"Mattie - Wyatt Earp's Secret Second Wife" - E.C. Meyers

[PJ Hardtack]

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My wife just finished and passed on to me a copy of the above book. Looks like an interesting read, dispelling the Hollywood 'good guy' image of the Earp family and their women.

Dyed in the wool Earp fans (ala the Kevin Costner movie version) are not going to be impressed with the light shed on the dark side of the Earp story, preferring the legend to the facts.

Paraphrasing John Ford (?): "When history and legend collide, go with the legend."

[mestiza letty]

PJ....
Hollywood don't care if the said "previous version" of the Earp family legend is in concoerdance. If they can present the "newer and truer" screenplay with enough $$$ backing it might fly. I sure hope so...far too many computer images have replaced good film as of late that passes for action films....So yes....
LONG LIVE COWBOYS

[Old Doc]

What about his second wife was "secret"? I have the book "I married Wyatt Earp", which I thought was written by his second wife.
I thought she was the one portrayed in the Kurt Russell movie, with which I am more familiar, compared to the Costner movie.

[PJ Hardtack]

Old Doc

You're right, the Costner movie did a credible job of portraying Mattie for what she was - a "soiled dove".

I think the real 'secret' the book is about is looking behind the Hollywood facade of the Earps as being upstanding lawmen instead of the gambling saloon keepers they really were.

Read the book. Come to your own conclusions.

[Old Doc]

Is Mattie the same as Josie? My book purports to be the memoir of Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, whom they refer to as Josie.

[PJ Hardtack]

I'll ask 'Miz Josie' (aka as my wife) when she gets home from school today. I believe that the lady in question was Earp's last (3rd 'wife').
My wife chose 'Miz Josie' as there is some evidence that she had a female ancestor (Josephine Nachtigall) who was an indentured Hurdy Gurdy Girl during our Cariboo Gold Rush. Then she discovered to her delight the Earp connection!

Now students who have seen her picture in the paper making smoke defer to her with respect; but none daring to call her anything but "Miz B".

[Coal Creek Griff]

Mattie Blaylock was Wyatt's second "wife".  Josie/Sadie Marcus was his third.

I believe that "I Married Wyatt Earp" had some credibility issues and is often classified as fiction.

CC Griff

[PJ Hardtack]

E.C. Meyers, author of the latest book on Mattie really did his research. He had lots of credibility concerns re: earlier biographical books on the Earps, the evidence suggesting that Wyatt fed authors what he wanted recorded.

What authors couldn't refute or verify, they printed as gospel and/or filled in the blanks to suit. Some things never change .....

[Stillwater]

Mattie Blaylock was Wyatt's second "wife".  Josie/Sadie Marcus was his third.

I believe that "I Married Wyatt Earp" had some credibility issues and is often classified as fiction.

CC Griff

Wyatt Earp was never formerly marrried to Mattie Blaylock.

Josephine Marcus Earp, although never formerly married to Wyatt Earp, spent the rest of her life after Wyatt Earp died, trying to polish Wyatt Earp's reputation.

The Marcus book has many fictional sequences in it, as do all books about famous westerners of that era. Read Stewart Lake's book about Wyatt Earp, if you want to read fictional prose. Lake couldn't get his book published, due to Josephine Marcus Earp's opposition, until after she died in 1944.

Both Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus Earp, had severe addictions to gambling.

One thing that I don't understand, is why people demand their western heros to always be the guy in the white had...! Nobody, then, or now, can stand up to the scrutiny that readers want to subject their heros too. They were men, subject to all the temptations and vissitudes that all of us are subjected too.

Bill