“Say when…” Withthe tragic lossof the greatVal Kilmer, it makes sense to look back on a career-defining role and moment in cinematic and cultural history withTombstone. In 1993, Val Kilmer was already one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, a diva to his core entrenched in a form of method acting, dashingly handsome, devastating in dramatic roles (The Doors), and somehow also hilariously funny (Top Secret).
It all came together in the iconic role of Doc Holliday, the doomed dentist of the West who ran with legendary lawman Wyatt Earp in his epic and bloodiest days. Holliday was a real-life legend who has taken on massive cultural proportions; a classic anti-hero from the pages of history, a kind of Byronic protagonist. Holliday has appeared in major movies and books consistently for over a century, but it wasn’t until Val Kilmer took on the role inTombstonethat the character and Kilmer’s performance were etched into cultural history forever. You can, to this day, repeat any number of his one-liners, and people know exactly what you are talking about: “I’m your huckleberry.”
Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in ‘Tombstone’
Holliday has been played by at least 30 actors in TV and film history. Some notable names to take on the role include Kirk Douglas, Marin Landau, Jason Robards, Dennis Quaid, Willie Nelson, Cesar Romero, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Stacy Keach, and the list goes on.
How didVal Kilmer top them all? How did he become the definitive version of the role and elevate everything about Doc and his real-life tragic tale?One key element was Kilmer’s undeniable charm. Being as funny as he is and rolling with the humorous aspects of the devil-may-care character made Holliday a perfect foil to the stiff and stern Wyatt Earp. While fact may veer from fiction in some ways, the Earp of Hollywood is always a pretty straight arrow and, thus, a harder character to derive real juice from. He’s the straight man to Holliday’s charming rake.So many actors failed to embrace the other critical aspect of Holliday, though, which was the fact that he was consistently on death’s door.
What Did Doc Holliday Die From?
Holliday suffered from Tuberculosis, a death sentence in his time, which factors heavily into almost all portrayals of him onscreen. Kilmer took it to the next level, and we’ll get to why eventually. Holliday contracted TB from his mother, and it forced him to leave the comforts of his life in southern gentility, with his impressive education and destiny as a successful dentist, to find thinner air. With death looming over him, Holliday pursued short-term pleasure and scoffed at death and danger. Despite being rail-thin and unable to move, he garnered a reputation for being deadly, mean, and quick with his temper. He ran with bad crowds, got into fights, killed people, and became a professional gambler.
Holliday’s tight bond with Earp would forever stand as one of history’s classic opposites-attract pairings. The real-life odd couple connected when Earp was on the trail after a wanted man and interviewed Holliday, who’d recently played cards with him.The bond was cemented when Holliday saved Earp, who was in a tight spot in the notorious Dodge City. This was all long before Holliday would stand by his friend’s side in themost infamous gunfightin history, the subject ofTombstoneand countless other works of semi-fiction, where they faced down the Clanton gang in a back alley near the O.K. Corral.
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InTombstone, Kilmer’s Doc Holliday is almost unable to join his friend that day due to a bad bout of coughing and illness.Where other actors before him would bring that to the role, only Kilmer dove headfirst into it and disappeared into the sickly state of the man. He was pale, his eyes rimmed with red, and his body slathered in sweat. He was visibly at death’s door, leading to one of his many indelible moments: “I’m in my prime.”
Other actors would reach for this accuracy later, but Kilmer was the first to do it, and as a result, he came to better embody the nature of the illness and the menace of a man with no tomorrow.
My Friend Doc Holliday
The bookMy Friend Doc Holliday, thatKurt Russell’s Wyatt Earpwrote about Doc and handed to him on his deathbed, is a creation of the movie, just like the existence of that scene between the men.Holliday died alone in a bed from his disease in Colorado. Earp was far away and wouldn’t know for months.
The bond between them, the unlikely friendship between the doomed gambler with a temper and the upright lawman with a poker face, is the core ofTombstone, and Kilmer’s performance is the reason for its endurance.
Kilmer Killed It With Doc Holliday Quotes
When you watchTombstone, it’s almost as if every scene with Kilmer’s Holliday is a classic, and every line he utters is an all-timer. Kilmer’s commitment to the humor and darkness of the role seems to swirl together perfectly and motivate moment after moment of cinematic glory. Nobody even knows what “I’m your huckleberry” means. As it turns out, it was probably meant to be “I’m your huckle bearer,” which is in reference to being a pallbearer in the Old West, i.e., carrying a casket to the grave.
A testament to the performance is that we don’t know, and we don’t need to. Kilmer’s dangerous charm in the role and delivery is cold-blooded comedy, and people keep saying it over and over again, not even knowing what the hell it means. Because it came to mean much more, it stands alongside “Go ahead, make my day” and other such tough guy utterances as the best of all-time.
Yet the humanity behind Kilmer’s Doc makes him more than another badass with one-liners preceding violence. You can see it in his vulnerability, intelligence, understanding, and grasping at the greater questions in life. Kilmer’s Doc sees beyond the smallness of his moments. He has one foot in the grave, and it grants him a strange kind of wisdom.
“There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it.”
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With his rival, the hot-blooded Johnny Ringo, played by Michael Biehn, Holliday has someone dangerous to dance with scene after scene. This fire-and-ice contrast builds to an epic confrontation that may or may not have happened in real life. By that point in the film, what did or didn’t happen, and what was or wasn’t said, no longer matters. Kilmer’s Holliday transcended the larger-than-life man himself.Unlike all the other countless performances that never quite reach the epic proportions of the real Holliday, Kilmer’s Doc is bigger, better, more romantic, more dramatic, and fuels an ongoing interest in the actual manwho was certainly not as great as Kilmer made him seem.
So, inclassic Western fashion, when the legend becomes fact, we print the legend. Among the many amazing roles in Kilmer’s decorated wonderful career cut way too short by illness,his Holliday stands as a singular type of achievement, where fact and fiction blend to create a cultural icon. Much as Kilmer was lucky to get the great role, Holliday and the rest of us are fortunate we got to see Kilmer craft something so close to performance perfection. Now Doc and Val are both gone, but their dance inTombstonewill live forever. “Live every second. Live right on to the end. Live Wyatt. Live for me.”
