Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal
First American hardcover edition
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| Author | Stuart N. Lake |
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| Genre | Biography, later Historical fiction |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Company, New York |
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Publication date
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1931 |
| Pages | 392 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 31029184 |
| F786 .E12 | |
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931) was a best-selling but largely fictional biography of Wyatt Earp written by Stuart N. Lake and published by Houghton Mifflin Company. It was the first biography of Earp, supposedly written with his contributions. It established the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in the public consciousness and conveyed a mythic story about Wyatt Earp as a fearless lawman in the American Old West. Earp and his wife Josephine Earp tried to control the account, threatening legal action to persuade Lake to exclude Earp's second wife from the book. When the book was published, neither woman was mentioned.
Lake's biography was adapted as the basis for at least three movies: Frontier Marshall (1934); Frontier Marshall (1939); and My Darling Clementine (1946). The 1955 television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, was also based on Lake's book; its success made Lake into one of the first television moguls. A number of writers and researchers have been unable to document many of the stories found in the book, and it is now considered "highly imaginative" and "largely fictional".
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Wyatt Earp were relatively unknown to the American public until 1931 when Lake published his book two years after Earp's death. Lake wrote that the Earps stood for law and order and that the lawmen justifiably arrested some of the Cowboys, and when they resisted, fought the outlaws to a final finish. Lake wrote, "Whatever else may be said of Wyatt Earp, against or for him, and no matter what his motives, the greatest gunfighter that the Old West knew cleaned up Tombstone, the toughest camp in the world." Lake turned Wyatt Earp into a "Western superman".
Lake's creative biography and later Hollywood portrayals exaggerated Wyatt's profile as a western lawman. Although his brother Virgil had far more experience as a sheriff, constable, and marshal, Wyatt, who outlived Virgil, was made famous by Lake's largely fictionalized biography, and Wyatt became the subject of and model for a large number of films, TV shows, biographies and works of fiction that continue to exaggerate his reputation and magnify his mystique.
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