The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

My parents remember this show when they were teenagers, and so we decided as a family to watch the series together.

Wow! What a treat! The writing in a lot of episodes is excellent, and many episodes could make a movie all it's own, enough to put modern tv series to shame. Many characters are woven into the series and once in a while make reappearances.

The acting is phenomenal. Hugh O'Brien is perfect for this role. His range of acting can range from comical to sheer wrath.

We have a friend that talks about the Gibb-slap, a reference to the TV series NCIS. Now we have a running joke: the Earp-slap! There are scenes where O'Brien surprises real genuine slaps so suddenly! No mere acting here!

The corruption of politics, woman's roles, the pain, pride and conflict following the civil war, a non-drinking Marshall who thinks before he shoots - this is a gem from the 50's.

I also enjoy so many of the faces that briefly appear that also came into their own fame in coming years.

Very impressed with the scriptwriters of the show.

This review is based on the first 13 shows of the first season.

Buried in the credits of The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp is the one that lists Stuart N. Lake as the consultant. That makes it an official Earp project.

Wyatt Earp had the distinct advantage that he lived long enough to have outlived most of his contemporaries and then at the very end of his life in 1929 commissioned his memoirs. Writer Stuart N. Lake did a series of interviews with Wyatt before he died and it was on that basis that a fine biography was published about him. Of course it was strictly from the Earp point of view.

When Earp died, Lake became custodian of the legend. Most of the films subsequently made concerning Earp if you'll look at the credits are based on Lake's book. And of course Wyatt is a cowboy hero. It took the recent films by Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell to kind of put Earp and his accomplishments in perspective.

To deal with towns like the frontier Wichita, Dodge City, and Tombstone you couldn't be a Boy Scout. Wyatt Earp was certainly not that and neither were his brothers Virgil and Morgan. Still this show preserves the legend as it would since it was based on the book of the legend maker.

I don't think any real person has been so blessed as Wyatt Earp to have had the variety of people playing him. Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, James Garner as well as Russell and Costner, I can't think of anyone who's been better preserved for posterity by Hollywood.

Add to the list Hugh O'Brian who got his career role in this series and never was ever really able to shake loose from the casting. He's as good a cowboy hero as they come.

Many of the stories from the series came from Lake's book. I urge you to read it if you can find a copy. There have been a number of attempts to debunk the Earp legend, but his fame and glory will live long, just as the series theme tells us.

I was a big fan of this show back when it was popular; I thought Wyatt Earp was 'the thing'. There was always plenty of action from Wyatt and Doc, and when they weren't taking care of business, Shotgun Gibbs could be counted on for some good gunplay. Two of my favorite western actors were in this one which was another reason for my interest - Myron Healy and Morgan Woodward, 2 of tinseltown's primo bad guys [who did stoop to playing good guys every now and then]. To see these two actors now I must watch some old western that might pop up on tv from time to time. I'll wager the real Wyatt wasn't a handsome, flashy dresser like O'Brien: more like an unwashed thug. Ah, Hollywood.

This prime-time Emmy nominated series along with "Gunsmoke", and "Cheyenne" set the stage that launched a great era of television Westerns. "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" was one of the tremendously popular half-hour shows that featured changes in locate while adding characters and changes of the actors playing the parts. Originally offer to George Montgomery, the title part went to lean and athletic actor Hugh O'Brien who remained with the series throughout it's entire six-year run who appeared in all 229 episodes. This was one of the great Desilu produced Westerns to come out of the mid-1950's with big name guest stars and superb writing and direction in all episodes. "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" premiered on ABC's prime-time schedule on September 6, 1955 premiering exactly four days before "Gunsmoke"(which aired on a rival television network) and produced by Robert Sisk, Louis F. Edelman, and Roy Rowland(who served as the executive producers of this series). "Wyatt Earp" was placed on ABC's Tuesday night schedule in prime-time for the remainder of it's run which aired at 8:30pm eastern/7:30pm central. The series was produced by Desilu Productions(the production company founded by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball)and was filmed at the Desilu-Cahuenga Studios. The show's sponsors throughout it's run were The General Mills Corporation, Proctor & Gamble, and The Parker Pen Company. A total of 229 episodes were produced in black and white from September 6, 1955 until the final episode of the series on June 27,1961. Interesting note about this show. An off-camera barbershop quartet(The Ken Darby Singers)sang the theme song and hummed the background music during the first two seasons.

Hugh O'Brien was the perfect choice as Wyatt Earp,the fictional character whose reign of law and order in the Old West set the stage for what was to come. During the series six-year run, it started with Wyatt's experiences as the deputy town marshal for the first four episodes in Ellsworth, Kansas and then moving towards Wichita,Kansas. There the show shifted from his stint in Dodge City, Kansas to Tombstone,Arizona Territory(toward the show's final two seasons). This brilliantly produced and intelligent writing of this series brought on board great guest stars as well as keeping TV-Viewers tuned in for some great action sequences that made this show stand out from all the other Westerns that came during the mid-1950's. Some of the best writers lend themselves to some of the great episodes ranging from John Dunkel to Wells Root, Frederick Hazlitt-Brennan, Buck Houghton, Dan Ullman, to Michael Fessier, Thomas Reed, Richard Sanville, and Celeste Plank. Big name directors like Frank McDonald, Roy Rowland, Paul Landres, Sidney Salkow and Lewis R. Foster contribute to some of the episodes.

Several big name guest stars appeared on this series ranging from newcomers like Angie Dickinson, Ed Nelson, James Coburn, Stacy Harris, Mike Connors(the future "Mannix"), Ron Ely(the future "Tarzan"),and James Best, Robert Fuller(the future "Laramie"), along with Steve Brodie to seasoned actors like Morgan Woodward, Paul Brinegar, Ray Kellogg, Denver Pyle, Lash La Rue, to Glenn Strange, John Anderson, John Dehner, Gloria Talbott, Gregory Walcott, Jean Allison, Harold J. Stone, along with Barney Phillips, Adele Mara, Whit Bissell, Sheb Wooley, Eddy Waller, John Carradine, Patricia Donahue, Frank Ferguson, Ellen Corby, and Marie Windsor. After "The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp" was canceled on June 27, 1961 after six seasons and 229 episodes, the show that replaced it in the fall of 1961 was the short-lived situation comedy series "Calvin and the Colonel"