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This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show.

Much of what America and the world knows about Doc Holiday comes from movies and TV.

But historians agree no movie portrayal has done real justice to his story.

Roger McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Hollywood, and Vigilantees,

Violence on the Frontier, a U.S. Marine and former history professor at

UCLA, he's a regular contributor for us here at Our American Stories. Here's McGrath with the story

of Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday was not only one of the most colorful characters in the

Old West, but also one of the most feared.

He acquired the nickname of Doc, honestly, earning a degree in dentistry and practicing in several towns.

However, he eventually spent nearly all his time as a professional gambler and occasionally as a gunfighter.

He had a vicious temper and feared no man,

perhaps because tuberculosis had already given him a death sentence.

Doc Holley is born John Henry Holliday in 1851 in Griffin, Georgia,

about 40 miles south of Atlanta.

His parents are of South Carolina pioneer stock of Scotch Irish and English ancestry.

Doc's father, Henry Holliday, is an attorney who fights the Indians in 1838, the Mexicans in 1846,

and the Yankees in 1861, rising to the rank of major in the Civil War before being forced by illness

to resign his commission. Doc has a comfortable middle-class childhood and receives a good education.

His mother, Alice, is a classic Southern Belle. She teaches in manners and etiquette, while his father regales him

with the war stories and tales of survival. Doc is only nine years old when the Civil War erupts

...