Was Eddie Foy Sr. really in Tombstone?

Wow! Great story! Did you get all this from Foy's autobiography? If so, and even allowing for poor memories or a bit of exaggeration, there must be truth to it, given Foy's "presence" (in one form or another) in all these O.K. Corral movies. Thanks for responding with such an informative post!

True -- though closer to the 60-year mark by 1939 -- but proximity doesn't mean reliability. What's fascinating (and a bit sad) is reading about men like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, for two, who ended their days pursuing a variety of careers far from the Old West.

It's also important to note that by the 1920s these men, and many other heroes of the West of half a century earlier, were scarcely remembered and hardly romanticized. Earp came to Hollywood in 1928 expressly to sell his life story, and thanks to his meeting up with author Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt became a legend long after his death, and grist for a lot of tall tales and exaggerations as well as fact. The same is true of other western personalities of the 1870s and 80s.

Arguably, the proximity of this film to that era made it less historically accurate because the main interest then was in selling idealized legends, not cold facts, and the people left from that period were happy to oblige, especially if they were being paid for the "right" reminiscences. More accurate portrayals of Earp and the others came much later in the 20th century, when all of their contemporaries had long since passed on.

None of this has any bearing on the Foy question, of course, but his presence in Tombstone in 1881 seems confirmed.