‘Doc’ Holliday traded dentist chair for gambling table

From Aug. 29, 2009:

I recently watched an old black-andwhite Western with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature as Doc Holliday. In the movie, Doc Holliday is a surgeon, but I thought he was a dentist.

The movie you saw was “My Darling Clementine,” a 1946 release directed by John Ford. It also starred Walter Brennan as the patriarch of the Clanton family, Earp’s enemies.

I am a bit reluctant to take up this question because it indirectly involves the famous gunfight at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral. There are people who have made studying that shootout a career. A friend of mine calls them “footnote people,” folks who probably could tell you what Earp had for breakfast that day.

“My Darling Clementine” was pretty good. And you’re right: In real life Holliday was a dentist.

John Henry “Doc” Holliday was born Aug. 14, 1851, in Griffin, Ga. He graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 and returned to Georgia to open a practice in Atlanta.

Not long after, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He moved to Dallas, hoping the dry, warm climate would help.

He opened a dental practice there, but things didn’t go so great. Not a lot of people wanted to be treated by a guy with a tubercular cough. And he discovered he could make more money gambling than pulling teeth.

He gambled his way through various Western boomtowns. He became friends with Wyatt Earp in Dodge City in 1878 and eventually ended up in Tombstone and at the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral. One of Holliday’s favorite expressions was, “I’m your huckleberry,” which seems to have been slang at the time for “I’m your guy,” or “Count on me.”

Holliday died Nov. 8, 1887, in Glenwood, Colo., where he had sought relief in the hot springs.

Supposedly, Holliday woke up in his sickbed that day and asked for a glass of bourbon. He drank it, said, “This is funny,” and died.