Film of the Week: 8.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral; Quite possibly the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West and it took place in Tombstone, Arizona back in 1881, October 26th at 3pm.

This fight was a classic example of an old fashioned 'show down', where a town was there for the taking for the outlaws and the law was nowhere to be seen. Only Tombstone had Wyatt Earp and his good friend John Henry (better known as "Doc" Holliday).

As a result of the fight, outlaws Frank & Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were shot and killed, Morgan & Virgi Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded but Wyatt Earp was unharmed.

The American public however were never even aware of this fight until 1931 (2 years after Earp's death) when author Stuart Lake released a biography on Wyatt Earp titled, 'Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal'. The biography has been determined to be mostly fictional.

The author then retold his story into a book in 1946 and that very year, legendary film-maker John Ford released one of his greatest westerns based on that book, My Darling Clementine.

It featured Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp in one of his most iconic roles and Victor Mature (from The Robe & Kiss of Death) as Doc Holliday. The film starts with the Earp brothers driving cattle to California. They then run into a gang (the Clantons) lead by the 'old man' and are told that there's a town nearby, Tombstone. So they leave their young brother James with the camp to check out the town.

Victor Mature as Doc Holliday

They realize that the town is completely lawless and when they return to their camp, they find their young brother James dead. In a state of anger, the head back to Tombstone where Wyatt takes on the role of the town sheriff (a job that nobody wants) along with his brothers and Doc.

There are however a few changes in the film, such as the character James Earp who in real life died in 1926 and the old man died two months before the OK Corral even occurred.

Numerous films have been released on the subject and many people have played the infamous Wyatt Earp, such as Burt Lancaster in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Joel McCrea in Wichita and Kurt Russel in Tombstone. However for my money, John Ford has done the best job with the material.

Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp

John Ford knows his westerns, and I'm pretty sure myself that he hung around with a few veterans of the old west. With the iconic image of Fonda on his chair with his feet up to the language in the film and even the way everyone goes about their business, we get the sense that Ford knows what he's talking about.

At the end of the day, his version may not be the most authentic, but it is the most legendary in the film world. As the man once told us in another one of his great films, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Click here for the trailer