Was Wyatt Earp a con man? He was a lifelong hardened criminal.
Earp was a gambler, a pimp and he fixed boxing matches. He owned and sold several saloons, where he would personally serve as a bouncer. There are even stories about Earp and his brothers robbing stagecoaches and then pursuing themselves for reward money under the guise of being “men of the law”… in 2026, you’d call such a man a grifter.
That’s Wyatt Earp in 1925, in the photo above. That’s been his saving grace — outliving virtually all other cowboys, outlaws and gunslingers of his era. Most men of the Jesse James, Billy the Kid era of the Wild West didn’t live to be old men. Earp did. He lived to be 80, dying in 1929. And by that time, his tall tales had gotten taller and he had found a welcoming audience in journalists, actors and movie directors. Chief among them the legendary Western director John Ford and a budding actor named Marion Robert Morrison, who would later come to fame as John Wayne.
Wayne and Ford liked Earp’s swagger, the way he carried himself. And Wayne in particular imitated the man in his performances, as he felt imitating the last Wild West gunslinger gave his portrayal of cowboys a level of authenticity no other actor could touch. In the end, this became the Gold Standard of Western flicks. Wyatt Earp became immortal, simply by outliving all rivals. Was he a conman? Kind of. But he was very much a real part of Western lore.
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