Wyatt Earp has been portrayed in many films and television shows throughout the years but these fictional portrayals tend to overlook the complexities and flaws of a man whose life is a window into the judicial, political and economic opportunities that arose for those living throughout the American frontier or Wild West.

Earp himself became a caricature for the life of a Western lawman and when he died in 1929, his fellow countrymen transformed him into a folk hero and archetype for how the Wild West was tamed and a man who took control of his own destiny.