The Wild Frontier

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 19

The Wild Frontier

HO was Wyatt Earp? The name’s familiar from stories of the American Frontier, but he was not, like Paul Bunyan, just a legendary figure. He lived a life of adventure in the . West of the 1870’s. While still in his early twenties he wore a Marshal’s badge, showing amazing courage and cool nerve against badmen notorious for sending men on unexpécted trips to the "boot-hill’-the cemetery where they: buried those who died with their boots on. Earp was a quiet-spoken, non-drink-ing, but hard-fighting man. Even the. famous Wild Bill Hickok ranked second to him as a fast-drawing man with a. six-gun, but Earp never killed a gunfighter unless there was no other way out. He alwaysr tried to shoot the gun from his quarry’s hand, this being held more of a disgrace. Frontier Marshal, the new serial on Friday nights from 1ZB, 3ZB, 4ZB and 3XC takes up the story of Wyatt Earp from his 21st year. He is in Ellsworth, in 1873, resting up between buffalo hunting trips. This is his livelihood, interspersed with Indian fighting and wagon-train scouting. The Thompson brothers ride into town and Bill Thompson shoots Sheriff Whitney in cold blood. Wyatt Earp isn’t wearing any Marshal's badge or holding any law office at the time, but when he sees the feeble attempts of the two deputies to disarm the Thompsons he shows his disgust to the Mayor when he arrives. The Mayor takes the deputy’s badge off one of them and pins it on Earp’s shirt, and thus begins the celebrated career of the youngest and thost famous of the West’s Frontier Marshals. Incidentally, Earp died peacefully, of old age. The role of Wyatt Earp is played by John Mellion, with William Rees as the Mayor,