Was anybody ever really known by that title in the old West, and, if so, did other gunslingers seek him out to acquire the name for themselves, as in countless movies?
It’s all fiction, like almost everything associated with movies about the old west.
AFAIK, nobody’s ever documented even one true stand-in-the-middle-of-a-dusty-street, pull-and-draw shootout, much less regular fastest gun contests.
I recall reading one account by an person who’d actually been is some gunfights and he essentially said the secret of his success was that he took an extra few seconds to aim.
Well, there was the inventor of the quick draw, Wellington J. French. Or, as he was known by his friends, “Old No Toes.”
Somewhere back in the Rat Pack days I read that Sammy Davis, Jr., was one fast gunslinger. I also read that he wound up with James Dean’s red windbreaker from Rebel Without A Cause.
Off on a tangent or two:
There was this fella - http://www.ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/html/lyrics/b/ballad_of_irving.txt
Gene Hackman was supposedly the fastest draw on the set of “The Quick And The Dead” because he got in a lot of practice (he isn’t in as many scenes as some of the other actors).
And my personal favorite, Bob Munden, who has truly been the fastest gun alive for many years:
http://www.sixguns.com/range/munden.htm
I’ve seen some film of him trick shooting, he’s a blur.
Nonsense. Everyone knows the fastest gun in the west was Will Sonnett. No brag, just fact.
The shootout between Wild Bill Hickock and Dave Tutt in 1865 was pretty much two guys on a dusty street pull and draw type of shootout. Dave Tutt was taunting Wild Bill about a watch that he had won the previous night in a poker game. A lot of folks think there was a lot more to the argument than a simple watch. Whatever it was about, the two guys ended up drawing their guns on each other.
From here: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/hickok.htm
They didn’t quite just stand there and shoot, but it was pretty close.
There was a gun that won the west.
There was a man, among the best.
The fastest gun or man alive,
a lightning bolt when he drew that colt …45.
Wade Preston as Christopher Colt
I hope that clears it all up.
Cecil addresses this question here.
It’s a cute story, but it probably didn’t happen quite that way. In fact, Hickok probably had his gun out and waiting.
The Shootout between Wild Bill Hickok and Dave Tutt: The Holcombe Version from the Local History Website of the SMSU Department of History.
Source: “Killing of Dave Tutt by ‘Wild Bill,’” in R. I. Holcombe, History of Greene County, Missouri (1883)
As Cecil wrote in his column, this was mythologized into something more than legalized murder, but it’s not in any way a fair quick draw movie-style duel. None of the other contemporaneous sources I found, such as those on this page (which don’t back up what the web writer has to say), mention anything more than Tutt’s being shot and Hickok’s being acquitted. Obviously, if you read the Harper’s Weekly articles, the mythologizing started early and at full bore.
Therefore, I’d like to see something contemporary contradicting the Holcombe piece before I change my mind.
I don’t know about the shootouts in the middle of the street, but you’re quite wrong about regular “fastest gun” contests. They still go on today. We have them every year in a town near here (Montana), and I’ve seen promotions for them in Wyoming, California, Texas, and New Mexico.
I don’t know when they began, but I’d imagine that for as long as people have had pistols and watches with second hands, they’ve timed each other shooting and had contests. At least one group has been holding them for the last 50 years.
The fast draw, in the Hollywood sense, seems to have been unknown in the Old West (as opposed to the showbiz versions of it that were touring the eastern cities even as the Frontier was being laid to rest). John Wesley Hardin makes no reference to it in his memoir; when he was arrested on a train he had his gun tucked in the waist of his trousers and got it caught inextricably in his galluses [suspenders]. After that he got a shoulder holster made.
InvisibleWombat, what you’re referring to is the result of the mythology, not the cause of it. Two totally different things.
What I’m referring to is (in your words) documentation of “regular fastest gun contests.” My facts indicate that these contests do indeed occur, and have for at least half a century. You said nobody had ever documented such a thing, and I provided links to documentation.
My hypothesis is that such contests were going on long before the days of Bill Hickock and Wyatt Earp. If you combine testosterone, noisy weapons, and a method for timing them, it’s pretty close to inevitable that timed shooting contests will ensue. My friends and I did it ourselves as teenagers, timing who could nail three empty cans in the shortest amount of time.
Did you read the OP? The one that referred to Hollywood movies? The one in which the “fastest gun” is regularly tested by wannabes in shoot-outs to see who really has the quickest draw? Have you ever seen the movie The Gunfighter, the best movie Hollywood ever made on this subject, and one in which Gregory Peck was brilliant in?
Do you understand that there is no documentation for those “regular fastest gun contests” in the real old west, which can be the only possible thing I was referring to in my post?
Do you understand what context is? Do you understand the parallelism in the contruction “even one … much less”?
Are we reading the same thread at all?
:smack:
I read and understood all of it, Exapno. Now perhaps it’s time for you to reread what you wrote (fastest gun contests have never been documented), and what I first wrote (“I don’t know about the shootouts in the middle of the street…”).
Okay. Got that much? I wasn’t disputing your statement about people shooting each other in the streets. Now reread where I said, “My hypothesis is that such contests were going on long before the days of Bill Hickock and Wyatt Earp.”
I still feel that fast draw contests have probably been taking place since shortly after pistols were invented, and about ten seconds of Googling traced it back at least 50 years. Instead of debating the point, you keep trying to dodge it with semantics. If you’re trying to change what you said, then come on out and change it.
InvisibleWombat. Before this gets out of hand, I think you should understand that Exapno was simply saying that regular contests of gunfighters in the Old West doing such things was unlikely as there is no documentation prior to the movies of the early 20th century.
Since there is nothing in the OP that requires a discussion of what has happened in the last fifty years in the “Modern West,” let’s just let this disagreement drop.
To others, I’ll leave the thread open, but please post to add info that will contribute only to the question asked in the OP.
OK, Sam, consider it dropped.
If you hit anything small at 75 yards with a cap and ball revolver, it’s pretty much an accident. I believe even the best of those revolvers, meticulously maintained and lubricated, with special care taken to make sure the balls are perfectly smooth and such, might have a group of maybe 2" at 15-20 yards. So at 75 yards probably even the best shot wouldn’t ba able to do better than 6" to 1’ groupings. Now consider a worn, possibly poorly maintained gun, maybe slightly dirty, with balls typical of what might have been available over the counter in the 1800’s… Not much accuracy.