CLEWS The Historic True Crime Blog

Depp as Dillinger

By now you may have heard that Johnny Depp is to play John Dillinger in a movie scheduled for release in 2009. Christian Bale will play Melvin "Stick 'em up, Johnny" Purvis.

Filming is taking place now in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The locals are taking sneak photos and are pretty excited. So are the Gangsterologists, because the production company and at least one of the actors have been in contact with respected crime historians and descendants to get all those little details about the machine-gun bandits just right.

The photo of Johnny Depp (above) comes from this anonymous blogger, who actually took the photos. He advises that they have been cut and pasted all over the Internet by professional media who did not (as I now have) seek permission (tsk, tsk, copyright violation).

It sure sounds as though they're making every effort to create an authentic film. The photos show the actual 1932 Studabaker sedan used by Dillinger's gang (owned by Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, IL) to rob a bank in Greencastle, Indiana in 1933.

The Hollywood Newsroom also has sneak photos. (Quips Rick Mattix: "Without the mustache Depp looks like a teenager. Mebbe he's playing Baby Face Dillinger?")

The film is based on Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, adapted by Oscar-winning director Michael Mann, a Chicago native. (Burrough (Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal) is the fellow yours truly recently dubbed a snotty jerk. Yikes. Did I say that?)

Methinks these folks will take the money and run.

For more reading, check out The John Dillinger Died For You Society

Historic True Crime at the Cinema: Savage Grace

It would take a writer who knows a lot more adjectives than I do to properly describe the Baekeland murder case.

It's the twisted tale of Barbara Baekeland, a woman so warped by wealth that she thought she could cure her son of homosexuality by seducing him.  Filthy rich indeed.

The film adaptation of the true crime book Savage Grace just roared through the Sundance film festival and caught the attention of the folks at Blogging Sundance. It stars Julianne Moore as maternal seductress and murderee. The book was written twenty-some years ago by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson. Time Magazine didn't know what to make of it, but the Times loved it.

These are such strange and unsettling tales - and extremely rare, isn't that right?  Do you recall Sante and Kenny Kimes? And there's Oedipus.... Do you know of other mother-son love murders? My, my, womankind, always producing a variation to astound us anew.

For more on the movie: IMBD on Savage Grace

Old True Crime Cases in the News, on TV, and at the Picture Show

True Crime Author: 'I'm afraid of the Zodiac case'  Next week, Hollywood's $80+million retelling of the Zodiac's murder spree will hit theaters. From a recent article in the San Jose Mercury-News: "I'm afraid of the case,'' admitted San Francisco true-crime author Robert Graysmith. "It is so obsessive, once you get into it, you find it hard to get out.'' He should know: he penned the two Zodiac books the new movie is based on."

Dominick Dunne Takes On the Perry March Case And some folks aren't too happy about it. Perry March was eventually convicted of the murder of his wealthy wife, Janet March.

A Journey From Murder to Theology? True crime devotees remember Jens Soering (photo) as the guy who brutally slashed his girlfriend's parents and was convicted for it. Twenty-two years afterward and he's a prison philosopher with four books on theology and reform. From The Virginian-Pilot:

Jens Soering stands apart from most of the Virginia prison system's 31,000 inmates. And not just because he is serving a double life sentence for a pair of grisly murders.

He has attracted dozens of influential supporters - including the German ambassador to the United States and the Most Rev. Walter F. Sullivan, bishop emeritus of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond. They and others hail him as an up-and-coming theologian and prison reformer....

The sensational case had all the elements - money, privilege, obsessive love, gruesome violence and an international flight from the authorities. It made Soering the biggest news that part of Virginia had seen in ages. He was Geraldo material, a true-crime heavyweight. He was 24-hour cable gabfest fodder before there were 24-hour gabfests....

The Mythic Tale of a Card Game Gone Wrong A great article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel describes some of the art and music that a famous Christmas murder inspired:

On Christmas night, 1895, Lee Shelton and Billy Lyons were playing cards at a saloon called the Bucket of Blood in St. Louis. At some point during the night, an argument broke out between the two men, supposedly over Shelton's Stetson hat. Though the details have been blurred by the passing century, what is known is that Shelton, forever more to be known as "Stagger Lee," shot Lyons to death, and was sent to prison, where he died in 1912 at the age of 47.

As word of the crime spread throughout the years, the story took on a life of its own, in the songs of blues and folk musicians, who each told their own take on the now mythic tale of a card game gone wrong, and a man's pride in his hat. The murder ballad of "Stagger Lee" has been sung by artists as varied as Mississippi John Hurt, Woody Guthrie, Lloyd Price, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, The Clash, and Nick Cave, all performing different versions of the song over the years....

The Jacob Ade Family Murder Steve Huff wrote a mesmerizing story of a family murdered in 1897 and a possible answer to the riddle that fans of very well written historic true crime stories are bound to admire.

A South African Guide to Crime and other Cool Links

... gentlemen, I propose to guide your studies, from Cain to Mr. Thurtell. Through this great gallery of murder, therefore, together let us wander hand in hand, in delighted admiration, while I endeavor to point your attention to the objects of profitable criticism.
--DeQuincey

Our Guide to the Bloody Delights of South Africa The website is Famous South African Crimes. Our guide is Mr. Rob Marsh, who offers for download his entire book, a collection of infamous cases. Some of the juicier-sounding tidbits, as listed in the index:

The Case of Dorothea Kraft, or, When witchcraft fails - The first woman hanged in the Union of South Africa, 1918

Petrus Hauptfleisch - 1925 - an infamous case of matricide.

Maria Lee - 1947 - arsenic poisoner

But there's all sorts of other cases for you folks who indulge in stories of wife killers, husband killers, assassinations, mass murders, spree killers and whatnot.

Ditto, Australia The leading authority on crime Down Under is The Australian Police Journal. In sixty years of publication, "for police officers and for true crime enthusiasts it has become the magazine of record" (The Australian). The current issue, for example, features stories about Ned Kelly, the Wickham Terrace Massacre, and other tidbits for the true crime fanatic. Alas, you have to have a subscription.

True Crime Carnival 58 The true crime bloggers have their weekly dispatch, which is now picked up by Google Alert.

True Crime Conquers the Laundrymat The Long Island, NY authorities have decided to end their fugitive problem by publishing a true crime magazine that they will distribute for free. "The county is launching a magazine that will profile most wanted felons and alert residents of local crimes," reports the local media. "Fugitive Finder Magazine will be funded by advertisers and distributed to about 200 supermarkets, coin-operated laundries, video stores and other locations. The county says it will circulate 25,000 copies."

Lessons from Maria Marten If you like me just love very, very well written short pieces on historic true crime cases, check out this piece written by Jonathan Kay for the National Post:

Last month, a dock worker from Ipswich, England, was charged with killing five local prostitutes. This month, George Svekla, an Alberta man who'd already been charged with murdering a prostitute (and carrying her body around the province in a hockey bag), was charged with killing another, one of at least 13 prostitutes slain in the Edmonton area since 1988. In Detroit, a 37-year-old man was recently charged with killing seven prostitutes over the last five years. And then there is Robert Pickton, the 57-year-old British Columbia pig farmer who has been charged with killing no less than 26 women, most of them Vancouver prostitutes.

Westerners now live in the safest societies known to humankind -- so safe that a single deadly car crash, club-land shootout or even military casualty is enough to make the front page. Yet behind the headlines, legions of dead streetwalkers get cast off into industrial scrubland or riverbeds without much notice...

To gain perspective, look beyond the parade of modern slaughter, and cast your mind back to Maria Marten, a molecatcher's daughter who lived and died in the English town of Polstead two centuries ago...

The Best True Crime Movies Ever? I wasn't expecting to agree with many picks on MTV's Top 10 True Crime Movies. What does MTV know about true crime. Some of its programming is a public nuisance in and of itself. But many of these I've got to agree with:

10. St. Valentine's Day Massacre

9. Monster

8. Reversal of Fortune

7. French Connection

6. Heavenly Creatures

5. Dog Day Afternoon

4. Rope / Compulsion

3. All The President's Men

2. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

1. In Cold Blood

Not a bad list. We could quibble, yes? There are no documentaries on the list and a lot of feature films are missing -- Anatomy of a Murder is one. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil also (that is not a chick flick!)

Meanwhile, Zodiac comes out in March, and the Black Dahlia film is getting good reviews -- one suggesting that the film is best viewed with a serving of tuna casserole. If this makes sense to you, kindly advise why.

Christmas Murders and the Lawson Christmas Massacre

Note: Are you in North Carolina? There is a program on this case Saturday, 17 Feb. 2007 at 1:00PM at the Library in

High Point

, North Carolina. It is FREE. This is a presentation by Patrick Boyles and Esther Johnson.

So here's what it's all about...

_________

We remember the Christmas murders.

Our celebration is tempered by a certain pathos that makes any notorious crime more tragic when it falls on or even near it. The worst crime of all, at least on this holiday meant for family and the enjoyment of children, is the murder of a family. We may always remember how Scott Peterson betrayed Laci and Connor on Christmas Eve.

The "family annihilators" -- men who cooly plan the murders of their wives and children -- sometimes choose this holiday to do it. In 1954, in Pasadena, California, Harold Oilar killed his family after their Christmas party. On Christmas Day, 1929, Charlie Lawson committed the unforgivable sin of killing his wife and six youngest children in southern Appalachia.

A Christmas Family Tragedy is the name of the new documentary just out about the Lawson family murders in 1929. Your correspondent had a chance to see it. The movie is filled with photos and interviews with local residents, historians, genealogists, Lawson experts, and descendants of the surviving family. The movie is a fascinating exploration of the many ways to ask why in the Lawson case.

Why did a 37-year-old farmer kill his family?

Why did people drive for miles to see the murder house?

Why did 5,000 people attend the funeral?

Why do we make music of such a thing?

How could it be that a recording of a hillbilly murder ballad about the Lawson Christmas tragedy actually cracked the top five in record sales in 1930?

Why is it that some locals refused to discuss the case, ever, while others take stones from atop the gravesite?

There are some elements in this case that the student of crime will recognize as inherent in the family annihilator. Like John List decades later, Charlie Lawson clearly planned for days or weeks. He took the whole clan to town ten days before Christmas to buy new clothes -- outfits that they'd be buried in -- the photo (above) that would run in newspapers across the region. After his awful deeds, Lawson, like List, collected them, posed some of them.

But the Lawson case is also unusual even within its type. Charlie Lawson was well regarded, a "good man," someone who was honest and did kind deeds for his neighbors. None of the "usual" explanations for family annihilators appear in this case. Lawson did not seem to suffer from religious delusion or any delusion at all. He in fact objected to his family attending church. There were rumors of incest, that his daughter was pregnant. But there doesn't seem to be much support for that. And if there were financial straits that drove him to do it, again there seems little proof.

One thing about Charlie Lawson is clear these many years later. He had a temper. Rages. A "strong hand." He beat a man in public once. His oldest son had begun sleeping in his clothes to protect the family from the patriarch.

In the end, the explanation for the Lawson Christmas tragedy may lie in the simple fact that murdering your family, "my family, and I can do what I want with them," may best be characterized as the ultimate act of domestic violence.

After exploring the why of it, the filmmakers remark --

The cold, hard, observable, tangible fact of the matter is that Charlie did it because he felt like he had the right to make that decision for his family by himself. He thought he had the right to make life-or-death decisions for other people without their knowledge or consent.

We hope we can give the spirits of the Lawson children a proper burial by honestly acknowledging their suffering and confronting the shocking brutality of what happened to them that day without blinking.

Maybe instead of forgiving and forgetting we should be acting on warning signs and preventing the next tragedy from happening in our own neighborhoods.

For more:

The filmmaker's website - featuring photos, links, a message board, and a place to order your own copy.

For more Clews, see The Lawson Family Tragedy In Music - about the Hillbilly music inspired by the murders.

A new book about the case -- The Meaning of Our Tears by North Carolina author Trudy J. Smith -- this is an update of the first and only other book about the case, White Christmas, Bloody Christmas (now out of print and in high demand). Trudy Smith first published White Christmas in 1990 along with her late father, M. Bruce Jones. The Meaning of Our Tears, which was published only weeks ago, is the enlarged and revised edition of the story.

***

An Interview with the Filmmaker

Matt Hodges, one of the producers of A Christmas Family Tragedy, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the film that I put to him. Here's the Q&A.

What ever came of the murder house?

As mentioned almost in passing in the film, the house was torn down in 1984 and the wood was used to build a covered bridge on the property.

Who owns the property today?

The current owner of the property is a rather private individual who specifically requested that we not include any info on him or his property in the film. That's the reason why it seems I only mentioned the fate of the house in passing at the beginning of the 1985 graveyard ghost story. I wanted to keep my promise to him, especially since he's currently Very upset that the book Did include a picture of the bridge he built without securing his permission. In a small community, it's a big deal, and I've done my best to not offend Any of the principals involved so as to contribute to the future goodwill attached to the project in the community.

The reason for their reticence seems to stem from a high volume of traffic to his home from curious onlookers, who in the past at least, vandalized a lot of things surrounding this story.

Did the one surviving member of the family ever speak at length about what happened and /or about his father? Did he leave any writings, any testimony?

Arthur 'Buck' Lawson to our knowledge never wrote any account of his life. We do have footage of more stories about his later life than we included in our film, but that's due in no small part to the need to contextualize every bit of info we got in a timely fashion within the structure of the overall film.

Strangely, we received stories that he sometimes accompanied the items from the house that toured local fairs as part of an exhibit, but we were unable to get anyone on record who saw him there or had any 1st hand account of it whatsoever, so we went with what we Did have, which was an apparent Lawson family imposter recounting the tale after Arthur's death. There are numerous newspaper accounts dating all the way throughout the 77 yrs of this story's history, but none that we found that referred to Arthur, except his obituary or the usual info we included.

Was there ever an inquest?

There was no inquest due to Dr. Helsabeck convening a jury on the scene of the crime announcing that the family was dead, Charlie was the killer, case closed. Again, there's newspaper stories from the time stating that a resident at Johns Hopkins University in the area, a Dr. James Spottiswood took the brain back to JHU to examine it, but followup stories on this are slim and inconclusive at best. After repeated efforts to track it's history at JHU, I was told that all records of it would have been purged long ago.

What is the family rift about today?

There are numerous causes of conflict amongst the surviving relatives. Some believe Charlie didn't do it, while others believe he did, but for different reasons. The one thing they all seem to agree on though is their universal unwavering hatred for the authors of WCBC. The 2 chief complaints being that by only interviewing one member of the family in depth, the rest of the family's opinions and considerations, not to mention feelings weren't taken into account. Thus the 'confirmation' of molestation was bitterly attacked by many who had at least as solid a connection to this story as Stella Lawson.

Secondly, that the authors exploited the story for their own private financial gain at the expense of family or any other needy cause affected by the issues raised in this story. Toward that end, to demonstrate our commitment to preserving history while using it to serve a greater good, we're donating 10% of the profits from the film for its lifetime toward domestic violence causes, which you can learn more about at http://www.bodproductions.com/domestic.htm.

Are there any good websites or forums for people to go on the net to discuss the case?

The forum for our film also serves as the only board I know of where folks are discussing this story and the myriad issues it raises and that's at http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/mb/maryc.

Thanks to the filmmakers for sharing their work with Clews readers.

The Lawson Family Tragedy in Music and Now Film

Comments to this post are now closed.

_________

The Lawson family massacre on Christmas Day, 1929 was news coast to coast when it took place, but the only ones who might know the case today are fans of hillbilly music.

Charlie Lawson was a "family annihilator" who killed his wife, six of his children, and then himself. The case has baffled and divided the folk of Stokes County, North Carolina for generations, and they've often expressed their feelings about the tragedy in music with ballads like "The Story of the Lawson Family," "Ballad of the Lawsons," "Murder of the Lawson Family," "The Murder of Charlie Lawson," "Charlie Lawson's Still," and many others. Poignant murder stories being a favorite subject of much mountain music, at least a dozen artists have recorded versions over the years on albums with titles like Ballads and Songs of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The most famous version of the song was by the Stanley Brothers. They grew up in the area where the family murder took place. Your correspondent is tempted to share some of the words, but lyrics are meant to be heard.

There's one book in print about the Lawson case, White Christmas-Bloody Christmas: Finally the True Story of the Lawson Family Murders of Christmas Day which cost as much as $100 for awhile but has been reissued due to new interest in the case.

For those interested in the true story behind the music, a new documentary is coming out this month. Having just had my socks knocked off by the Villisca film (see this post), I'm intrigued by news of the movie 'A Christmas Family Tragedy', which explores the facts and legends surrounding the Lawson murders and what they mean today for the descendants and the community. Santa might bring me a copy, and I'll provide you with some particulars.

Meanwhile, for more --

Another essay about Christmas Murders and the Lawson Christmas Massacre

The film's official website with photos and trailer

Clip: "Documentary explores notorious Stokes killing" by Mark Burger

Hear the Stanley Brothers play "The Story of the Lawson Family" on itunes

Clip: "Grisly Tale for Yuletime" by Jim Wicker: "The name “Charlie Lawson” is probably unfamiliar to most people today. But there was a time when it was on nearly every Tar Heel lip. By now, only a few spry old-timers in their late 70s, early 80s or older remain to remember the crimes that made Lawson’s name familiar in every North Carolina home for many years, along with those of John Dillinger and Al Capone..."

Clip: Hillbilly Ghost Hunters on the Lawson Family Murders by Betty Sue Haynes

Encyclopedia of Death and Dying on Folk Music

Please Note Comments to this post are now closed.

P.S. The ballads based on the Lawson case are so powerful that they inspire people to shoot each other -- to ask to be shot. No kidding. From the Charleston Gazette, January 1939:

Villisca: The Best Movie Ever Made in the Genre

Legendary true crime writer Edmund Pearson once said, "The Borden case is without parallel in the criminal history of America. It is the most interesting, and perhaps the most puzzling murder that has occurred in this country."

For two decades I agreed with him.

But yesterday I watched a two-hour documentary on an unsolved murder case from Iowa. Now my head has been entirely spun around, and I look not to the east but to the west and a tiny town called Villisca, Iowa -- and I stand corrected. Pearson, you were wrong all along. The greatest unsolved murder in the history of America took place in 1912, and the film Villisca: Living With a Mystery is an excellent introduction to a case that will leave all students of true crime saying, "Lizzie who?"

If Lizzie Borden is Historic True Crime 101, then the obscene axe murders that took the lives of eight people (including six children) as they slept, destroying the psyche of this quiet Iowa town on June 10, 1912, is Historic True Crime 401: it will call on all you think you've learned about criminology.

Villisca: Living With a Mystery is the single best true crime documentary I have ever seen (and I do believe I've seen virtually all of them). With exquisite care, never dipping into the sensationalism that would have been within easy reach (and which the residents of Villisca would not have tolerated), the filmmakers relay the facts of the murders, the effect they had on the townsfolk, the suspects, the theories, the courtroom dramas. It even includes a (tastefully done) computer animation of the crime scene and interviews with a forensic psychiatrist as well as FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler, a very nice touch for those of us who like to hear from profilers on everything. The movie also features top-notch production values and narration, interviews with writers, historians, and residents, and hundreds of historic photos of the people and places involved (which are not repeated, and I'm glad of this. Endless repetition of the same photos over and over and over is one of my primary beefs with most true crime stories depicted on film and TV.)

The murders of a prominent businessman, his wife, their four children, and two young girls who were visiting that night just terrified the town. They couldn't explain a crime like this -- eight people, killed in their beds with an axe; one of the victims was posed afterward -- how could an early twentieth century mind wrap itself around it? There were no witnesses, no fingerprints, no apparent motive, and it was never solved. Descriptions of the murder scene strongly reminded me of Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, for those who know that reference (Amazon link).

For decades, residents of Villisca argued about who committed the murders, when they would talk about it at all. Was it the state senator, who certainly had ample cause to hate? Was it the preacher, the profoundly mentally ill Englishman known as a peeping Tom and pervert, who confessed to the slayings? Or was it a serial killer who was implicated in a string of similar butcheries and who kept newspaper clippings on the crime? While the film does not purport to have the final answer, it certainly is a satisfactory exploration of the horrific event.

The film has received universally good reviews, with all Amazon reviews giving it the full five stars and glowing viewer comments on IMDb such as --

• "A wonderful film... faithful and respectful... I highly recommend it."
• "An enjoyable movie for crime buffs and historians -- very well presented."
• "Great. I wasn't expecting to get so caught up... keeps you glued to the story... an excellent murder mystery and a good historical documentary worth seeing."
• "I... was captivated...this story will knock your socks off."
• "Two hours well spent."
• "Absolutely engaging! ... Like Ken Burns... the attention to detail, accuracy, use of animation to take the viewer into the home and town all make this film credible and engaging."
• "What a wonderful piece of work!"

The comparison to legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is certainly appropriate, for this film is in his league. The film is so absorbing that I completely forgot at several points that I meant to take notes and had to watch it again. Though I would have watched it again anyway and will watch it again in the future and am glad to have my own copy.

If you have seen this film, and/or have studied this murder case, I would love to hear your opinions. I find myself utterly absorbed in this mystery to the point that I added a "Villisca" category to Clews (at left) and want to explore it further. The movie's official website features quite a lot of content, as does the "official site" of the murders. A genealogy buff has created a website featuring some of the original newspaper coverage. The Villisca Historical Society also has a website that delves into the mystery in detail.

The movie is being released on DVD this month, and you can order a copy from the official website for the film or from Amazon. It will also be available for rent from the Family Video chain as well as Netflix. 

Grade: A+. The best movie ever made in the true crime genre.

"Why, now, here's something like a murder! This is the real thing. This is genuine. This is what you can approve, can recommend to a friend."

--Thomas DeQuincey

More Capote, But Let's Get Something Straight

... our human speech is naught,

Our human testimony false, our fame

And human estimation words and wind.

The Ring and the Book, Robert Browning (1868)

Another movie about Truman Capote -- already? Filmmaker Douglas McGrath will ride the wave of last year's landmark film Capote with this year's Infamous, another "biopic" about the legendary true crime writer, this one emphasizing his curious social life and droll wit.

The film is going to be released on October 13; it premieres today in Venice. The film is based on the late George Plimpton's Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (I'll put an Amazon link at the end of this post). Sandra Bullock plays Harper Lee while Toby Jones (photo) tackles the lead. Brave man, that Jones, to risk comparison to the best performance of the year from that "other" actor who starred in the same role! Also appearing are Isabella Rossellini, Sigourney Weaver, and one of my favorite actors, Jeff Daniels (he's from Michigan, and I love his Michigan accent).

But I'm not so sure that Truman Capote really deserves this much attention, frankly. He credited himself with inventing a new genre, a crime story with a semi-fictional, "literary" treament, and In Cold Blood was heralded as a "nonfiction novel" or "new journalism."

That's all-out bull.

There are so many prior examples of, quote, literary true crime that it's hard to know where to begin, except The Ring and the Book, written by legendary English poet Robert Browning is one good example, and the closing lines, quoted above, are apropos today. It's a true crime poem, if you will, written in 1868, and it tells the tale of a sensational murder in Rome in 1698, and enthusiasts generally agree that it is the one poem that made his fame lasting.

Crime historian Albert Borowitz reached even further back to disprove Capote's claim. In his Innocence and Arsenic, Borowitz had this to say:

Truman Capote clearly had no eye to literary history when he claimed to have created in his crime study, In Cold Blood, a new genre, the "nonfiction novel" ... Far from being a modern invention, the nonfiction novel, as a device for crime narrative, dates back at least to the early nineteenth century. One of the first notable examples in France was The Memoirs of Madame Manson, published in London in 1818... the original work of the versatile man of letters Henry de Latouche....

A Wikipedia page has more details about the new Capote movie. You can see a trailer here (and if you do, kindly let me know what you think; I don't have a sound card and my connection is too slow to watch it).

The truth is this to thee and that to me.

--Browning

Revisiting the OK Corral and the Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp

On a recent post about the Earps in Deadwood, a Clews visitor, Chase, left this remark:

Big deadwood fan myself (big westerns fan too). Maybe it's just me, but I dont like the way wrote Morgan's character. On another note, which movie did you like better, Tombstone or Wyatt Earp? It's hard for me to choose...if i could, i would blend the casts...keep costner as wyatt, keep val kilmer as doc holliday, etc

And my answer is, both, and neither. Both actors are easy on the eyes but anyway I still wonder -- why don't they stick closely to the history? Isn't that fantastic enough for Hollywood?

Because the real history of the OK Corral and the tremendous fallout have never been fully plumbed on film.

It is early afternoon on a fateful day - October 26, 1881 - in the frontier town of Tombstone, Arizona. Four heavily armed men have decided to take the law into their own hands. Gamblers and possibly thieves, a notorious gunslinger among them, they are determined to take vengeance for a series of trivial insults and imagined threats. Ignoring the orders of the county sheriff, they march grimly to an alley between a rooming house and a photographer's studio. There they catch sight of their intended victims....

So begins The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp, a law review article by Steven Lubet that appeared in the University of Colorado Law Review. It's a terrific -- and accurate -- primer on the thorny legal questions raised by the actions of the Earps. After writing this article, Lubet expanded it into a book; I will include an Amazon link to the book at the end of this post.

And in the same vein:

Wyatt Earp is a cultural icon, a man of law and order, a mythic figure of a West where social control and order were notably absent. The West also had its share of “bad” men and notorious villains. Could it be that the legendary Wyatt Earp might have have less the hero than we have made him out to be? Was he, as some now contend, a killing, gambling, philandering, corrupt politician with close associations to known murderers and gamblers?

That is the lead on a piece written by Colleen Coughlin entitled Law at the OK Corral: Reading Wyatt Earp Films, originally published in the Legal Studies Forum. The author analyzed four films of the famous shootout:

• My Darling Clementine (1946), starring Henry Fonda; the Earps are "frequently filmed with sunshine surrounding them"
• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), including a fictional "twist in the legend."
• Warlock (1959), "brilliant in its challenge to mythology"
• Tombstone (1993) "perhaps the most historically accurate of the films discussed."

These articles left me wondering two things -- One, why does the history not exactly match the popular cinema -- isn't the truth, with its subtleties and shades of gray, more compelling than the white hat/black hat thing?

And two, when did law reviews start publishing such interesting articles?

The Jesse James Cinematic Curse

Sorry, this post has been deleted. You'll have to wait for the book!