13 Best Westerns About Wyatt Earp Ranked

Since the early 1900s, Hollywood has brought many different versions of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp's life to the big screen. Believe it or not, it was a long time before people were interested in his story. According to Mark C. Carnes' book "Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies," after moving to Los Angeles with his wife Josephine, Earp would spend a lot of his time hanging around frontier types who worked as actors on the sets of Hollywood Westerns. He wanted a book or a movie made that would portray him accurately, unlike previous publications that didn't tell the real story. In 1928, Stuart Lake, a magazine and film writer who believed in Earp, visited him and began writing one of the most successful Western biographies of all time: "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal" (1931). Once Lake published the book, it became a success, and people in Hollywood started to see the bigger picture.

Stephen Hunter of The Baltimore Sun wrote, "Contemporary accounts suggest that the real Wyatt had two extraordinary strengths: He was always deadly calm, and he was one of those rare men who was quite literally fearless. He'd just stand there, aim and fire, no matter the lead whizzing in the air. He himself expressed it most eloquently: 'Take your time — fast.'" On our list of the best portrayals of Wyatt Earp, we've taken into account every actor to play the Old West icon as well as the quality and cultural impact of the films that featured him. Here are the most notable portrayals of Wyatt Earp onscreen, ranked from worst to best.

This is Val Kilmer's second appearance in a Wyatt Earp film, and this time, he's playing the Old West legend himself. The direct-to-video "Wyatt Earp's Revenge" goes back and forth between Wyatt as an older man (Kilmer) and as a younger man, played by Shawn Roberts. While in San Francisco, Wyatt tells a reporter a very vivid and very historically inaccurate tale about how he and his posse of men went after Spike Kenedy, the killer of his lover, Dora Hand.

Some critics referred to Kilmer's performance of an aging Wyatt as "tired" — this was surprisingly one of the better reviews of the movie. And Roberts' younger version of Wyatt is played with one single expression of his face throughout most of the film. One of the highlight performances is that of Wilson Bethel as a young Doc Holliday, whose take on the character is very maniacal, to say the least. One reviewer called the film "boring, predictable, and extremely poor in quality to boot."

"Wichita" is director Jacques Tourneur's retelling of the early, pre-Dodge City part of Wyatt Earp's career. The film was notable for being Allied Artists' first release in CinemaScope and (as some consider it) a prequel to John Ford's "My Darling Clementine." According to Great Western Movies, actor Joel McCrea was more popular than John Wayne at the time of filming. McCrea had starred in other Westerns prior to working on the film and was a top choice. 

In "Wichita," McCrea plays a young Wyatt Earp with stern morality, opposite Vera Miles' fine performance as Laurie McCoy. Some criticized the casting of McCrea as a young Wyatt because in real life, the actor was 50 years old at the time of filming, and Wyatt was much younger while working as a policeman in Wichita. The Chicago Reader notes that the cast is full of actors from other well-known Westerns, including Lloyd Bridges, Edgar Buchanan, Jack Elam, Walter Sande, Robert Wilke, and Sam Peckinpah in a bit part as a bank teller.

Stuart Lake sold the rights of his book "Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal," to the Fox Film Company for $7,500 and loyally split $6,750 with Wyatt's wife, Josephine Marcus, writes HistoryNet. "Frontier Marshal" was the first movie based on Lake's famous biography that made Wyatt into an American hero. The protagonist, played by George O'Brien, is based on Earp but uses the name Michael Wyatt. O'Brien would later work closely with director John Ford in many movies and became a Navy captain during World War II. Ford would eventually make the Wyatt Earp film "My Darling Clementine" in 1946 and base it off of the second adaptation of "Frontier Marshal." 

The first-ever portrayal of Wyatt seen on screen was by Bert Lindley during a very brief scene in the 1923 silent movie "Wild Bill Hickok." While "Frontier Marshal" isn't the best portrayal of Wyatt on screen, it was the first to really show his character and give him credit to his name as the legendary lawman of the Wild West.

Released in 1971, "Doc" is a unique addition to the film renditions of Wyatt Earp because it made a statement about Vietnam's impact on America. According to historian John Mack Faragher in the book "Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies," Pete Hamill, screenwriter of "Doc," drew a straight line between his script and the Vietnam War. "We were continuing to fight [in Vietnam] because of some peculiar notions of national macho pride," Hamill wrote. "Indochina was Dodge City, and the American [sic] were some collective version of Wyatt Earp." As HistoryNet notes, the film was known for being one of the "dirty" Westerns popular in the early 1970s, presenting a crude, realistic image of dirty, weathered sets and costumes.

The film was also noted for its revisionism and attempt to rewrite the characters fans were used to seeing in previous Wyatt Earp movies. Paul Mavis of DVDTalk described Harris Yulin's version of Wyatt as a "cold-blooded, Nixonian politician who doles out smarmy, unconvincing platitudes about making Tombstone a better place to live for families, all the while plotting and scheming to take over the town and bleed it dry." Stacey Keach does a fine performance as Doc Holliday, and Faye Dunaway's Kate Elder helps light up the screen.

"The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp' was the first adult Western on television and became a top-ten-rated series, reports the LA Times. Actor Hugh O'Brian became a household name and earned Emmy nominations for his portrayal of the O.K. Corral icon. According to True West Magazine, the show also catapulted "the myth of his extra-long-barreled Buntline special." Wyatt Earp biographer Stuart Lake was listed as a consultant for the show. The series followed Wyatt from the first episode, where he becomes marshal of Ellsworth, Kansas, to later episodes, where the lawman moves to Dodge City. According to HistoryNet, "The 'Life and Legend' theme song about brave, courageous and bold Wyatt Earp is ingrained in the minds of many 1950s baby boomers and, indeed, remains as catchy as a goldfish in a glass bowl."

O'Brian took the role seriously and spent lots of time developing the character of Wyatt for the ABC series. One of his proudest achievements as Wyatt was developing the fast draw the lawman was known for. "I didn't want to force them into having to cut away whenever that happened; I wanted it to be realistic," the actor said in a 2005 Archive of American Television interview.

O'Brian spent hundreds of hours practicing the quick draw, which "became a very big promotional tool ... and everybody talked about the quick draw."

When comparing "Tombstone" to "Wyatt Earp" (released just six months apart), more Western fans and critics have chosen "Tombstone" as the better film. It was indeed a gunslinging showdown between both movies, with "Tombstone" also winning at the box office by earning $56 million, more than double the earnings of "Wyatt Earp." "Tombstone" focused on more than just Wyatt Earp's character, and the film wasn't afraid to take artistic liberties that didn't distract too much from capturing the real Wyatt Earp. The film contained an ensemble cast of Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Charlton Heston, Thomas Haden Church, Billy Bob Thornton, and, of course, Val Kilmer's version of Doc Holliday, which is regarded as one of his best roles. The iconic mustache and one-liners were a part of his charm on screen that many remember.

Kurt Russell put a lot of work into the character of Wyatt and even more behind the camera. "I have such admiration for Kurt as he basically sacrificed lots of energy that would have gone into his role, to save the film," Kilmer told The Hollywood Reporter. "Everyone cared, don't get me wrong, but Kurt put his money where his mouth was. He also stated, "I watched Kurt sacrifice his own role and energy to devote himself as a storyteller, even going so far as to draw up shot lists to help our replacement director, George Cosmatos, who came in with only two days prep."