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often ruthless, era in which Wyatt lived and served; It wty<br />
a time for men of action. It was a time when planned,<br />
purposeful action by the individual held promise of great<br />
rewards and opportunities. It was a time when there was<br />
space-room to roam untrammeled by the fetters of a modern<br />
industrial economy. Room to roam and time to enjoy<br />
roaming. Not that I want to go back to that period; I don't.<br />
But it was a time of which men have dreamed since Adam;<br />
a time and place where a combination of circumstances<br />
momentarily made it possible for a large number of human<br />
beings to achieve a high degree of individual freedom;<br />
freedom from political, economic and social conventions<br />
which bind'mei to one hearth, one job, one city, one state,<br />
and one exacting set of rules and regulations.<br />
That such a "freed~min.time and space" ever really<br />
existed even in Wyatt' Earp's West is, of course, impossible,<br />
but in his day as now people all over the. world<br />
thought it did. That is why the "Western"-be it book,<br />
magazine, movie, radio or TV production-after a hundred<br />
years is still the most popular entertainment both here and<br />
overseas. Western books, western movies, TV westerns<br />
such as Wyatt Earp, Gunhmoke (CBS) and Frontier<br />
(NBC), are ~rinted and shown in almost every country in<br />
the world including Russia, China and Iceland.<br />
Wyatt Earp had one other important characteristic that<br />
made it possible to re-enact his life and legend without<br />
apology or reservation. Earp was a respecter of persons,<br />
of property, of the law. Unlike his good friends, "Bat"<br />
*Masterson and "Wild Bill" Hickok, he was not a killer,<br />
?"though he did kill when he had to. Though his work often<br />
required him to wade in the slime and filth of such "sinks<br />
)of sin and iniquity" as Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City<br />
, find, finally, Tombstone, little, if any, of the dirt ever stuck<br />
tfitJ& boots or blackened his reputation.<br />
/Sfot that Wyatt was a paragon of virtue or even a<br />
Real Wyatt Earp looked calm as a banker but when he ,<br />
strapped on his Colts to pacify cowtown he was deadly.
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