Doc Holliday

This article is about the American historical figure. For other uses, see Doc Holliday (disambiguation).

Doc Holliday
Holliday's dental school graduation photo at age 20 in 1872
Born	John Henry Holliday August 14, 1851 Griffin, Georgia, U.S.
Died	November 8, 1887(1887-11-08) (aged 36) Glenwood Springs, Colorado, U.S.
Resting place	Pioneer Cemetery 39°32′21.987″N 107°19′9.02″W
Education	Graduated from Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 at age 20
Occupation(s)	Dentist, professional gambler, gunfighter
Known for	Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Earp Vendetta Ride
Parents	Henry Burroughs Holliday Alice Jane McKey

John Henry "Doc" Holliday (August 14, 1851 – November 8, 1887) was an American gambler, gunfighter, and dentist of the American Old West who is most well-known for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

As a young man, Holliday earned a D.D.S. degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and set up a dental practice in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1873, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his mother when he was 15. He moved to the American Southwest in hopes that the climate would prolong his life. Taking up gambling as a profession, he subsequently acquired a reputation as a deadly gunman. During his travels, he met and became a good friend of Wyatt Earp and his brothers. In 1880, he followed the Earps to Tombstone, Arizona and took part in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

After Virgil Earp was maimed by hidden assailants and Morgan Earp was murdered, Holliday joined Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp's posse in the Earp Vendetta Ride, during which they killed four outlaw cowboys. The members of the federal posse were indicted by the Tucson courts for killing Frank Stilwell. No longer welcome in the state, the posse members rode to New Mexico and later Colorado. Wyatt Earp learned of an extradition request for Holliday and arranged for Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin to deny Holliday's extradition. Holliday spent the remaining few years of life in Colorado and died in his bed at a hotel in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, at the age of 36.

Holiday's colorful life and character has been depicted in many books and portrayed by well-known actors in numerous movies and television series. Since his death, researchers have concluded that Holliday killed from three to seven men and was present at nine shootouts.

Early life and education

Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia, to Henry Burroughs Holliday and Alice Jane Holliday (née McKey). His father served in the Mexican–American War and the Civil War, during which his father brought with him an adopted son named Francisco and taught Holliday shooting. His family baptized him at the First Presbyterian Church in 1852.

In 1864, his family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, where his mother died of tuberculosis on September 16, 1866, when he was 15 years old. The same disease killed his stepbrother. Three months later, his father married Rachel Martin. While in Valdosta, he attended the Valdosta Institute, where 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 the 19-year-old Holliday left home to begin dental school in Philadelphia. On March 1, 1872, at the age of 20, he met the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery (which later merged with the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine). He graduated five months before his 21st birthday, which would have been problematic since this age was needed both to hold a D.D.S. degree and to practice dentistry as anything other than a student under a preceptor in Georgia.

Doc won awards as a dentist during the Annual Fair of the North Texas Agricultural, Mechanical, and Blood Stock Association at the Dallas County Fair together with his Dallas, Texas dental partner, Dr. John A. Seegar. Holliday took all three awards - "best set of teeth in gold," "the best in Vulcanized rubber" and "the best set of artificial teeth and dental ware.

Holliday did not go home after graduation, but worked as an assistant with a classmate, A. Jameson Fuches, Jr., in St. Louis, Missouri. By the end of July, he had moved to Atlanta, where he lived with his uncle and his family while beginning his career as a dentist. A few weeks before his birthday, the Atlanta papers carried an announcement by noted dentist Arthur C. Ford in Atlanta that Holliday would fill his place in the office while he was attending dental meetings. This was the beginning of Holliday's career in private practice as a dentist, but it lasted only a short time, until December.

Holliday's cousin by marriage was Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind.

Health

Author Karen Holliday Tanner reported that Holliday was born with a cleft palate and partly cleft lip that was repaired by his uncle, Dr. J. S. Holliday, and a family cousin, the famous physician Crawford Long. She wrote that Holliday needed many hours of speech therapy conducted by his mother. Another Holliday biographer, Gary L. Roberts, argues that it is unlikely that an infant as young as two months would have undergone cleft palate surgery in that era, as most operations of this type were postponed until the child was around two years old. Roberts asserts that such an early procedure would have been sufficiently noteworthy as to merit mention in local and national media and medical journals. Thus, he considers it doubtful that Holliday had a cleft palate at all and dismisses the claim that a surgical scar is visible in the graduation photograph. In early adulthood, he stood about 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) and weighed about 160 pounds (73 kg).

Shortly after beginning his dental practice, Holliday was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He may have contracted the disease from his mother. He was given only a few months to live, but he thought that moving to the drier and warmer Southwestern United States might slow the deterioration of his health.

Gambler and gunman

Autographed photo of Holliday taken in 1879 in Prescott, Arizona

Big Nose Kate

One of Holliday's earliest alleged shootings happened on the Withlacoochee River in 1873. A young Holliday, together with friends, went to their favorite bathing place, but discovered it occupied by a group of African-American youths. Holliday and his companions told them to leave, but they were defiant. Enraged, Holliday left and returned carrying either a shotgun or a pistol and started firing. Some of the African-Americans may have started firing at him as well. Accounts of this event varied, as violence against blacks was largely undocumented at the time. Some members of Holliday's family later denied that he killed anyone that day; accounts of other family members and friends said that Holliday killed from one to three of the group. In any case, he moved to Dallas shortly thereafter.

In September 1873, Holliday moved to Dallas, Texas, where he opened a dental office with fellow dentist and Georgian John A. Seegar. Their office was located between Market and Austin Streets along Elm Street, about three blocks east of the site of today's Dealey Plaza. He soon began gambling and realized this was a more profitable source of income, since patients weren't inclined to patronize his practice due to his persistent cough. On May 12, 1874, Holliday and 12 others were indicted in Dallas for illegal gambling. He was arrested in Dallas in January 1875 after trading gunfire with saloon keeper Charles Austin, but no one was injured and he was found not guilty. He moved his offices to Denison, Texas, and after being found guilty of and fined for "gaming" in Dallas, he decided to leave the state.

Holliday went to Denver, following the stage routes and gambling at towns and army outposts along the way. During the summer of 1875 he settled in Denver under the alias "Tom Mackey" and found work as a Faro dealer for John A. Babb's Theatre Comique at 357 Blake street. While there, he got in an argument with Bud Ryan, a well-known and tough gambler. Drawing knives, they fought and Doc left Ryan seriously wounded. Doc left after hearing about gold being discovered in Wyoming, and on February 5, 1876, he relocated to Cheyenne. He found work as a dealer for Babb's partner, Thomas Miller, who owned a saloon called the Bella Union. In the fall of 1876, Miller moved the Bella Union to Deadwood (site of the gold rush in the Dakota Territory), and Holliday moved with him.

In 1877, Holliday returned to Cheyenne and Denver, eventually making his way to Kansas to visit an aunt. He left Kansas and returned to Texas, setting up as a gambler in the town of Breckenridge, Texas. On July 4, 1877, he got involved in an altercation with another gambler named Henry Kahn, whom Holliday beat with his walking stick repeatedly. Both men were arrested and fined, but later in the day Kahn shot an unarmed Holliday, wounding him seriously.

The Dallas Weekly Herald incorrectly reported that Holliday had been killed in its July 7 edition. His cousin, George Henry Holliday, moved west to take care of him during his recovery. Fully recovered, Holliday relocated to Fort Griffin, Texas, where he met "Big Nose Kate" (Mary Katharine Horony) and began his longtime involvement with her. In Fort Griffin, Holliday was introduced to Wyatt Earp through mutual friend John Shanssey. Earp had pursued an outlaw to Fort Griffin, Texas, before returning to Dodge City in 1878, where he became an assistant city marshal under Charlie Bassett.

In the summer of 1878, Holliday assisted Earp during a barroom confrontation when Earp "was surrounded by desperadoes". In Earp's account, a man named Ed Morrison, whom Wyatt had humiliated in Wichita, rode into Dodge together with Tobe Driskill and about 50 Texas gunmen. There, they started shooting and vandalizing before entering the Long Branch Saloon so as to get Wyatt's attention. Wyatt, not realizing what was happening, ran through the front door and the men aimed their pistols and rifles at him, sneering, "Pray and jerk your gun! Your time has come, Earp!" Holliday, who was playing cards and saw the commotion, retaliated by drawing his pistol at Morrison's head and said, "No, friend, you draw or throw your hands up! Any of you bastards pulls a gun and your leader here loses whats left of his brains." The men were then apprehended. Earp credited Holliday with saving his life that day, and the two became friends as a result.

Bat Masterson recalled that when Holliday was in Jacksonboro, he had a gunfight with an unnamed colored soldier, whom Holliday eventually shot and killed. Historian Gary L. Roberts found records of one Private Jacob Smith, who was gunned down at that time by an "unknown assailant". Holliday was still practicing dentistry on the side from his rooms in Fort Griffin, Texas, and in Dodge City, Kansas, 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 practiced dentistry. He gained the nickname "Doc" during this period.

Holliday was primarily a gambler, but he also developed a reputation as a deadly gunman. One known instance occurred on July 19, 1879, when Holliday and former lawman and noted gunman John Joshua Webb were seated in a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Former U.S. Army scout named Mike Gordon tried to persuade one of the saloon girls, a former girlfriend, to leave town with him. When she refused, Gordon stormed outside, one report said he began firing into the building, and when he saw Doc sneaking outside, Gordon shot at him. Gordon, however, missed, and before he could get in another shot, Holliday pulled his own weapon and shot him. When Gordon died the next day, Holliday left town. Doc fled to Dodge City as authorities tried to capture him for questioning and for his gambling. Eventually, Doc settled in Tombstone.

Before leaving Las Vegas however, Holliday was engaged in another gunfight with a bartender named Charles White. According to eyewitness Gillie Otero Jr., Holliday walked into the saloon with a cocked revolver in his hand and challenged White, so as to settle a score. White, who was serving customers at the time, took cover behind a bar, and started shooting at Holliday with his own six-shooter. A duel commenced. Holliday shot White in the scalp. Holliday thought he had killed White and left for Dodge City, but White actually survived the ordeal.

Tombstone

Dodge City was not a frontier town for long. By 1879, it had become too respectable for the sort of people who had seen it through its early days. For many, it was time to move on to places not yet reached by the civilizing railroad—places where money was to be made. By this time, Holliday was as well known for his prowess as a gunfighter as for his gambling. Because of his friendship with Wyatt and the other Earp brothers, especially Morgan and Virgil, Holliday made his way to the silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in September 1880. The Earps had been there since December 1879. Some accounts state that the Earps sent for Holliday when they realized the problems they faced in their feud with the Cochise County Cowboys faction. In Tombstone, Holliday quickly became embroiled in the local politics and violence that led up to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October 1881.

Prior to the gunfight, Holliday had heard that a Tombstone bar owner, Milt Joyce, was spreading rumors about him robbing a stagecoach. Joyce had recently disarmed Holliday's revolver earlier after Holliday's altercation with a fellow gambler named Johnny Tyler. Holliday rushed drunk over to the saloon and sent abuse to Joyce, demanding his firearm back. When Joyce refused and threw him out, Holliday came back carrying a "self cocker" and started firing. Joyce, upon seeing this, brandished a pistol at him, but Holliday shot the six gun out of Joyce's hand, putting a bullet through his palm. Seconds later, he shot Joyce's bartender Parker in the toe when the latter tried to grab his gun. Joyce, on the other hand, quickly managed to counter by picking up his pistol and knocking Holliday out. Holliday was then detained. On October 26, 1881, Doc sought out Ike Clanton when he learned Ike was the one spreading the rumors by getting Kate drunk and pushing her into claiming that Holliday robbed the stagecoach. Doc then challenged Ike to a gunfight. Clanton pleaded to be spared and was pistol whipped by Wyatt later that day. Kate later recanted her false accusation against Holliday.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Main article: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

The gunfight happened in front of, and next to, Fly's boarding house and picture studio (where Holliday had a room) the day after a late night of hard drinking and poker playing by Ike Clanton. The Clantons and McLaurys collected in the space between the boarding house and the house west of it when they were confronted by the Earps and Holliday. It's possible because of the proximity to his room that Holliday thought they were there to kill him. Holliday was credited by the Tombstone Nuggett with killing Tom McLaury and his brother Frank. Holliday may have also wounded Billy Clanton. After Tom McLaury was killed by a shotgun round fired by Holliday, his brother Frank, who had moved across Fremont Street, challenged Holliday. He is reported to have yelled, "I've got you now," and shot at Holliday, grazing him across the hip. Holliday is said to have replied, "Blaze away! You're a daisy if you have." One analysis of the fight give credit to either Holliday or Morgan Earp for firing the fatal shot at Frank on Fremont Street. Holliday may have been on Frank's right and Morgan on his left, and Frank was shot in the right side of the head, so Holliday is often given credit for shooting Frank. However, Wyatt Earp had shot Frank in his torso, earlier, a shot that alone could have killed him and having been hit Frank would have turned away and Wyatt could have placed a second shot in Frank's head. It is also highly unlikely that Morgan fired the fatal shot, as he had been shot across both shoulder blades, possibly leaving him incapable of shooting accurately.

Virgil Earp gave Holliday a coach gun that they picked up from the local stage office before the fight. Holliday was wearing a long coat that would allow him to conceal it. Virgil Earp in turn took Holliday's walking stick, and by not going conspicuously armed, Virgil was seeking to avoid alarming both the citizenry of Tombstone and with the Clantons and McLaurys.

Big Nose Kate, his longtime 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, wept, and said, "That was awful—awful". A 30-day-long preliminary hearing found that the Earps and Holliday had acted within their duty as lawmen, although this did not pacify Ike Clanton.

Earp Vendetta Ride

Main article: Earp Vendetta Ride

The situation in Tombstone soon grew worse when Virgil Earp was ambushed and permanently injured in December 1881. Then Morgan Earp was ambushed and killed in March 1882. After Morgan's murder, Virgil Earp and many remaining members of the Earp families fled town. Holliday and Wyatt Earp stayed in Tombstone to exact retribution on Ike Clanton and the corrupt members known as the Cowboys. Several Cochise County Cowboys were identified by witnesses as suspects in the shooting of Virgil Earp on December 27, 1881, and the assassination of Morgan Earp on March 19, 1882. Some circumstantial evidence also pointed to their involvement. Wyatt Earp had been appointed Deputy U.S. Marshall after Virgil was maimed. He deputized Holliday, Warren Earp, Sherman McMaster, and "Turkey Creek" Jack Johnson. Although sick with tuberculosis, Holliday managed to ride with the posse into the badlands in search of the cowboys. It was in that time that Holliday said farewell to Kate for good.

The Earp party guarded Virgil Earp and his wife Allie on their way to the train for California. In Tucson, the group spotted an armed Frank Stilwell and Ike Clanton who they thought were lying in wait to kill Virgil. On Monday, March 20, 1882, Frank Stilwell's body was found at dawn alongside the railroad tracks, riddled with buckshot and gunshot wounds. Wyatt credited himself as the one who fatally shot Stilwell with a shotgun; other bullets placed into him may have been fired by Doc Holliday.

Tucson Justice of the Peace Charles Meyer issued arrest warrants for five of the Earp party, including Holliday. On March 21, they returned briefly to Tombstone, where they were joined by Texas Jack Vermillion and possibly others. Wyatt deputized the men who rode with him. After leaving Tombstone, the posse made its way to Spence's wood-cutting camp in the South Pass of the Dragoon Mountains. There they found and killed outlaw cowboy Florentino "Indian Charlie" Cruz.

Gunfight at Iron Springs

Two days later, Earp's posse arrived at Iron Springs located in the Whetstone Mountains. There, they came upon eight cowboys camping in the springs, and the posse decided to sneak around and ambush the cowboys. Things went bad when the cowboys, well-hidden in the bank, surprised and ambushed the party instead. Outnumbered and outgunned, Holliday, Johnson, and McMaster fled to find cover. Holliday also assisted Vermillion who got pinned down under his horse. Wyatt Earp in retaliation, stood his ground and killed Curly Bill Brocius, who was a prime suspect in Morgan's death, with a shotgun to the chest. Earp also shot two other cowboys with his pistol, Johnny Barnes in the chest and Milt Hicks in the shoulder. Holliday gave covering fire as the posse retreated from the mountains. Barnes, mortally wounded, died afterward. Holliday left his own record of the battle during an interview.

Holliday and four other members of the posse were still faced with warrants for Stilwell's death. The group elected to leave the Arizona Territory for New Mexico and then Colorado. While in Trinidad, Colorado, Wyatt Earp and Holliday parted ways, going separately to different parts of Colorado. Holliday arrived in Colorado in mid April 1882.

Extradition fails

On May 15, 1882, Holliday was arrested in Denver on the Arizona warrant for murdering Frank Stilwell. Wyatt Earp, fearing that Holliday could not receive a fair trial in Arizona, asked his friend Bat Masterson, Chief of Police of Trinidad, Colorado, to help get Holliday released. The extradition hearing was set for May 30. Late in the evening of May 29, Masterson needed help getting an appointment with Colorado Governor Frederick Walker Pitkin. He contacted E.D. Cowen, capital reporter for the Denver Tribune, who held political sway in town. Cowen later wrote, "He submitted proof of the criminal design upon Holliday's life. Late as the hour was, I called on Pitkin." After meeting with Masterson, Pitkin was persuaded by whatever evidence he presented and refused to honor Arizona's extradition request. His legal reasoning was that the extradition papers for Holliday contained faulty legal language, and that there was already a Colorado warrant out for Holliday—one on bunco charges that Masterson had fabricated in Pueblo, Colorado.

Masterson took Holliday to Pueblo, where he was released on bond two weeks after his arrest. Holliday and Wyatt met briefly after Holliday's release during June 1882 in Gunnison.

Death of Johnny Ringo

On July 14, 1882, Johnny Ringo was found dead in the crotch of a large tree in West Turkey Creek Valley, near Chiricahua Peak, Arizona Territory, with a bullet hole in his right temple and a revolver hanging from a finger of his hand. The book, I Married Wyatt Earp, supposedly written by Josephine Marcus Earp, reported that Wyatt Earp and Holliday returned to Arizona to find and kill Ringo. Actually written by Glen Boyer, the book states that Holliday killed Ringo with a rifle shot at a distance, contradicting the coroner's ruling that Ringo's death was a suicide. However, Boyer's book has been discredited as a fraud and a hoax that cannot be relied upon. In response to criticism about the book's authenticity, Boyer said the book was not really a first-person account, that he had interpreted Wyatt Earp in Josephine's voice, and admitted that he could not produce any documents to vindicate his methods.

Official records of the Pueblo County, Colorado, District Court indicate that both Holliday and his attorney appeared in court there on July 11, 14, and 18, 1882. Author Karen Holliday Tanner, in Doc Holliday, A Family Portrait, speculated that Holliday may not have been in Pueblo at the time of the court date, citing a writ of habeas corpus issued for him in court on July 11. She believes that only his attorney may have appeared on his behalf that day, in spite of the wording of a court record that indicated he may have appeared in person—in propria persona or "in his own person". She cites this as standard legal filler text that does not necessarily prove the person was present. There is no doubt that Holliday arrived in Salida, Colorado, on July 7 as reported in a town newspaper. This is 500 miles (800 km) from the site of Ringo's death, six days before the shooting.

Final illness, death and burial

Holliday spent the rest of his life in Colorado. After a stay in Leadville, he suffered from the high altitude. He increasingly depended on alcohol and laudanum to ease the symptoms of tuberculosis, and his health and his skills as a gambler and gunfighter began to deteriorate. One of Holliday's last gunfights happened in a saloon in Leadville, Colorado. An inexperienced and arrogant gunfighter named Billy Allen allegedly challenged Holliday to a duel. When Holliday replied that he carried no weapon, Allen sent insults to him, making him leave the saloon bitter. Allen again spoke to Doc, but was said to be armed and had a pistol in his pocket. When Doc saw Allen trying to draw his pistol, Doc let out two shots from his own, one hitting Allen in the arm and disarming him. But at that time, Holliday's disease had already taken a toll on the gunfighter. This was the second or the third time Holliday shot a man in the hand or the arm to disarm them and force them to drop their weapons, his favorite method of dueling, which avoided the risk of capital punishment for killing.

The records of exactly where Holliday's body is located within the cemetery were lost, so the City of Glenwood Springs erected a headstone, but it had the wrong birth year on it. This monument replaced the former monument.

In 1887, prematurely gray and badly ailing, Holliday made his way to the Hotel Glenwood, near the hot springs of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. (The Hotel Glenwood was not a sanatorium, as is popularly believed. The sanatorium in Glenwood Springs was not built until many years after Holliday's death.) He hoped to take advantage of the reputed curative power of the waters, but the sulfurous fumes from the spring may have done his lungs more harm than good. As he lay dying, Holliday is reported to have asked the nurse attending him at the Hotel Glenwood for a shot of whiskey. When she told him no, he looked at his bootless feet, amused. The nurses said that his last words were, "Damn, this is funny." Holliday died at 10 am on November 8, 1887. He was 36. It was reported that no one ever thought that Holliday would die in bed with his boots off.

Recent Holliday biographer Gary L. Roberts, however, considers it unlikely that Holliday, who had scarcely left his bed for two months, would have been able to speak coherently, if at all, on the day he died. Although the legend persists that Wyatt Earp was present when Holliday died, Earp did not learn of Holliday's death until two months afterward. Big Nose Kate later said she attended to him in his final days, but it is also doubtful that she was present.

The Glenwood Springs Ute Chief of November 12, 1887, wrote in his obituary that Holliday had been baptized in the Catholic Church. This assertion in his obituary was based on correspondence written between Holliday and his cousin, Sister Mary Melanie, a Catholic nun. No baptismal record exists, however, in St. Stephen's Catholic Church in Glenwood Springs or at the Annunciation Catholic Church in nearby Leadville, Colorado. Holliday's mother had been raised a Methodist and later joined a Presbyterian church (her husband's faith) but objected to the Presbyterian doctrine of predestination and reconverted to Methodism publicly before she died, saying she wanted her son John to know what she believed. Holliday himself was later to say that he had joined a Methodist church in Dallas. At the end of his life, Holliday had struck up friendships with both a Catholic priest, Father E.T. Downey, and a Presbyterian minister, Rev. W.S. Randolph, in Glenwood Springs. When he died, Father Downey was out of town, and so Rev. Randolph presided over the burial at 4 pm on the same day Holliday died. The services were said to be in the presence of "many friends."

He is buried in Linwood Cemetery overlooking Glenwood Springs. Because it was November and the ground may have been frozen, some authors like Bob Boze Bell have speculated that Holliday could not have been buried in his marked grave in the Linwood Cemetery, which was only accessible via a difficult mountain road. Holliday biographer Gary Roberts, however, has located evidence that other bodies were transported to the Linwood Cemetery at the same time of the month that year. And the papers reported at the time explicitly that the burial was in the Linwood Cemetery; no exhumation has been attempted.

Character

Throughout his lifetime, Doc was known by many of his peers as a tempered, but calm Southern gentleman. In an 1896 article Wyatt Earp said that "Doc was a dentist, not a lawman or an assassin, 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 six-gun that I ever knew."

In a newspaper interview Holliday was once asked if his conscience ever troubled him. He is reported to have said, "I coughed that up with my lungs, years ago."

Public reputation

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." He and Ringo were prevented from a gunfight only by the Tombstone police (which did not include the Earps at the time), who arrested them both. During the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Holliday likely killed Tom McLaury and probably fired the second bullet that hit Frank McLaury. Although Frank McLaury is sometimes erroneously stated to have been hit by three bullets (based on the next-day news accounts in Tombstone papers), the coroner's inquest found Frank was hit only in the stomach and through the back of the head under his ear, which was Holliday's based on their last position during the fight. Holliday was also present at the death of Frank Stilwell in Tucson, Arizona, and the other three men killed during the Earp Vendetta Ride. Overall, Holliday was arrested 17 times, but he was never given any jail time. Four attempts were made to hang him and he survived ambush five times.

Stabbings and shootings

Much of Holliday's violent reputation was nothing but rumors and self-promotion. However, he showed great skill in gambling and gunfights on several occasions. Even though Holliday was sick with tuberculosis, it didn't hamper his ability as a gambler and a marksman. Holliday was ambidextrous and was known to have carried two pistols into fights. There were three to four instances that Holliday used a shotgun. With the exception of Mike Gordon in 1879 and a few other victims, there are no contemporary newspaper accounts or legal records that match the many unnamed men whom Holliday is credited with killing in popular folklore. The same is true for the several tales of knifings credited to Holliday by early biographers. Some scholars argue that Holliday may have encouraged the stories about his reputation although his record never supported those claims. Overall, Holliday was in at least five one-on-one gunfights in his lifetime.

In a March 1882 interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Virgil Earp told the reporter, "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 that it was hearsay, and that nothing of the kind could really be traced up to Doc's account."

Arrests and convictions

Biographer Karen Holliday Tanner found that Holliday had been arrested 17 times before his 1881 shootout in Tombstone. Only one arrest, an 1879 shootout with Mike Gordon in New Mexico, was for murder. Holliday was not successfully prosecuted. In the preliminary hearing following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Judge Wells Spicer exonerated Holliday's actions as a duly appointed lawman. In Denver, the warrant for Frank Stilwell's murder went unserved when the governor was persuaded by Trinidad Chief of Police Bat Masterson to release Holliday to his custody for bunco charges.

Out of all his other arrests, Holliday pleaded 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".

Alleged murder of Ed Bailey

Wyatt Earp recounted one event during which Holliday killed a fellow gambler named Ed Bailey. Wyatt and his common-law wife Mattie Blaylock were in Fort Griffin, Texas, during the winter of 1878, looking for gambling opportunities. Earp visited the saloon of his old friend from Cheyenne, John Shannsey, and met Holliday at the Cattle Exchange.

According to Earp, Holliday was playing poker with a well-liked local man named Ed Bailey. Holliday caught Bailey "monkeying with the dead wood," or the discard pile, which was against the rules. Holliday reminded Bailey to "play poker", which was a polite way to caution him to stop cheating. When Bailey made the same move again, Holliday took the pot without showing his hand, which was his right under the rules. Bailey immediately went for his pistol, but Holliday whipped out a knife from his breast pocket and "caught Bailey just below the brisket" or upper chest. Bailey died and Holliday, new to town, was detained in his room at the Planter's Hotel.

In Stuart Lake's best-selling biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931), Earp is quoted as saying that Holliday's girlfriend, Big Nose Kate, devised a diversion. She procured a second pistol from a friend in town and then, removing a horse from its shed behind the hotel, set fire to the shed. When everyone but Holliday and the lawmen guarding him ran to put out the fire, she calmly walked in and tossed Holliday the second pistol. However, no contemporary records of any either Bailey's death or of the shed fire have been found. In addition, Big Nose Kate denied before she died in 1940 that the story was true and laughed at the idea of "a 116-pound woman holding a gun on a sheriff".

Photo issues

There are three photos most often printed (but of unknown provenance) of Holliday, supposedly taken by C.S. Fly in Tombstone (but sometimes said to be taken in Dallas). Holliday lived in a rooming house in front of Fly's photography studio. Many individuals share similar facial features and the faces of people who look radically different can look similar when viewed from certain angles. Because of this, most museum staff, knowledgeable researchers, and collectors require provenance or a documented history for an image to support physical similarities that might exist. Experts will rarely offer even a tentative identification of new or unique images of famous people based solely on similarities shared with other known images.

• 
  March 1872 age 20. Pennsylvania School of Dental Surgery graduation photo. Authenticated as Holliday.
• 
  Prescott, Arizona, 1879, age 27; known provenance.
• 
  Uncreased print of supposed 1882 Tombstone photo of "Doc Holliday", age 30; left side of upturned, detachable shirt collar toward camera, no cowlick.
• 
  Creased and darker-toned version of Tombstone, Arizona photo on left.
• 
  Most-often reproduced "Doc Holliday" photo; heavily retouched oval-inscribed portrait with cowlick and folded-down collar.
• 
  Photo of "Doc Holliday" with bowler (derby) hat and more open vest and coat. This is not a retouch or expanded field version of any of the other photos.

Legacy

Life-size statues of lawman Wyatt Earp and deputy Doc Holliday at the Historic Railroad Depot

Doc Holliday is one of the most recognizable gunslingers in the Old West, but he is most remembered by his enduring friendship with Wyatt Earp. Holliday's friendship with the lawman has been a staple of popular sidekicks in culture, and Holliday himself became a stereotypical image of a deputy and a loyal companion in modern times. He is typically portrayed in films as being loyal to his friend Wyatt, whom he sticks together during the duo's greatest conflicts such as the Gunfight at the OK Corral and Earp's vendetta, even with the ensuing violence and hardships they both endured. Together with Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday has become a modern symbol of loyalty, brotherhood, and friendship.

On March 20, 2005, the 122nd anniversary of the killing of Frank Stilwell by Wyatt Earp, a life-sized statue of Holliday and Earp by the sculptor Dan Bates was dedicated by the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum at the restored Historic Railroad Depot in Tucson, Arizona, at the approximate site of the shooting on the train platform. The facial features on this statue are based on the set of supposed portrait photos and not on the two known authentic photos of him.

"Doc Holliday Days" are held yearly in Holliday's birthplace of Griffin, Georgia. In January 2010, to coincide with its sesquicentennial celebration, Valdosta, Georgia, held a Doc Holliday look-alike contest. It was won by local resident Jason Norton.

Places are also named after him, with themes about his life such as a restaurant called "J Henry's" which features pictures and memorabilia of Holliday in Holliday's home town of Griffin, on College Street. A bar called "Doc Holliday's Saloon," featuring murals and pictures of Holliday, exists on Avenue A in the East Village district of New York City. For a time in the 1970s and 1980s, in Valdosta, Georgia, where he formerly resided, the Holliday Skate Palace, a since defunct roller skating rink, was named in his honor.

In popular culture

Holliday was nationally known during his life as a gunman. The shoot out at the O.K. Corral has become one of the most famous frontier stories in the American west, and numerous westerns TV shows and movies have been made about it. Holliday is usually a prominent part of the story.

Actors who have portrayed Holliday include:

• Cesar Romero in Frontier Marshal, 1939, plays Doc Halliday (spelled with an A), a surgeon from Chicago, not a dentist from Georgia.
• Walter Huston was an extremely older Holliday in The Outlaw, in 1943, with no real attempt at verisimilitude. Despite its reputation for introducing Jane Russell to films, the Howard Hughes film was very cheaply made.
• Victor Mature in My Darling Clementine, in 1946, directed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp.
• Harry Bartell in the 13th episode of the CBS radio program "Gunsmoke," which aired on July 19, 1952.
• Kim Spalding in the syndicated television series Stories of the Century (1954), starring and hosted by Jim Davis.
• Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in 1957, with Burt Lancaster as Earp. Again, Holliday's feud with Ringo is a large part of the story, and Ringo dies at the corral. In fact, he was not involved and is believed to have committed suicide.
• Douglas Fowley in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp television series (1955–1961) with Hugh O'Brian as Earp.
• Myron Healey played a younger Holliday in ten other episodes, a masterful characterization demonstrating the same sophistication and gravitas as Fowley without neglecting a notable tongue-in-cheek wittiness.
• Arthur Kennedy played Holliday opposite James Stewart as Earp in director John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn.
• Adam West played Holliday on episodes of three different ABC television series, Colt .45, Lawman, and Sugarfoot.
• Gerald Mohr and Peter Breck each played Holliday in the 1957 ABC/WB series Maverick. Mohr's Holliday (who appeared twice in season 1) was a dark, brooding character, while Breck's Holliday was a semi-regular towards the end of the series run, and was played as a more free-wheeling gambler and operator.
• Christopher Dark played Holliday in an 1963 episode of the NBC series Bonanza.
• 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.
• Jack Kelly played Holliday in a 1967 episode of The High Chaparral.
• Sam Gilman in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun." Gilman, who utters the line 'That joke is all around town already, McLowery. But my name is still Holliday. Doc Holliday' 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 miniseries based on Brian Garfield's novel.
• John McLiam portrayed an elderly version of Holliday in the pilot episode of the short-lived 1981 television series Bret Maverick.
• Jeffrey DeMunn played Holliday in the 1983 made-for-television movie I Married Wyatt Earp.
• Willie Nelson in the 1986 all-singer/actor TV-remake of Stagecoach.
• Val Kilmer in Tombstone in 1993. Sylvia D. Lynch in Aristocracy's Outlaw believes Kilmer caught Holliday's cheerful mix of despair and courage, but his last fight with Ringo is disputed.
• Dennis Quaid in Wyatt Earp in 1994, a detailed bio-pic of Wyatt Earp's life wherein Quaid plays an often drunk 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.

Fiction

• A Wicked Little Town: Book One of The Doc Holliday Series by Elena Sandidge, 2013 ISBN 978-0-9928070-0-9
• Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday by Victoria Wilcox, 2013 ISBN 978-1-908483-55-3
• Holliday Nate Bowden and Doug Dabbs, 2012 ISBN 978-1-934964-65-1
• Doc: A Novel by Mary Doria Russell, 2011 ISBN 978-1-4000-6804-3
• Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name by Edward M. Erdelac, a novel in the Weird West genre, copyright 2010, ISBN 978-1-61572-190-0
• The Buntline Special by Mike Resnick, copyright 2010, ISBN 978-1-61614-249-0
• Territory by Emma Bull, copyright 2007 ISBN 978-0-8125-4836-5
• The Last Ride of German Freddie by Walter Jon Williams, a Novella in Worlds that Weren't copyright 2005, ISBN 978-1-101-21263-9
• The Once and Future Dentist by D. Richard Pearce, 2005, audio published by Escape Pod
• Bucking the Tiger: A Novel by Bruce Olds, copyright 2002 ISBN 978-0-312-42024-6
• The Fourth Horseman by Randy Lee Eickhoff, copyright 1998 ISBN 0-312-85301-7
• Deadlands a tabletop role-playing game produced by Pinnacle Entertainment Group in Law Dogs, copyright 1996, ISBN 978-1-889546-26-1
• Wild Times by Brian Garfield, copyright 1978 ISBN 978-0-671-24374-6

Songs

• "Linwood", written and performed by Jon Chandler on The Grand Dame of the Rockies – Songs of the Hotel Colorado and the Roaring Fork Valley; winner of the 2009 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Song
• Danish metal band Volbeat performs the song "Doc Holliday" on their album Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies.
• The song "Doc Holliday" is featured on the 2010 album Suffocation by Latent Anxiety.
• The band Doc Holliday
• The band Doc Holliday Takes the Shotgun
• The song "Tombstones" from the album "Larry Keel Experience" [written by Larry Keel]

See also

• Lottie Deno

Further reading

• Lynch, Sylvia D. (1995). Aristocracy's Outlaw: The Doc Holliday Story. Tennessee Iris Press. ISBN 0-9645781-0-7.
• Roberts, Gary L. (2006). Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-26291-9.
• Tanner, Karen Holliday (1998). Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3320-1.

External links

• "CrimeMuseum.org: Doc Holliday (unique photo)".

• "Detail of Doc Holliday's Travels and Encounters by Date (1875–1887)". Archived from the original on April 5, 2009.
• Skyways.org, John Henry Holliday arrives in Dodge City from Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, by Karen Holliday Tanner, 1998
• Kansasheritage.org, John Henry Holliday family history
• Tombstonetimes.com, "Where's Doc"
• Doc Ancestry.com, Holliday Information, Photos and Genealogy from Spalding County, Georgia GenWeb
• "John Henry "Doc" Holliday". Western Lawman. Find a Grave. January 1, 2001. Retrieved September 2, 2012.