Wyatt Earp

He goes by the name "Wyatt Earp" and is an eerie dead ringer for the quintessentially Western-looking Marlboro Man. But 31-year-old mortgage banker and aspiring actor Glen Wyatt Earp is not about to ride off into the sunset anytime soon. One of the few true-blood relatives of the legendary Western hero, who had no children, Earp is the famous frontier marshal's fifth cousin. (The outlaw was fourth-generation American and the aspiring actor is ninth-generation Earp.

A handmade sign at the edge of the filthy frontier town in AMC's post-Civil War drama, "Hell on Wheels," gives a grim statistic: "Hell on Wheels: Population — One less every day. " Just the opposite seems to be true of prime-time television and its reinvigorated love of the western, where projects are sprouting like cactus in the desert. In the event that all or even some of these gestating network and cable shows get to air, viewers may see the biggest glut of westerns on TV since the genre's heyday in the '60s.

Sure, he's best known as the steely nerved Wild West lawman who faced down the bad guys at the O.K. Corral. But Wyatt Earp may have had a soft and sentimental side too. Brothers Keith and Brian Collins say they discovered Earp's personal photo album while picking through a Hesperia antique shop. Inside the worn, leather-bound album were more than two dozen tiny tintype and carte de visite pictures showing Earp as a child, a teenager and a young adult, they say. They say the album also contains photos of his mother and pictures of two of his three wives.

Sure, he's best known as the steely nerved Wild West lawman who faced down the bad guys at the O.K. Corral. But Wyatt Earp may have had a soft and sentimental side too. Brothers Keith and Brian Collins say they discovered Earp's personal photo album while picking through a Hesperia antique shop. Inside the worn, leather-bound album were more than two dozen tiny tintype and carte de visite pictures showing Earp as a child, a teenager and a young adult, they say. They say the album also contains photos of his mother and pictures of two of his three wives.

Marshal Larry Talvy's phone rang. There was trouble in town. A bunch of men in black dusters with guns were walking down Allen Street. Again. Talvy bolted uphill to the town's main drag, strode toward the armed men and laid down the law, New West style. Show me your permit, he said, or you'll be ticketed for an illegal street performance. It's been 127 years since Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp fought the Clantons and McLouries at the O.K.

Hoping to fill a need for a strong outside shooter, the UC Irvine men's basketball team landed a commitment from Bakersfield College guard Chris Brown over the weekend. Brown, a 6-foot-2 sophomore with two years of eligibility remaining, committed to the Anteaters after a weekend visit and plans to sign a letter of intent with them Wednesday. Brown led Bakersfield in scoring last season with a 19.1 average. He shot 40.9% from three-point range, making 130 of 318 shots.

One of the best-known men ever to sling a gun or wear a badge spent much of his later life in Los Angeles, operating on both sides of the law but always accompanied by a beautiful Jewish woman who was the toast of the coast when Los Angeles' Jewish population was small. In 1879, Josephine Sarah "Sadie" Marcus, an impulsive, 17-year-old San Francisco girl who would become Wyatt Earp's third wife, slipped away from her home in San Francisco's Jewish community to join a traveling theater group.

Boxing referees often take a heap of vocal abuse. Sometimes the abuse becomes physical. Richard Steele ended up on the ring floor being kicked in the leg and chest after he decided Donovan "Razor" Ruddock had had enough in the seventh round against Mike Tyson. The referee is helpless in such circumstances. Well, there was one referee. . . . It was Dec.

A handmade sign at the edge of the filthy frontier town in AMC's post-Civil War drama, "Hell on Wheels," gives a grim statistic: "Hell on Wheels: Population — One less every day. " Just the opposite seems to be true of prime-time television and its reinvigorated love of the western, where projects are sprouting like cactus in the desert. In the event that all or even some of these gestating network and cable shows get to air, viewers may see the biggest glut of westerns on TV since the genre's heyday in the '60s.

A musty old photo believed to show Wyatt Earp as a fresh-faced teen-ager turned up in the archives of a newspaper preparing a story on the legendary gambler and lawman. The family portrait published by the San Francisco Examiner on Friday shows three adults and three children. The Examiner said the picture languished in its photo library until it was discovered recently by an employee. An accompanying article quotes historians who identify two of the adults as Earp's parents.

It's unlikely that Wyatt Earp, the gruff frontier lawman, and Johnnie Cochran, the smooth-talking defense attorney, would have been friends had they lived in the same era. In a way, they've even been on opposite sides in death — in a matter involving a school in midtown Los Angeles. In the 1990s there was a movement to rename Mount Vernon Junior High after Earp because it occupied the site of the gunfighter's last residence at 4004 W. 17th St. "I like the sound of 'Wyatt Earp Junior High,'" City Councilman Nate Holden said at the time.

Hugh O'Brian made a career of playing ruggedly serious heroic types, most notably as the stalwart lawman in the western saga "The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp," which aired on ABC from 1955 to 1961. So it comes a bit of surprise to learn the former Marine drill instructor is kind of a hoot -- the title of the autobiography he's writing is "The Older I Get, the Better I Was, or Fate Is a Four-Letter Word." He tells you he's 84 -- though some sources say he's 86 -- and he "wants more."

Marshal Larry Talvy's phone rang. There was trouble in town. A bunch of men in black dusters with guns were walking down Allen Street. Again. Talvy bolted uphill to the town's main drag, strode toward the armed men and laid down the law, New West style. Show me your permit, he said, or you'll be ticketed for an illegal street performance. It's been 127 years since Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp fought the Clantons and McLouries at the O.K.

Jimmy Stewart's hometown, Indiana, Pa., will celebrate the centenary of his birth Saturday. The actor who played George Bailey, Elwood P. Dowd, Glenn Miller and Wyatt Earp would have turned 100 this week. Stewart died in 1997. Centennial Festival Day on Saturday will center around the Indiana County courthouse and Jimmy Stewart Museum. The museum, which opened in 1995, attracts about 10,000 visitors annually and is the county's main tourist attraction.

Big Nose Kate's saloon in Tombstone, Ariz., is the perfect place for a debate about Wyatt Earp. It has a long mahogany bar where perfumed women in low-cut dresses snuggle up to men in greatcoats and slant-heeled cowboy boots, and the piped-in music sounds as if it came straight from "My Darling Clementine," John Ford's 1946 movie about the legendary lawman. Faux gunfire sounds in the street outside, where re-enactors brandish hog-leg pistols to entertain the tourists.

Colton carries the name of an obscure railroad man, but a famous family helped put the Inland Empire town on the map. The Earps have lived in these parts for more than 130 years, mostly keeping to themselves and keeping quiet about their famous ancestors who won the shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1881.

Impressive but uninviting, "Wyatt Earp" is easier to admire from a distance than pull up a chair and enjoy close-up. A self-conscious attempt at epic filmmaking that feels orchestrated as much as directed, it has noticeable virtues but chooses not to wear them lightly. And at three hours plus, it finally encourages audiences to feel as trail weary and exhausted as any of its characters.

What famous American has been played on film by Henry Fonda, Ronald Reagan, Hugh O'Brian, George Montgomery, Joel McCrea and Burt Lancaster? The answer, of course, is Wyatt Earp, and the intriguing aim of "Inventing Wyatt Earp" is to find out who the lawman really was and how he became a legend of the American West. Earp's fame rests on 30 seconds of rapid gunfire on a street in Tombstone, Ariz., on Oct. 26, 1881.

"Atardy and subordinate genre," sniffed Jorge Luis Borges at the North American western novel in his "Lectures on American Literature," particularly in contrast to his beloved poesia gauchesco --"gaucho literature"--of South America. But that was 1967, and the westerns that Borges referred to were written by Zane Grey and LouisL'Amour.

Tom Gorman's wonderful July 7 article on Goldfield, Nev., "Now-Busted City Awaits Next Strike," prompts me to point out an interesting historical tidbit that might help stimulate new interest and growth in that Western town. Wyatt Earp's older brother, Virgil, arrived in Goldfield in the summer of 1904 to seek his share of the gold being mined around there. No luck. So, to quote from the Tonapah Sun (Feb. 5, 1905): "Virgil Earp, a brother of Wyatt and one of the famous family of gunologists, is acting as deputy sheriff (bouncer)