Synopsis Of The Movie 'Thoughts On Doc Holliday'

Spencer Penk Masucci

12/2/2017

Doc Holliday Paper

Thoughts on Doc Holliday

Dr. John Henry Holliday was born on August 14th, 1851. was a gambler, dentist, and gunman. He was also a good friend of Wyatt Earp. He is best known for his role as a temporary deputy marshal in the events leading up to and following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. When he had tuberculosis, "Doc" decided to travel west. The Doctors had told John that the drier air of the west would be good for his disease. He was only given one year to live.

He discovered that he was very good at poker, and his new life began. However, gambling in the west was nothing to mess with. Doc carried a six gun on his hip and one on his shoulder along with a knife and used them at will. As Doc ran through towns across the west, his reputation was growing. Many believed that Doc

liked to kill but this was untrue.
He ventured from Dodge City to Tombstone and through Colorado on several occasions. He would often run into people that wanted to prove themselves and take him down. He had a large bounty on his head, and an even bigger reputation. He had a good relationship with Wyatt Earp. Wyatt and Doc would become friends after Doc shot down the two men that attempted to hang him. Wyatt described Doc as, "The was the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, fastest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever saw." On October 26, 1881, Holliday and the Earps entered an intense firefight with cowboys Ike and Billy Clanton, and Frank McLaury and his brother Tom. More than 30 shots were fired in a 30-second battle that came to be known as the shootout at the O.K. Corral. In Tombstone, members of the outlaw Cochise County Cowboys gang repeatedly threatened him and spread rumors that he had robbed a stage. On October 26, 1881, Tombstone city marshal Virgil Earp deputized Holliday. When the lawmen attempted to disarm five members of the Cowboys, which resulted in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It's arguably the most legendary gunfight ever fought in the American West.
After a long battle with Tuberculosis, Doc decided to go to Glenwood Springs, CO, to try the sulfur vapors. He spent his last fifty-seven days in bed. One day he woke and asked for a glass of whiskey. He drank it and said, "This is funny", and passed away on November 8th, 1887.
The book and the movie made to retell his story hold true to these facts, but they have different ways of expressing it.

The movie focused on the world around Doc Holliday and while he was one of the most major characters in the movie, there were many times it would spotlight the events of people like Wyatt Earp over him. This helped separate the movie from being more of a biography movie and focused more on the background of his group of peers, which helps give a better understanding to the people he worked with. The book tells the story from a first-person perspective. It describes what is happening in the world with Doc Holliday’s thoughts and words. I do not like this as much as the movie’s approach, as it gives a more limited view on emotions and motives of the other people in his life. To the book’s credit, however, this does give a more in-depth view on Doc’s character himself. In the movie, there are many scenes where Holliday is drunk, under a strong medicine that weakens him, or he is not even in the scene at all. While the movie shows us many scenes of other people, it comes at the cost of being able to focus on Doc

himself.
For someone in the West, Doc was a quite unusual character, being an extremely intelligent and refined man, in a place where these traits were not common. He was fluent in Latin, played the piano excellently, was a fancy dresser, and was very well mannered. Still, he lived life in a constant battle between fighting tuberculosis along with the various outlaws, law enforcement and other enemies he gathered during his time in the west.