Stuart N. Lake


Stuart Nathaniel Lake was a writer who focused on the American Old West.

Professional career

Lake was a professional wrestling promoter and a press aide to Theodore Roosevelt during the Bull Moose presidential campaign in 1912. During World War I, he was run over by a truck.

Works about Wyatt Earp

His 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp, , was a best seller and was adapted for several films, including Frontier Marshal, a 1939 production starring Randolph Scott, and John Ford's My Darling Clementine. His work also inspired the 1955-1961 ABC television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian in the title role. The biography was later found to be highly fictional. Lake was the first writer to describe Earp's use of the Colt Buntline. Later researchers have been unable to establish that Earp ever owned such a weapon.

Other films

Lake also wrote for other motion pictures, including The Westerner, starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan; Powder River with Rory Calhoun; and Winchester '73 starring James Stewart.

Accuses politician of bribery

In 1951, Lake alleged that Robert M. Wright, a member of the Kansas House of Representatives from 1875 to 1883, and a founder and later mayor of Dodge City, Kansas, had paid money to get his son acquitted of a crime. In a letter to the author and historian Stanley Vestal of the University of Oklahoma, Lake said that in 1878, Wright had pocketed $25,000 as a "fee" from the South Texas cattleman Mifflin Kenedy, for whom Kenedy County, Texas, is named. Lake claimed that Kenedy had paid the money to gain acquittal of his son, James "Spike" Kenedy, in the inadvertent shooting death of the popular dance hall singer, Dora Hand. Young Kenedy and James H. "Dog" Kelley, another early Dodge City mayor, were both suitors of Dora. Kenedy thought that he was shooting Kelley, rather than Dora.

Filmography

Lake wrote scripts for the following shows.