A Dozen Actors Who Have Played Doc Holliday in the Movies

Born of an August 14, John Henry “Doc” Holliday (1851-1887): gunfighter, gambler, dentist, and TB sufferer.

Holliday was a classically educated son of Georgia, who got his dentistry degree in Philadelphia at age 20. (Some movies elevate him to a physician and surgeon, intending, I guess, to make him seem more glamorous). Not long after Holliday started practicing dentistry he contracted tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his mother. This is why he initially moved to the Southwest, for the warmer, drier climate. He moved around a lot, from Dallas to Denver to Cheyenne to Deadwood. His practice fell off, and he began to make his living by gambling. Scholars have determined that his career as a gunfighter has been exaggerated. He is believed to have killed 1-3 men, rather than the dozen he boasted of (or has been embellished in biographies). Holliday’s most celebrated adventure was his support of lawman Wyatt Earp in The Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, 1881. In his last years he depended increasingly on alcohol and laudanum to deal with his TB. He died at a Colorado spa in 1887, at the age of 36.

Hollywood has told the story of the Earp Brothers and Holliday many and many a time. Almost every treatment has taken audiences far wide of the truth mark and are pretty unsatisfying in one way or another. Holliday is usually depicted as nasty and moody, fatalistic, and given to rash and risky behavior, his death being imminent in any case. He drinks a lot in saloons, and causes as much trouble as he solves. But he is a loyal friend, and rises to the occasion when his help is required. Here are twelve of the actors who have played him:

Cesar Romero, Frontier Marshal(1939, Allan Dwan)

Kent Taylor, Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942)

Walter Huston, The Outlaw (1943, Howard Hughes)

Victor Mature, My Darling Clementine (1946, John Ford)

Douglas Fowley, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955-61, television series)

Kirk Douglas, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957, John Sturges)

Arthur Kennedy, Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

Jason Robards,Hour of the Gun, (1967, John Sturges)

Stacy Keach, Doc (1971, Frank Perry)

Willie Nelson, Stagecoach (1986)

Val Kilmer,Tombstone (1993)

Dennis Quaid, Wyatt Earp (1994, Lawrence Kazdan)

Randy Quaid, Purgatory (1999)

My favorite amongst the existing portrayals, it may surprise you to know, is Dennis Quaid’s! The word is that Jeremy Renner is slated to play Doc in an upcoming bio-pic, as well.