Doc Holliday
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- See Doc Holliday (band) for the US Southern Rock band
John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 – November 8, 1887) was an American dentist, gambler and gunfighter of the American Old West frontier, who is usually remembered for his associations with Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
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[edit] Genealogy and education
John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia, to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane Holliday née McKey. His father served in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War.
Holliday's mother died of tuberculosis on September 16, 1866, when he was 15 years old. Three months later, his father remarried Rachel Martin. Shortly after the marriage, the family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, where Holliday attended the Valdosta Institute. There he received a strong classical secondary education in rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, history and languages — principally Latin, but also French and some ancient Greek.
In 1870, 19 year-old Holliday left home to begin dental school in Philadelphia. On March 1, 1872, he received the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. Later that year, he opened a dental office with Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta.
[edit] Health
At birth he had a cleft palate and partly cleft lip. At two months of age, this defect was repaired surgically by Holliday's uncle J.S. Holliday, M.D., and a family cousin, the famous physician Crawford Long. The repair left no speech impediment, though speech therapy was needed. However, the repair is visible in Holliday's upper lip-line, in the one authentic adult portrait-photograph which survives, taken on the occasion of his graduation from dental school. This graduation portrait, taken at the age of 20, supports contemporary accounts that Holliday had ash-blond hair and blue eyes. In early adulthood he stood about 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) tall, and weighed about 160 pounds (70 kg).
Not long after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis, generally called "consumption" in that era. (It is possible that Holliday contracted the disease from his mother, although no one would have thought this at the time because tuberculosis was not known to be contagious until many years later). He was given only a few months to live, although it was thought that moving to the drier and warmer southwestern United States might help to reduce the deterioration of his health.
[edit] Early travels
In September 1873, he went to Dallas, Texas, where he opened a dental office at 56 Elm Street, about four blocks east of the site of today's Dealey Plaza. He soon began gambling and realized this was a more beneficial source of income. He was arrested in Dallas in January 1875, after trading gunfire with a saloon-keeper, but no one was injured and he was found not guilty. He had already moved his offices to Denison, Texas. After being found guilty of "gaming" in Dallas and fined, he decided to leave the state.
In the years that followed, Holliday had many more such disagreements, fueled by a hot temper and an attitude that death by gun or knife was better than by tuberculosis. The alcohol which Holliday used to control his cough may also have contributed. There was also the practical matter that a professional gambler, working on his own at the edge of the law, had to be able to back up disputed points of play with at least a threat of force. Over time, Holliday continued traveling on the western mining frontier where gambling was most likely to be lucrative and legal. Holliday was found in Denver, Cheyenne, and Deadwood (site of the gold rush in the Dakota Territory) in the fall of 1876. It was possibly in Deadwood that winter that Holliday first heard of Wyatt Earp, who was also there at the same time.
By 1877, Holliday was back in Fort Griffin, Texas, where Wyatt Earp remembered first meeting him. The two of them began to form an unlikely friendship (Earp more even-tempered and controlled; Holliday more hot-headed and impulsive). This friendship was cemented in 1878 in Dodge City, Kansas, where both Earp and Holliday had traveled to make money from the gambling of the cowboys driving cattle up from Texas. Holliday was still practicing dentistry on the side from his rooms in Dodge City, as indicated in an 1878 Dodge newspaper advertisement (he promised money back for less than complete customer satisfaction), but this is the last known time he attempted practice. In an interview printed in a newspaper later in his life, he said that he only practiced dentistry "for about 5 years."
[edit] Dedicated gambler, gunman reputation
In September 1878, an incident occurred in which Earp, a deputy city marshal, was surrounded by men who had "the drop" on him. Holliday, coming up from another angle to cover the group with a gun, either shot one of these men or threatened to, and Earp afterwards always credited Holliday with saving his life that day. Accounts of Holliday's involvement in gunfights, however, are exaggerated. He has several documented saloon altercations in which he was involved in small shootings, but in most cases he was drunk and missed his target completely.
One documented instance happened when Holliday was employed during that railroad dispute. On July 19, 1879, Holliday and noted gunman John Joshua Webb were seated in a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico, when a former U.S. Army scout named Mike Gordon began yelling loudly at one of the saloon girls. When the man stormed from the saloon, Holliday followed him. Gordon produced his pistol and fired one shot, missing. Holliday immediately drew and fired, killing Gordon. Holliday was placed on trial for the shooting but was acquitted, much based on the testimony of Webb. [1]
[edit] Tombstone, Arizona Territory
Dodge was not a frontier town for long, and by 1879, it became too respectable for the kinds of people who had seen it through its early days. For many, it was time to move on to places where money was being made and had not yet been reached by the civilizing railroad. Holliday by this time was as well known for his gunfighter reputation as he was for being a gambler, although the latter was his trade, and the former simply a reputation. Through his friendship with Wyatt Earp, Holliday eventually made his way to the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in September 1880 (Earp had been there since December 1879). There, Holliday quickly became embroiled in the local politics and violence that led up to the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881.
The gunfight happened the day following a late-night argument between Holliday and Ike Clanton, and it happened in the vacant lot and street immediately next to Fly's boarding house where Holliday had a room. The Clantons and McLaurys had collected in the lot before being confronted by the Earps, and Holliday must have thought they were there specifically to assassinate him.
Testimony from an eyewitness who saw the fight begin with a "nickle plated pistol" and a blast of unusual smoke, suggests that Holliday could have started the gunfight, despite town marshal Virgil Earp's attempts to calmly disarm the cowboys. Ike Clanton was never hit. It is known that Holliday carried Virgil Earp's Coach Gun into the fight; he was given the weapon just before the fight by Earp, because Holliday was wearing a long coat which could conceal it. Virgil Earp took Holliday's walking stick. By not going conspicuously armed, Virgil Earp was seeking to avoid panic in the citizenry of Tombstone, and in Clantons and McLaurys.
The strategy failed, for while Virgil held up the cane, one witness saw a man who was almost certainly Holliday poke a cowboy in the chest with the shotgun, then step back. Shortly thereafter, Holliday used this weapon to kill Tom McLaury, the only man to sustain shotgun wounds — a fatal buckshot charge to the chest. This probably happened quite early in the fight, before Holliday fired a pistol. Scenarios in which the slight and tubercular Holliday held a pistol with one hand and a double-barreled shotgun in the other during the gunfight.
Following an inquest and arraignment hearing that determined the gunfight was not a criminal act on the part of the Earps and Holliday, the situation in Tombstone grew worse when Virgil Earp was ambushed and permanently injured in December, and Morgan Earp ambushed by assassins and killed in March 1882. After Morgan's murder, the Earps, their families, and Holliday fled town. In Tucson, while Wyatt, Warren Earp, and Holliday were escorting the wounded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie back to California, they prevented another ambush and began the Earp vendetta against the cowboys they believed were responsible for Morgan's death.
[edit] Earp Vendetta Ride
The lawless killing started with Frank Stilwell, a former deputy of Johnny Behan's, who was in Tucson to answer a stage-robbery charge, but who wound up dead on the tracks in the train yard near the Earps' train. What Stillwell was doing in the train yard has never been explained (he may have been waiting to pick up another man who was supposed to testify in his favor), but Wyatt Earp certainly thought Stilwell was there to do the Earps harm. In his biographies, Wyatt admitted shooting Stilwell with a shotgun, but along with two shotgun wounds, Stilwell was also found with three bullet wounds. Holliday, who was with Wyatt that night and said that Stilwell and Ike Clanton were waiting in the train yard to assassinate Virgil Earp, is likely the second shooter. Holliday never directly acknowledged his role in Stilwell's killing, or those that followed.
After the Earp families had left for California and safety, Holliday and Wyatt, along with Wyatt's younger brother Warren Earp and Wyatt's friends Sherman McMasters, Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion, rode on a vendetta for three weeks, during which Curly Bill Brocius and at least two other men thought to be responsible for Morgan's death, were killed. Eventually, with warrants on six of the vendetta posse (including Wyatt Earp and Holliday) in the Arizona Territory for the killing of Stillwell, the posse moved to New Mexico, then Colorado, in mid-April 1882. Along that journey, while in New Mexico, Wyatt Earp and Holliday had a minor argument and parted ways before going separately to different parts of Colorado.
After the vendetta ride, neither Holliday nor the rest of the vendetta party ever went back to Arizona to live. In Holliday's case, Colorado refused to extradite him (lack of evidence) when he was arrested for the Stilwell killing in Denver in May 1882 (Holliday spent the last two weeks of that month in jail while that issue was decided). He and Wyatt met again in June 1882 in Gunnison after Holliday was released. There is controversy about whether any of the Earp vendetta posse slipped briefly back to the Tombstone area to kill Johnny Ringo on July 13, 1882. Biographers of Ringo do not believe it is very likely.
[edit] Final illness
Holliday spent the rest of his life in Colorado. After a stay in Leadville, Colorado, he suffered from the effects of the high altitude, and his health and evidently his gambling skills began to deteriorate badly.
In 1887, prematurely gray and ailing badly, Holliday made his way to a hotel (the Hotel Glenwood) near the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, hoping to take advantage of the reputed curative power of the waters. However, the sulfurous fumes from the spring may have done his lungs more harm than good,Dying, Holliday asked for a drink of whiskey, and his reputed last words were "This is funny." e looks at his bootless feet, amused as he dies.Perhaps he was looking at his bootless feet. No one ever thought that he would die with his boots off, or in bed.
Holliday's grave is in Glenwood Springs cemetery. There is dispute about whether he is actually buried in his marked grave, or even in the cemetery itself. He died in winter when the ground was frozen and was buried the same day in what was probably a temporary grave. This grave may not have been in the old cemetery, which was up a difficult road on the mountain. It is thus possible his body was never later relocated, but the truth is not known, since no exhumation has been attempted.
[edit] Character
In a (probably ghost-edited) article in 1896, Wyatt Earp had this to say about Holliday: "Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a gun that I ever knew."
In a newspaper interview, Holliday was once asked if his killings had ever gotten on his conscience. He is reported to have said "I coughed that out with my lungs, years ago."
Big Nose Kate,his long-life companion, remembered Holliday's reaction after his role in the O.K. Corral gunfight. She reported that Holliday came back to his room, sat on the bed, and wept. "That was awful—awful," said Holliday.
Virgil Earp, interviewed May 30, 1882, in The Arizona Daily Star (two months after Virgil had fled Tombstone after Morgan Earp's death), summed up Holliday:
"There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man and yet, outside of us boys, I don't think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country; that he had robbed and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit it was hearsay, and that nothing of the kind could really be traced to Doc's account. He was a slender, sickly fellow, but whenever a stage was robbed or a row started, and help was needed, Doc was one of the first to saddle his horse and report for duty."
[edit] "Record" of violence
Wide ranging historical accounts have usually supported the belief that Holliday was extremely fast with a pistol, but his accuracy was not perfect. In his four known pistol uses in single combat, he shot one opponent in the arm (Billy Allen), one across the scalp (Charles White), and missed one man (a saloon keeper named Charles Austin) entirely. In an early incident in Tombstone in 1880 shortly after he arrived in town, a drunken Holliday managed to shoot Oriental Saloon owner Milt Joyce in the hand, and his bartender Parker in the toe (neither was the original man Holliday quarreled with). For this, Holliday was fined for assault and battery. With the exception of his having killed Mike Gordon in 1879, there are no contemporary newspaper or legal records to match the many and always unnamed men whom Holliday is "credited" with shooting to death in popular folklore, and the same is true for the several tales of knifings credited to Holliday by early biographers. All these colorful stories may be viewed with skepticism.
Publicly Holliday could be as fierce as was needed for a gambling man to earn respect. In Tombstone in January 1882, he told Johnny Ringo (as recorded by diarist Parsons) "All I want of you is ten paces out in the street," and he and Ringo were prevented from having that kind of gunfight only by the Tombstone police (which did not include the Earps at the time), who arrested them both. Holliday's role in the deaths of Frank Stilwell and the other three men killed on the Earp vendetta ride remains uncertain, but he was present at the events. Holliday is another probable shooter of Stilwell. Holliday killed Tom McLaury, and either Holliday or Morgan Earp fired the second bullet that ended the life of Frank McLaury. Although Frank McLaury was sometimes erroneously stated to have been hit by three bullets (this is based on the next-day news accounts in Tombstone papers), at the coroner's inquest Frank was found to actually have been hit only in the stomach and in the neck under the ear; therefore either Holliday or Morgan missed Frank.
Biographer Karen Holliday Tanner states that of Holliday's 17 known and recorded arrests, only one (1879, Mike Gordon in New Mexico) was for murder. Actually, Tanner is incorrect, since Holliday was arrested and jailed for murder in connection with both the O.K. Corral fight, and later for the murder of Frank Stillwell. However, in neither case was Holliday successfully charged (the Spicer hearing was an indictment hearing, but it did not recommend indictment; any Stilwell indictment was quashed by Colorado's refusal to extradite). Of the other arrests, Holliday pled guilty to two gambling charges, one charge of carrying a deadly weapon in the city (in connection with the argument with Ringo), and one misdemeanor assault and battery charge (his shooting of Joyce and Parker). The others were all dismissed or returned as "not guilty."
[edit] Mythology
Some have claimed (on very thin circumstantial evidence) that Holliday was involved in the August 1881 death of Old Man Clanton (Ike and Billy Clanton's father) and four other cowboys in a canyon 100 miles (160 km) from Tombstone, while the cowboys were driving cattle from Mexico. However Clanton's death in the so-called Guadalupe Canyon Massacre could just as well have been (and is usually assumed to be) a revenge-killing by angry Mexican cattle-owners who had recently been the target of rustlers (perhaps not the same men they later killed). Some have taken Holliday's use of a walking stick on the day of the O.K. Corral fight (which he traded Virgil for the shotgun), to be evidence that Holliday had been wounded, perhaps at the death of "Old Man" Clanton two months before. However, Holliday was known to use a walking stick as early as 1877, since in that year he was arrested for using it as a club on another gambler, in a fight. On that occasion in 1877 Holliday actually was wounded in the fight by gunfire, but there is no direct evidence that he was newly wounded in the fall of 1881. Actually the cane was typical; Holliday was physically frail through much of his adult life.
One of the better stories about Holliday never happened (and the tale has made it into at least one movie). According to the Stuart Lake biography of Wyatt Earp (Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal), Holliday got into a fight with another gambler (Ed Bailley) in Fort Griffin and knifed the other man to death as the man was drawing a gun on Holliday. Held by the law and targeted for lynching, Holliday was rescued from death by Big Nose Kate, who procured horses, set fire to a building as a diversion, and then drew a gun on the sheriff to allow Holliday's escape. The problem with this story is that no record of any such killing (or Bailey, the man supposedly killed) exists in news or legal accounts of the day. Additionally, Big Nose Kate, at the end of her life in 1940 (after the Lake biography of Earp had appeared in 1931), explicitly denied that the story was true and laughed at the idea of herself holding a gun on a sheriff. (Kate's refusal to embellish or even claim a part in a good story which centers around her, makes her simultaneous report of the action at the O.K. Corral gunfight, which she did claim to see, considerably more credible).
[edit] Photo problems
Is this the same man?
There are many supposed photos of Holliday, most of which do not match each other. The one adult portrait-photo known to be authentic is the March 1872 Pennsylvania School of Dental Surgery graduation photo taken when Holliday was 20. This photo shows a light-haired man with light and slightly asymmetrical eyes. It matches well with the other known authentic photo, a poor-quality (but signed) standing photo of Holliday taken in Prescott, Arizona Territory, in 1879, the year before he went to Tombstone.
The 1879 standing photo shows Holliday had not changed a great deal in seven years, though he sports a mustache and perhaps also an imperial beard (triangular bit of hair left below the middle of the lower lip, combined with a mustache). In the authentic 1879 photo, Holliday is also wearing a tie with a diamond stickpin, which he was known to wear habitually and which was among his few possessions (minus the diamond) when he died. This stickpin is similar to the one Wyatt Earp was wearing in his own most well-known photo.
There are three photos most often printed (supposed) of Holliday, which were supposedly taken by C.S. Fly in Tombstone (but sometimes are said to be taken in Dallas). They clearly show the same man but in three different poses and slightly different dress. This man shows some differences with Holliday in the two authentic photos, and therefore may not be Holliday. The man in these three later photos has much darker hair (though this could have been dyed with hair treatments of the time, or possibly retouched in the photos), and this man may have smaller ears. None of the photos match each other exactly in certain details. For example, a cowlick and folded collar is present only in the oval inscribed photo, several different cravats are seen, and the shirt collar and vest change orientation between photos.
The last of the three later supposed photos of Holliday—in which the subject has a more open overcoat, a more open vest (allowing the bowtie cords to be seen), an upturned shirt collar, and is holding a bowler hat (derby hat)—exists as a print in the Cochise County Courthouse Museum in Tombstone. Other sources for it are sought. It is evidently the same dark-haired man shown in the other two photos, but is yet another image (perhaps from the same photo session in which the upturned detachable shirt collar is worn, rather than the folded-down collar of the oval portrait).
Other, even more questionable photos exist as well.
[edit] Popular culture
The very different personal characters of Holliday and Earp have provided contrast which has inspired historical interest. Holliday was nationally known during his life as a gunman, whereas Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at O.K. Corral became a part of folklore only following Stuart Lake's biography of Earp after Earp's death. As this fight has become one of the most famous moments in the American West, numerous Westerns have been made of it, and the Holliday character has been prominent in all of them.
Holliday, related by marriage to Margaret Mitchell, was said by Mitchell to be the inspiration of the character Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.[citation needed]
Holliday has influenced the fictional gamblers in many Westerns. He is possibly the role-model for the character of the cadaverous gentleman gambler Hatfield (John Carradine) in the classic 1939 Western film "Stagecoach". There may also be some influence of the Holliday legend on another memorable character in the movie, a drunken doctor (Thomas Mitchell as Doc Boone won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for this role). Holliday may be the inspiration of the con-artist lung-cripple character Rizzo in the academy award-winning film Midnight Cowboy (In this film, Holliday's two real-life great loyal friends, the prostitute and the cowboy, have been combined into a single ambiguous character.)
Roy Halladay, ace pitcher for Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays, has claimed the Nickname "Doc" as a result of the semblance in his name to Doc Hollidays
Actors who have played Holliday in name include:
- Walter Huston in The Outlaw, in 1943, a historically inaccurate film.
- Victor Mature in My Darling Clementine, in 1946, an inaccurate version directed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Writer Alan Barra's comment on this movie is that it shows Holliday as he might have been, if he had been a tough-guy from Boston: "Victor Mature looks about as tubercular as a Kodiak bear."
- Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the OK Corral, in 1957, with Burt Lancaster as Earp.
- Douglas Fowley in "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" television series 1955-1961. As with many popular portrayals Fowley played Holliday as considerably older than the historical figure. Taking his cue from the popular Kirk Douglas portrayal, Fowley played Holliday as courtly, temperamental and dangerous. Unlike the Kirk Douglas Holliday, whose anger is often volcanic, Fowley's Holliday maintained a cool, gentlemanly Southern calm.
- Gerald Mohr and Peter Breck each played Holliday more than once in the 1957 television series Maverick.
- Arthur Kennedy played Holliday opposite James Stewart as Earp in director John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn.
- Anthony Jacobs in the 1966 Doctor Who story The Gunfighters
- Jason Robards in Hour of the Gun, a 1967 sequel to the 1957 movie, with James Garner as Earp. This is the first movie to fully delve into the vendetta that followed the gunfight; both films were directed by John Sturges.
- Sam Gilman in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun". Gilman, who plays Holliday as a physician, was 53 years old at the time he played this role. The real Holliday was 30 years old at the time of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
- Stacy Keach in "Doc", in 1971, in which the Tombstone events are told from his perspective.
- Bill Fletcher in two episodes of the TV series, Alias Smith and Jones: "Which Way to the OK Corral?" in 1971 and "The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry" in 1972.
- Dennis Hopper in Wild Times, a 1980 television mini-series based on Brian Garfield's novel.
- Willie Nelson in the 1986 all-singer/actor TV remake of Stagecoach, this time replacing alcoholic Doc Boone with an actual "Doc Holliday" character (who is a medical doctor and consumptive).
- Val Kilmer in Tombstone, in 1993. Several historians believe Kilmer caught Holliday's cheerful mix of despair and courage.
- Dennis Quaid in Wyatt Earp, in 1994, a detailed bio-epic of Wyatt Earp's life where Quiaid plays a much drunk Doc Holliday, and a Doc Holliday with a relationship with Big Nose Kate
- Randy Quaid in Purgatory, a 1999 TV film about dead outlaws in a town between Heaven and Hell.
[edit] References
- "Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend", Gary L. Roberts, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2006 ISBN 0-471-26291-9.
- "Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait", Karen Holliday Tanner, University of Omaha Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8061-3036-9 .
[edit] External links
- Timeline
- More grave and cemetery photos
- John Henry Holliday family history
- Detailed biography of Doc Holliday
- John Henry Holliday arrives in Dodge City from Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, by Karen Holliday Tanner, 1998
- "Where's Doc" from Tombstone Times
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1851 births | 1887 deaths | Deaths by tuberculosis | American folklore | People from Georgia (U.S. state) | American Methodists | Gamblers | American poker players | Cochise County, Arizona | History of the American West | Gunmen of the American Old West
