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SJ Reidhead
Category:
History
Publisher: Jinglebob Press
ISBN-10: 1892508133
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 527
Copyright: 2005
ISBN-13: 9781892508133
Legendary New Mexico author Frank Waters did his best to slander Wyatt Earp. Why he did so is still a mystery. After a decade of research, I still don’t know why he did it. Travesty features the original version of The Earp Brothers of Tombstone, that I discovered, untouched, after nearly a half century.
Why did Frank Waters hate Wyatt Earp and his brothers so much? I doubt if we will ever really know. But, we must realize and fully understand his writings about the Earps are a creation of pain and anger against his own life and childhood. They must never be taken for true biography, unless, we are looking at it as his own autobiography. For, in writing biography, authors bring a part of their own selves into play.
Excerpt
Richard Erwin once wrote, “…whenever Frank Waters could find something derogatory about Earp, he printed it, but if it was complimentary, he left it out.”
What did Wyatt Earp ever do to Frank Waters to deserve such, malicious, vicious treatment? Why would a man of Waters’ reputation risk it all on one big lie? Why did he hate Wyatt Earp? Why did he hate Stuart Lake? Why did Frank Waters champion the rights of known outlaws, stage-robbers, cattle-rustlers, and murderers over the rights of a handful of good, honest, God-fearing men? When one compares the résumés, the vita of Frank Waters to that of Wyatt Earp, and to the man he tried to make Wyatt Earp into, some interesting facts emerge.
Frank Waters was a self-aggrandizing, egotistical, aspirant to the good-life – Hollywood style, who lived on the fringes of literary society, until he incorporated it into his own, rather strange worldview. The ultimate narcissist, he was unable to sustain relationships with women for very long. They interfered with the art of being Frank Waters. A failure as a screenwriter and unable to leave his mark in Hollywood the way Stuart Lake did, he retreated to Taos, New Mexico, to create his own little world, his own little round table. Once there, he set out to destroy the man who crossed him, Stuart Lake. The only way he could destroy Lake was to destroy what he perceived as Lake’s creation, ‘Wyatt Earp’, never realizing Lake based his literary hero on a real, flesh and blood man
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Unfortunately, there is much, much more to the pathology of Frank Waters. He was a tragic figure, more deserving of pity than disdain. The problem is, he becomes a difficult person to like. It becomes imperative that we treat Frank Waters more kindly, and much more fairly than he treated the Earps. If not, we are no better than he was.
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