Wyatt Earp : the life behind the legend /

According to Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp the person lived long enough to rue his part in the creation of Wyatt Earp the Wild West lawman and prototypical pop cultural icon. Meticulously, Tefertiller strives to untangle the threads of truth in Earp's story from those of hyperbole and froth. He finds that widespread impressions of Earp as either a fanciful hero or an ominous villain are cartoonlike pastiches, products of the fable of Earp created in magazines, books, and films that sensationalized his story. Of course, Tefertiller examines the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which was to haunt Earp because it became such a staple of Wild West folklore; even after detailed analysis, the incident remains murky. Earp lived into his seventies, which gave him plenty of time to be involved in further controversies, such as his refereeing of the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons boxing match, for which his personal integrity and grasp of the rules of boxing were questioned. In all, an engrossing, satisfying inspection of a quintessential figure in American popular culture. --Mike Tribby

As Terfertiller's biography establishes, Earp's legend endures vividly in books and films, especially in John Ford's classic My Darling Clementine (1946), which is not burdened by the facts. Earp spent many more years as gambler and saloonman than as frontier marshal. The saga of the Earp brothers in Dodge City and Tombstone in the 1880s is a sleazy one, Terfertiller shows, as they operated on both sides of the law, enforcing order as maverick marshals. If there were profits to be made, principle became insignificant. One vendetta, the notorious O.K. Corral shootup, takes up much of the story. Yet there were few pistol duels, none of them cinematically romantic, and Earp, with his Sadie, would drift in search of income as far north as Nome, Alaska. Down on his luck, he lived into his 80s, dying in 1929 after decades of handouts from his wife's family. Although he had already become a legend in print, his gunslinger period was unrewarding, and his years after Tombstone proved to be even more so. Terfertiller, a former journalist for the San Francisco Examiner, is meticulous in his research, with the net effect of diminishing the Earp image. Photos. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Basing his account on primary resources, Tefertiller, a former writer for the San Francisco Examiner, has tried to write an unbiased report of the storied life of lawman Wyatt Earp‘a villain and a hero in Tombstone, Arizona, both before and after his death in 1929. Portrayed by novelists, historians, and filmmakers, the Earp brothers‘especially Wyatt‘became the stuff of legends. Attempting to uncover what really happened in Tombstone, Tefertiller draws on newspaper articles and personal accounts by Earp's friends, enemies, and acquaintances. The result is a fresh look at legendary events, showing how the image of Earp was formed. This well-researched historical work is a pleasure to read. Recommended for collections on the American West and wherever Earp is popular.‘Terri P. Summey, Emporia State Univ. Lib., Kan. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This biography of the controversial western lawman, by a former San Francisco Examiner writer, uses newly found primary sources and exhaustive archival research to uncover the real man obscured by myths, tall tales, and calumnies. Tefertiller's version of Earp finds, amid some unpleasant elements, a real core of heroism. He had a penchant for gambling and saloon life, was an energetic womanizer, and had a habit of applying undue force in arresting suspects. Yet he was also, as Tefertiller documents, indisputably courageous. His varied and colorful career included time as a security guard on Wells Fargo stagecoaches, prospecting, running faro games, and speculating on western lands and mines. Most famously, though, he served as a town sheriff and a US marshall. That Earp could be at various times a gambler and a marshall should not, the author suggests, seem all that startling: Gamblers were highly esteemed figures in the demimonde of the wide open towns of the frontier. Men familiar with violence seemed to these communities to be the ideal choice to establish order. During his term as marshall of Tombstone, Ariz., Earp did just that, confronting rustlers, robbers, and gunmen, bringing them to justice or occasionally shooting it out with them, most famously in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Earp's actions inevitably brought him into conflict with powerful, autocratic ranchers and corrupt politicians. The charges that blackened Earp's reputation, Tefertiller argues, were largely fictions circulated by his enemies, who planted stories about him in pliant frontier newspapers. Using a wide variety of primary sources, Tefertiller manages to summon up a human, complex figure and, while not omitting flaws, to persuasively demonstrate that Earp believed in the law and did his best in hard times to defend it. A great adventure story, and solid history. (42 photos, not seen)