor)
Edgar Latimer Hinton, Jr., known as Ed Hinton and sometimes as Edward Hinton , was an American actor known particularly for guest-starring roles on television westerns...
, I. Stanford Jolley
I. Stanford Jolley
Isaac Stanford Jolley, Sr., known as I. Stanford Jolley was a prolific American character actor of film and television, primarily in western roles as cowboys, law-enforcement officers, or villains...
(six times, including "A Papa for Butch and Ginger"), Tyler McVey
Tyler McVey
Tyler McVey was an American character actor.-Early life and career:McVey was born in Bay City on Saginaw Bay in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. His first screen role, uncredited, came at the age of 39 in 1951, when he portrayed Brady in the The Day the Earth Stood Still...
(four times), Gregg Palmer
Gregg Palmer
Gregg Palmer, originally Palmer Lee is an American actor, known primarily for his prolific work in television westerns...
(five times as Tom McLowery), John M. Pickard
John Pickard (American actor)
John M. Pickard was an American actor who appeared primarily in television Westerns.-Early life and career:...
(three times), Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong was an American actress, the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American to become an international star...
, and John Vivyan
John Vivyan
John Vivyan was an American actor active primarily between 1957 and 1970. He was known for his starring role as the honest debonair gambler in the CBS adventure series Mr. Lucky.-Early life and career:Born John C...
. Walter Coy
Walter Coy
Walter Darwin Coy was an American stage, radio, film, and, principally, television actor, originally from Great Falls, Montana. He was best known for narrating the NBC western anthology series, Frontier, which aired early Sunday evenings in the 1955-1956 season.-Career:Coy performed on Broadway...
appeared twice on Wyatt Earp, as Ben Thompson in "Dodge Is Civilized" (1959) and as Henry Mason in "The Doctor" (1960).