The legend of Doc Holliday is now well past a century old. While his time on earth was brief, troubled and filled with pain, his legend took wings and flew. Beginning with his part in the now famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Denver newspapers first told his story in the late 19th century. They, followed by words of Wyatt Earp, grasped the glimmer of his tale. So enamored was the public that by 1939 he was a literary icon and his character had appeared in eight films. Historians, authors, screenwriters and eventually television refined the legend, which reached its apex perhaps with the 1993 film Tombstone. Doc Holliday’s image has neither dimmed nor wavered in the 21st century. Broadway, country music and art join with literature and film to continue his mystique as the personification of a surviving legend of the U.S. West.

After teaching at Texas and Montana colleges, and contributing to numerous journals, Shirley Ayn Linder now lives in Midland, Texas, where she continues to study and write on the history of the old West.

Shirley Ayn Linder

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 200
Bibliographic Info: 23 photos, notes, filmography, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7335-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0330-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments ix
Foreword by Paul A. Hutton 1
Preface 3
Introduction 5
One—Facts and Early Fantasies 7
Two—The Legend Begins 38
Three—The Great Depression 52
Four—The War Years 66
Five—The Glory Days 77
Six—The Tragic Sixties 97
Seven—The Sinking Seventies 108
Eight—The Ignoble Eighties 116
Nine—The Legendary West at the Turn of the Century 123
Ten—Doc Holliday in the New Millennium 140
Chapter Notes 157
Filmography 171
Bibliography 174
Index 183

• “recommended”—ARBA
• “fascinating…most entertaining”—Western Clippings
• “the book is charming, informative, and pleasantly humorous in its pursuit of Holliday through history and popular culture”—Western Historical Quarterly
• “a fun read, an excellent critical study, and literary and film history”—The Journal of Arizona History