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Arts & Entertainment

The Gentleman Doc Holliday

The dentist-turned-gunfighter tells his side of the O.K. Corral story in a performance by Wyatt Earp III.

Did Doc Holliday actually say, “I’m your huckleberry,” as Val Kilmer offered menacingly in his portrayal of the gun-slinging dentist in the movie Tombstone?

It was a common 19th century expression, explained Wyatt Earp III, star of The Gentleman Doc Holliday, a one-man show staged Saturday at Camino Real Playhouse. It usually means, “I’m just the man you’re looking for” or “I’m the man for the job.”

But Doc Holliday’s response to a dare issued by Clanton gang associate Johnny Ringo carried a darker meaning. Holliday would play any game Ringo wanted—be it cards or a gunfight—but the outcome likely would not be what Ringo intended.
Examination, explanation and extrapolation of the Holliday-Earp relationship abounded during and after the monologue performance by Earp III, the great-grand-nephew of the legendary Old West lawman Wyatt Earp.

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Earp III literally put a face and voice to the accidental gunfighter Holliday, who grew up in an affluent and close family in Griffin, outside Atlanta. Tall and thin and sporting high cheekbones and a thick handlebar mustache, Earp III assumed the role of Holliday with ease.

In real life, Earp III is a retired insurance salesman living in Phoenix who has been portraying Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday since the mid-1990s. His wife, playwright Terry Earp, wrote The Gentleman Doc Holliday in collaboration with Karen Holliday Tanner, as well as Wyatt Earp: A Life On The Frontier. Tanner is a direct descendant of Doc’s cousin, Robert Holliday.

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The setting for The Gentleman Doc Holliday is a Denver jail cell in 1882 where Holliday has been taken into protective custody by lawman William Barclay “Bat” Masterson and Gov. Frederick Pitkin. Tempers were still running high two months after Holliday and the Earps fled the Arizona Territory following the infamous gunfight with the Clantons at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone.

From his jail cell, Holliday tells the story as he sees it, taking sips from a flask and breaking into coughing spells throughout. Holliday, like his mother Alice, suffered from tuberculosis, called consumption back at the turn of the century. He found that alcohol relaxed his lungs and dispelled the feeling of suffocation.

He was born John Henry Holliday on Aug. 14, 1851. He and his cousin, Robert, both became expert shooters by the age of 10. They learned to play cards and gamble from Sophie Walton, a young mulatto woman working in the household of Doc’s uncle, Doctor John Stiles Holliday.

Doc earned a degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, the second oldest school of dentistry in the United States. His uncle had urged him to become a dentist rather than a physician because “dentistry was progressive and respectable.” With a partner, he opened a dental practice that became the largest in Atlanta. He was just 21 years old.

He was advised that relocating to a drier climate would improve his health, so he moved to Dallas where he also built a thriving dental practice (although his coughing fits would prevent some patients from returning). Then came a severe downturn in the economy, leaving Holliday with a lot of free time. Blessed with a sharp dexterity of mind and hands, Doc found that he could make a living as a gambler.

“Within 10 years, he went from one who heals to one who kills,” Earp as Holliday explained. Except when Earp utters the line, kills sounds like keels. (In a post-show Q&A session with audience members, Earp said he worked with a dialect coach to get the accent just right.)

Earp’s storytelling rolls with irreverent humor and droll self-examination, an homage to Holliday’s sharp wit.

“I can do almost anything with a deck of cards, even tell the future. And from all indications, I don’t have one,” Earp as Holliday said. Knowing he would die a slow death from tuberculosis, Doc Holliday had developed a nihilistic point of view. It seems Doc took an instant dislike to Ike Clanton. “Truth was I wanted to strap him down and pull every tooth out of his head … without the noxious oxide,” he stated calmly.

Earp III noted that the spirit of the Tombstone movie reflected the close familial relationship Holliday enjoyed with the Earps, even if some of the facts got in the way of movie theatrics.

In reality, the Oct. 26, 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral didn’t occur at high noon, but later in the day, at about 3 p.m. The movie suggests a warm day, but really it took place on a very cold day with snow patches on the ground. The gunfight itself took just 30 seconds in a vacant lot a block-and-a-half away from the corral.

“It was cold, so cold,” Earp as Holliday said. “I could see my breath in the air. The funny thing was, I wasn’t coughing. But suddenly I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing the red clay of Georgia again.”

Indeed, Holliday died six years later alone in a hotel room in Glenwood Springs, Colo., where he had hoped the town’s sulfur springs would improve his condition.
In Earp III’s characterization of Holliday, we get to know a man who at times seems apologetic of whom he has become. He was born into a reputable Southern family, afforded an education, raised a mannered gentleman and succeeds as a talented dentist, yet his life is that of a professional gambler, a killer and a drifter.

“Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t have a good name to malign” Earp as Holliday revealed.

As the music of Beautiful Dreamer began, he closed the show with a word of advice: “Take good care of your teeth.”

Like his great-grand-uncle, Earp III is blessed with the gift of storytelling. An appreciative audience, many of who came dressed in Western hats, leather or denim vests, cowboy shirts, jeans, and of course, boots, wildly applauded his performance.

Annabelle Isky, a Playhouse ticket subscriber and a volunteer at Mission San Juan Capistrano, said she was in the audience at last year’s staging of Wyatt Earp: A Life On The Frontier. She said that in viewing a photograph of Marshal Earp, she felt amazement over Earp III’s strong resemblance to him.

“He is really just terrific, and he has said that San Juan Capistrano is one of his favorite places to perform,” Isky said.

Indeed, the day before the show, Earp III spent time with the locals at Swallow's Inn

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