Wyatt Earp stands next to a 1926 Packard Model 326 “Opera Coupe” that is believed to have been owned by silent film actor William S. Hart. Tom Mix preferred flashier cars and spared no expense when he went out on the town with Wyatt—the actor was making $7,500 a week at Fox, with virtually no income tax!
While living in Los Angeles, Earp became an unpaid film consultant for several silent cowboy movies. In 1915, Earp visited the set of director Allan Dwan’s movie, The Half-Breed, starring Douglas Fairbanks. In his autobiography, Dwan recalled, “As was the custom in those days, he [Earp] was invited to join the party and mingle with our background action.”
Earp became friends with William S. Hart and later Tom Mix, the two most famous movie cowboys of their era. Hart was a stickler for realism in his depictions of Western life, and may have relied on Earp for advice.
Earp tried to persuade his good friend William S. Hart to help set the record straight about his life and get a movie made. “If the story were exploited on the screen by you,” he wrote Hart, “It would do much toward setting me right before a public which has always been fed lies about me.”
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