The community has really made it an exciting place. There are live wild west shows and the biggie...GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL. After the 1947 movie with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Rhonda Fleming...there were lots of tourist coming to see the town. So the residents reconstructed the town and made it come alive. Most residents are dressed the part of being in the old west. A tour of one of the mine (which is why tombstone was settled). Boot hill and original buildings brought back to life. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of tourists.
The new movie TOMBSTONE (check out the video) with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliott has really made an impact too. It also stars Charlston Heston and is narrated by Vincent Price I haven't seen the movie, but guess I'll have to find it somewhere along the way, as everyone said it was good. There was a saying "I'm your huckleberry" on various articles for sale. I ask what it meant and the best answer was Val Kilmer (Doc Holliday) in the movie made the statement. To be one’s huckleberry — usually as the phrase I’m your huckleberry — is to be just the right person for a given job, or a willing executor of some commission. Anyway, it makes for a good story and sell products.
We went the whole nine yards, bought tickets and saw it all.
The story of the gunfight is very convoluted. There are so many individuals and testimonies that you hardly know what to believe. One thing, Wyatt was not the nice guy as portrayed by Hugh O'Bryan.
Movies do influence how we view certain events as we found out while in Mission, Tx. We attended a lecture " A brief analysis of Six Films Featuring the Death of Davy Crockett" in Edinburg, TX by a local professor. He presented 6 movies of The Alamo. Each one had a variant of the defence at the Alamo. The jest of the lecture was how movies have tainted our view of historical events. I have seen only the John Wayne production, so, that is my prospective of what happened at The Alamo. John Wayne would never tell a lie...right?
The death of Davy Crockett has always been portrayed as he went down fighting. Recently a diary of a Mexican soldier ,who was at the battle of The Alamo, has surfaced, indicating that Davy and several men were captured, tortured and hacked to death. That theory, the professor indicated, has caused a lot of people to be upset.
The reason I was interested in the lecture is that Davy Crockett married into the linage of my Grandmother, Drucilla Thomas. We are obviously not directly related but close enough for me to claim. :-))
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