Wyatt Meets Doc Holliday

Val Kilmer's masterful performance of Doc Holliday in Tombstone must have been based in some way upon the delightful performance of Doc Holliday by Douglas Fowley in this episode of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. Kilmer put the finishing touches on Doc, but watch this episode and tell me you can't see Fowley in Kilmer's performance (or vice versa). No other rendition of Doc Holliday in film and TV is as close to Kilmer's as Fowley's was. Looking forward to the next episode of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

The show, as a whole, is definitely one of the best westerns from the mid 1950s. Unusual in it's a capella sound track; and it uses music-free footage and serious dialogue-free moments (silence) that remind me of the style used by European black and white film directors from that era. True, Hugh O'Brian's Wyatt drank only milk and he had no mistresses who were prostitutes, but he does a great job as Wyatt. Besides, we're talking about the 1950s when kids like me idolized the heroes of television. Prostitutes and alcohol would have been unthinkable of our hero back then. But there is plenty of satisfying action. And when it comes to whacking a bad guy unconscious with his Buntline, O'Brian's Earp never holds back and he never hesitates.