Doc Holliday Biography

Doc Holliday

An educated killer with a gambler's heart and a terminal illness, “Doc“ Holliday is one of the best known gunslingers of the Wild West. John Henry Holliday was born to a wealthy southern family in 1851, and graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dentistry in 1872. Holiday worked as a dentist in Atlanta, but contracted tuberculosis and moved west to a more arid climate that would add a few months to his life. After unsuccessful attempts at dentistry in Dallas, Holliday discovered a proficiency for gambling and gun play. From 1875 to 1880 he bounced from town to town, usually just ahead of an angry posse, drinking, gambling and building up a reputation with his six-gun. On October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona he participated in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which Holliday and the Earp brothers gunned down three of the Clanton Gang. Holliday also assisted close friend Wyatt Earp in hunting down several outlaws in Arizona. He was arrested in Denver in 1882 for the murders in Arizona, but was released by a Colorado judge. On November 8, 1887 he died of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. His adventures with Wyatt Earp are romantically portrayed in Tombstone (1993), and Wyatt Earp (1994)