We watched Tombstone the other night, and I’ve been thinking about the movies I’ve seen that feature the Doc Holliday character (I googled–there were 12 as of 1998). (I’ve also seen Gunfight at the OK Corrall, My Darling Clementine and, I think, The Outlaw.)
Doc seems to have caught the American imagination (or mine, at least)–a dying man, drinking to forget, a cool, cynical gambler and talented gunfighter (if you’re not scared of death, you’re calmer and a better shot) and an educated professional, but with his heart in the right place when it comes to fightin’ bad guys. (Doc was a real person and he may not have been like this in real life, but this is the form of the legend that is interesting to me.)
The character seems so very familiar–before checking the list of movies, I would have said that I’d seen the Doc Holliday character at least a dozen times.
So, I am forgetting something? Was the Doc Holliday character (or a knock-off/similar type) in some forgotten TV show? Was he in a book (fiction)? (If not, man, someone should write it.) What other characters are there out there who share Doc Holliday’s qualities?
I clearly remember that Doc Holiday was a recurring character in the old TV series, Wyatt Earp starring Hugh O’Brian and many Westerns on television had a Doc Holiday character wander into it at least once.
Speaking from memory now, and that could be weak, he was on a couple of times on Maverick and as I remember a couple of times on the Rifleman, at least once on High Chaparrel (I think a two-parter). That one was played by Jack Kelly (formerly Bart Maverick). I think he wandered through Bonanza also. He was also on that made for TV movie about dead gun hands that live peacefully in a small purgatory-like town (I think Dennis Quade played him there) that was on USA for quite a while. As I remember he even made an appearance in the television show The Wild Wild West. I vaguely remember him on the TV Westerns Lorado, Restless Gun and Tombstone. I even remember him on Dr. Who and Twlight Zone (or it could have been Outer Limits). I seem to remember a Doc Holiday in one of the Bob Hope Paleface movies and just as vaguely I recall a Doc Holiday character in that Three Stooges thing where they went out west.
Over and above that, he became a “type” and even those Westerns (both TV and movies) that did not call him “Doc Holiday” often had a character that took on the personality of the fictionalized Doc Holiday.
So it is not surprising that he is familiar to you.
By the way, I think the “Doc” in The Outlaw is a totally different “Doc” from Doc Holiday.