American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta. By Mark J. Dworkin.

Abstract

The myth of the West rode into twentieth-century America with Walter Noble Burns. Already a famed journalist and editor, Burns was covering the pursuit of Pancho Villa by General “Black Jack” Pershing when he met a friend of Pat Garrett in El Paso, Texas. Inspired, Burns returned to New Mexico, interviewed many of the actual people involved, and, in 1926 published his first book honoring the American West. The Saga of Billy the Kid (c. 1920s), “history as it should have been,” introduced the rugged individualism of the idealized western hero. Reviewers over time have criticized it as romanticism while others laud it as dramatic fiction. Between 1911 and 1999, fifty-two films portrayed Billy as never changing but ever changing. Literature and television continue to feature his story well into the twenty-first century. Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest (1929), Burns’s next step into the mythical West, forever seared the legend of Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral into American and international minds. Previously published with little veracity, Burns conducted hours of newspaper research, interviewed many of the original participants, and spent miles on horseback, familiarizing himself with local landmarks. Vignettes of the major characters, coupled with Burns’s classic narrative style, launched Earp and the entire lineup well into the next millennium. The films Tombstone , in 1993, and 1994’s Wyatt Earp bear living tribute to Burns’s contribution to western history.