Texas Jack Pete Sherayko on Dead Man's Hand, Val Kilmer & Tombstone

Welcome: Texas Jack Pete Sherayko Joins Gunslingers

The show opens with the crew welcoming Pete Sherayko, the actor who played Texas Jack Vermillion in the 1993 film Tombstone. Jeff calls him a legend without hedging, and the descriptor fits. Sherayko brings firsthand knowledge of the Old West film world, Western history, and the single action revolver that few working actors can match. The conversation covers ground from Deadwood, South Dakota in 1876 to a movie set in the early 1990s, and it moves fast.

Wild Bill Hickok's Dead Man's Hand: Aces and Eights or a Much Later Legend?

Jeff opens with the question that has floated around saloons and card tables for a hundred and fifty years: what was in Wild Bill Hickok’s hand when Jack McCall shot him from behind on August 2nd, 1876? Sherayko gives the standard answer first. The hand has always been reported as aces and eights. The fifth card, the one nobody saw, has been called a jack, a queen, and a nine depending on who is doing the telling. No one ever established it with certainty because the cards scattered when Hickok hit the floor.

Then Sherayko drops a different read on the whole story. He says nobody in the historical record actually talks about aces and eights as a meaningful combination until the 1920s. What he points to is the shooting of Joe Masseria, a Prohibition-era mob boss killed in 1931 while playing cards. There is a well-known photograph of Masseria’s body with an ace of spades held between his fingers, placed there after the shooting for the newspaper camera. Sherayko argues that image, and the mythology around it, is what gave aces and eights their sinister weight, and that the connection back to Hickok was constructed later. He invites listeners to check it out themselves. It is the kind of revisionist historical argument that is hard to dismiss entirely, and he makes it cleanly.

He also points out the anachronism problem that shows up in Western films constantly. Any movie set before August 2nd, 1876 that has a character call aces and eights a dead man’s hand is getting the history wrong, because that phrase did not exist until after Hickok was killed. The dead man’s hand is not a timeless poker term. It has a birthday.

Joseph Rosa and Wild Bill Hickok's Reflexes at the Moment of Death

Sherayko mentions historian Joseph Rosa as probably the most thorough authority on Wild Bill Hickok in print. Rosa, an Englishman who devoted much of his scholarly life to Hickok, wrote multiple books that remain the foundation of serious research on the subject. One detail Rosa documented is that when Hickok was shot in the back of the head at the Nuttal and Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, his hands went to his guns even as he was dying. His reflexes, built over a lifetime of survival, fired one last time before his body understood what had happened. Sherayko says he believes it. So does Jeff. It is the kind of detail that does not get invented.

Val Kilmer: Three Movies, One Broken Single Action, and No Hard Feelings

Jeff asks for a Val Kilmer story and Sherayko corrects the premise immediately: he worked with Kilmer in three films, not just Tombstone. The second was Wyatt’s Revenge in 2012, where Kilmer played Wyatt Earp. The third was Soldier’s Revenge in 2018, where Sherayko was the producer and hired Kilmer himself to play the father of the main character.

The Tombstone story he tells is the one that establishes everything about how Kilmer operated on set. Before shooting began, the entire cast was warned about Kilmer. He had a reputation for being difficult, for staying deep in character, for not tolerating interruptions. People were keeping their distance. On the first day of shooting the vendetta ride sequence, Sherayko looked over and noticed Kilmer’s single action revolver was riding half-cocked in the holster. That is a problem. A single action carried at half-cock is not properly secured, and if the hammer snaps down it can fire. It can also damage the action.

Sherayko rode his horse over and told Kilmer straight: your gun is half-cocked, and if somebody on this set sees that, they are going to know you do not know how to handle a single action. Kilmer’s response was to look at him and say he finds that people who break the rules get ahead. Sherayko decided not to argue with Val Kilmer. Within five minutes he looked over and Kilmer had a different revolver in the holster. He rode to the armorer, who confirmed that Kilmer had broken the original gun, specifically the sear, the small part on the hammer that engages the trigger notch. Sherayko rode back over, noted the new gun, and Kilmer looked at him and said, quietly, that he had broken it. No heat. From that point on they got along fine, because Kilmer knew that Sherayko knew what he was talking about when it came to firearms.

Drinking Whiskey Between Takes: The Scene Where Turkey Creek and Texas Jack Come Out of the Saloon

Sherayko describes the scene in Tombstone where Turkey Creek Jack Johnson and Texas Jack Vermillion come staggering out of a saloon after a night of drinking and end up killing a man. His logic on the set was simple: he was supposed to be drunk, so he might as well be. Every take, he went back inside and took another drink of actual whiskey. By the time they shot the scene where his character crosses paths with Doc Holliday, Morgan, Virgil, and Wyatt Earp, he was, in his own words, a little lightheaded. Kilmer spent part of the day looking at him with what Sherayko describes as a knowing look, and later in the afternoon called him over and asked flat out if he had been drunk in that scene. Sherayko looked at Kilmer and threw his own line back at him: he finds that people who break the rules get ahead. That closed the book on it between them.

Val Kilmer in 2018: Soldier's Revenge, Throat Cancer, and a Piece of Artwork

By the time Sherayko hired Kilmer for Soldier’s Revenge in 2018, Kilmer had lost most of his speaking voice to throat cancer. They sat together in the motor home between takes and talked, Kilmer communicating through effort and gesture and the occasional hit on the shoulder. He gave Sherayko one of his pieces of original artwork during that production. Sherayko speaks about the man with obvious warmth. He says Kilmer was centered in a way that made him hard to beat at anything requiring sustained concentration. They played darts regularly and Sherayko, who was good at it, could not get the better of him. His read on Kilmer is simple: a good man, fully committed to whatever he put his mind to, which is exactly what made him one of the best screen actors of his generation.

Tombstone, Arizona: August 8-10 Val Kilmer Memorial Walkdown and New Book and CD

Sherayko mentions that Tombstone, Arizona will be holding a memorial walkdown for Val Kilmer on August 8th through the 10th, timed to coincide with the Doc Holliday Days event that has been held annually around that date. Sherayko will be there. He will be signing both his previous book and his new book, titled Prove It Safe, along with a new CD released under the title Tombstone. Jeff promises to get his contact information posted online and says they need to get Sherayko and his colleague Frank on together for a future segment. Sherayko agrees without hesitation. They are, in his words, a good team.