Doc Holliday - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

Holliday was nationally known during his life as a gunman, and the O.K. Corral fight has become one of the most famous moments in the American West. Numerous Westerns have been made of it, and the Holliday character has been prominent in all of them. Not all films however, that feature Holliday, or a character based on him, are biographical in nature.

Actors who have played Holliday in name include:

• Cesar Romero in Frontier Marshal, 1939, plays Doc Halliday, a surgeon, not a dentist, who is ambushed coming out of the Belle Union tavern after performing surgery on the bartender's son. Wyatt Earp, played by Randolph Scott, single-handedly fights and wins a gunfight against Doc's killers at OK Corral. Doc's tombstone in Boot Hill, the last shot in the film, reads John Halliday 1848–1880.
• Walter Huston in The Outlaw, in 1943, a Howard Hughes film.
• Victor Mature in My Darling Clementine, in 1946, directed by John Ford, with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp. Holliday is portrayed as an Eastern-born surgeon fleeing his fiancee because of his tuberculosis and dissolute lifestyle. Writer Alan Barra's comment on this movie is that it shows Holliday as he might have been, if he had been a tough-guy from Boston: "Victor Mature looks about as tubercular as a Kodiak bear." Also, Holliday is killed at the Corral, when in fact he survived it. And Ringo was not even there.
• Harry Bartell in the 13th episode of the CBS radio program "Gunsmoke," which aired on July 19, 1952.
• Kim Spalding in the syndicated television series Stories of the Century (1954), starring and hosted by Jim Davis.
• Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in 1957, with Burt Lancaster as Earp. Again, Holliday's feud with Ringo is a large part of the story, and Ringo dies at the Corral. In fact, he was not involved and committed suicide.
• Douglas Fowley in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp television series (1955–1961) with Hugh O'Brian as Earp. As with many popular portrayals, Fowley played Holliday as considerably older than the historical figure. Taking his cue from the popular Kirk Douglas performance, Fowley played Holliday as courtly, temperamental and dangerous. Unlike the Kirk Douglas Holliday, whose anger is often volcanic, Fowley's Holliday maintained a cool, gentlemanly Southern calm.
• Gerald Mohr and Peter Breck each played Holliday more than once in the 1957 television series Maverick.
• Arthur Kennedy played Holliday opposite James Stewart as Earp in director John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn.
• Adam West played Holliday on an episode of the TV series Lawman.
• Christopher Dark in an 1963 episode of the TV series Bonanza.
• Anthony Jacobs in the 1966 Doctor Who story The Gunfighters.
• Jason Robards in Hour of the Gun, a 1967 sequel to the 1957 movie, with James Garner as Earp. This is the first movie to fully delve into the vendetta that followed the gunfight; both films were directed by John Sturges.
• Sam Gilman in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun". Gilman, who refers to the character as 'Dil Holliday', was 53 years old at the time he played this role. The real Holliday was 30 years old at the time of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
• Stacy Keach in Doc, in 1971, in which the Tombstone events are told from his perspective.
• Bill Fletcher in two episodes of the TV series, Alias Smith and Jones: "Which Way to the OK Corral?" in 1971 and "The Ten Days That Shook Kid Curry" in 1972.
• Dennis Hopper in Wild Times, a 1980 television mini-series based on Brian Garfield's novel.
• John McLiam portrayed an elderly version of Holliday in the pilot episode of the short-lived 1981 television series Bret Maverick.
• Jeffrey DeMunn played Holliday in the 1983 made-for-television movie "I Married Wyatt Earp."
• Willie Nelson in the 1986 all-singer/actor TV-remake of Stagecoach. In addition to the alcoholic Doc Boone character of the original film, the remake adds a new "Doc Holliday", also a medical doctor, and a consumptive. Since Doc Boone in the original film is loosely based on Holliday, the remake now contains two characters based on Holliday. If the character of the Southern-gentleman-gambler Hatfield is partly based on Holliday (being played by the thin John Carradine, for emphasis, in the original film), then the 1986 remake actually contains three characters in whole or partly based on Holliday.
• Val Kilmer in Tombstone, in 1993. Sylvia D. Lynch in Aristocracy's Outlaw believes Kilmer caught Holliday's cheerful mix of despair and courage. But his last fight with Ringo is disputed.
• Dennis Quaid in Wyatt Earp, in 1994, a detailed bio-epic of Wyatt Earp's life where Quaid plays an often drunk Holliday with a relationship with Big Nose Kate. Quaid's performance was an insightful one.
• Randy Quaid in Purgatory, a 1999 TV film about dead outlaws in a town between Heaven and Hell.

Roy Halladay, a Major League Baseball pitcher, is nicknamed "Doc" Halladay, a name coined by the late Toronto Blue Jays announcer Tom Cheek.

"Doc Holliday Days" are held yearly in Holliday's birthplace of Griffin, Georgia.

In Fallout 2, a doctor going by Doc Holliday lives in Broken Hills. His dialogue reveals that he was an adventurer before he settled down and became a doctor there.

A restaurant called "J Henry's," featuring pictures and memorabilia of Holliday, exists in Holliday's home town of Griffin on College Street.

A bar called "Doc Holliday's Saloon," featuring murals and pictures of Holliday, exists on Avenue A in the East Village district of New York City.

In Parasite Eve II a portrait of Doc Holliday with the date 1851-1897, can be seen on room 1 in the second mission.