Doc
Director: Frank Perry
Year: 1971
Rating: 6.0
In all the Wyatt Earp films, Doc Holliday
is always the most interesting character. While Wyatt is a straight arrow
full of a sense of justice, Holliday is a more complicated shaded person
with ethics that were adjustable. But his loyalty was not. A gambler, a gunman,
a scholar, literate in a few languages and slowly dying from tuberculosis.
In this film he gets the front seat with Wyatt playing second fiddle. So,
a few historical facts about the man.
Born in Georgia, he went to university and
then graduated from a school of dentistry. And was by all accounts and awards
a very good one. He would likely have been a dentist all his life but he
caught TB from his dying mother and was told that he only had months to live
unless he moved out west to a dryer climate. He set up shop there but repeated
coughing spells put an end to that. So, he took up gambling and found out
that he was good at it. He was good with a gun as well and had his share
of confrontations though how many he killed is thought by researchers to
be between three and fifteen. He was in a saloon gambling in Texas when Earp
came in looking to arrest a few folks - they all had their guns pointed at
him - and were about to shoot when Holliday got up, held a gun to the head
of their leader and told them to stop. Earp and Holliday became fast friends
and often found themselves in the same town a few times. After the O.K. Corral
and the killings afterwards, Doc drifted away and got sicker. The scene in
Tombstone was real - his last words looking at his bare feet in bed - were
- "that's funny" because he always thought he would die with his boots on.
He was 36.
Doc here as played by Stacy Keach is a fairly
reasonable man without the idiosyncrasies that other films load on him. It
is his friend Wyatt (Harris Yulin) who is deranged to the point that he is
nearly psychotic. It is an interesting interpretation. He is the bad guy
in this one. Wyatt keeps pushing the Clanton's till they really have little
choice but to challenge him at the O.K Corral - and no fair play here - Wyatt,
his two brothers and Doc just start blasting away with shotguns before the
Clanton's even draw. Wyatt does it to polish his reputation for an election
run for Sheriff. Basically, he is bat shit crazy. Doc is there because Wyatt
is his friend and you stick with your friends even when you know they are
wrong.
The film opens though with Doc entering
a small bar out of a dust storm and offering to gamble his horse for a woman
with a man. He wins. The man is a Clanton. She is covered with grime head
to foot, looking like an adult version of Pig-Pen. But off they go to a bedroom
with dirty sheets. In the morning she looks better when she is cleaned up
- Faye Dunaway better. He moves on to Tombstone, so does she to work as a
prostitute - he decides he loves her and they play house. None of that is
true though it has echoes of such. The only woman he spent much time with
was Big Nose Kate who he had met in Texas in 1877. She was a dance hall girl
and was with Holliday in Tombstone when the OK Corral came to pass. After
Doc died, she later married and lived to 1940 at the age of 90. Damn, people
led fascinating lives back then.
