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Who really cares if this film is historically accurate? This is the re-telling, no matter how grandiose and overblown, of a gunfight that has gained in reputation over the years and has become legendary, deserved or un-deserved. The result is one jim-dandy of a western with a little bit of love, a little bit of drama and a whole lot of violence as the Earps and the Clantons go head to head.

And who better to be the bigger than life heroes than those two bigger than life stars, Lancaster and Douglas. Talk about perfect casting...... Lancaster as Wyatt Earp moves through this film like a ballet dancer and Douglas as Doc Holliday squares that famous chin and gets tough while hacking up his lungs to tuberculosis. Who can forget Lancaster running and diving across the corral with a shotgun. His former career as an acrobat and trapeze artist is on display here.

The supporting cast is about as good as it gets. From Lyle Bettger to John Ireland as the bad guys......to Jo VanFleet as Doc's woman.....to Dennis Hopper as the confused youngest Clanton. Rhonda Fleming is beautiful and is only part of the sub-plot used to flesh out the running time but I'm not complaining.

You don't have to be a fan of westerns to get involved in this epic tale......and I haven't even mentioned Frankie Lane's title song. It's a heroic tale of family honor and violent consequences when honor is challenged. Accuracy be damned......it's a great film.

Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957)

This has the makings of a classic, and of course the story is one of the great ture legends of the Wild West. Burt Lancaster as the tough and unbending lawman and Kirk Douglas as the unpredictable semi-lawless cad are both great, and the best scenes are probably those with the two of them. The rest of the cast is reasonable, some of them really good, though maybe the all important bad guys lacked some kind of wild evil they might have needed (a Lee Marvin intensity). One of the bad guys, Johnny Ringo, is played by a nice guy actor, John Ireland, even though Ringo was never part of thie OK Corral story. It does have a young Dennis Hopper, which is fun to see (and Hopper hailed from Dodge City itself in real life).

Still, it looked like it would really be equivalent to "Rio Bravo" and others from the same time period.

Not so, not for me. And it's simply because of that whole range of different things that add up in a great movie and slip and slither in a decent one. For example, there are a number of interludes with horses walking through the big landscape and the corny theme song is sung through a new verse. I can't believe this was effective even at the time (music from 1957 in general wasn't so corny and fakey, including country music), but now it deadened the flow. Likewise the series of events didn't always seem to lead one to the next in a compelling way, as the interludes allowed a shift in location and sometimes a whole new situation to develop.

One problem (if this is a problem) is that it's based on facts. I think this made the movie makers add information and keep switching towns simply because it was the way it was and they thought they must. Maybe they did. Oddly, they got lots of the essentials wrong that might actually make a better movie if someone wants to take another crack at it (quick details at wikipedia). The final famous shootout is fun and well done but way too obvious with the good guys always getting their target and the bad guys missing, or hitting a leg.

So why the reputation? It isn't bad, and it is always compelling to see Douglas in particular in almost any film. The filming (by Charles Lang, one of the greats) is first rate, and so just watching, whatever the scene, is enjoyable.

"Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" derives from one of the most celebrated shoot-outs in Western history in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881... The semi-legendary confrontation had made of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, men of exceptional quality...

"Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" has some of the Sturges virtues, but not all… It doesn't however disappoint when it comes to the crunch—the gunfight itself… This is magnificently staged… It probably equals anything that law and order movies have produced in set-piece battles…

The film also focuses on the friendship between Earp and Holliday and the good will of two different kinds of men... Earp, is an honest lawman with authority, and Holliday, a gambler with a 'real big hate for the law.'

The two characters are powerful, strong, and at the same time compassionate, with respect and dignity... Holliday's character as the black sheep, is much more interesting than the straight marshal who is at the same time the lawman, the judge and the jury.' The main assets of the motion picture are Lancaster and Douglas, two great stars conscious of their potentialities with excellent ability...

Douglas is impressing and brilliant as the troubled sick Doc Holliday and Lancaster is confident, solid and likable as Wyatt Earp... The mirror scene, in the beginning of the film, is great: Douglas, cool and steady, is ready for action observing carefully in the mirror the sharp feature and narrow steely eyes of Lee Van Cleef who is so anxious to kill him with a small gun hidden in his left boot...

Fine performances by a first-class cast heighten the interest: Rhonda Fleming is ravishing as the redhead lady gambler; Jo Van Fleet is very effective as the jealous lady, torn between Ringo and Holliday; Earl Holliman is good as the naive deputy who 'picks up the hardware as soon as the cowboys hit town;' John Ireland is unforgettable with his slight stoop and menacing walk; Lyle Bettger is strong as Ike Clanton, the organizer of the toughest bunch of gunslingers; Dennis Hopper is difficult and rebellious as the young Clanton who can't take the advice of the marshal; and Jack Elam is threatening as the tall and lean man with an evil leer...

Dimitri Tiomkin's great score back up the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," a pure Western, magnificently photographed by Charles Lang in VistaVision and Technicolor...

John Ireland has been twice on the losing side of the Corral incident... The first time as Billy Clanton in John Ford's "My Darling Clementine."

This is strictly Hollywood. If one reads even the most fundamental biographies of the Earps and their associates, we come to realize that their feud with the Clantons is overblown by writers who wished to satisfy an audience. The Earps and Doc Holliday were far from perfect enforcer's of the law. Wyatt was as much a politician as he was a lawman, having on many occasions to try to appease a population that didn't especially like him. Doc Holliday was a user and abuser and a very sick man. The Earp brother had their own problems. One of the foibles, especially of Wyatt, was being bad judges of women. This film makes them saviors and, in the Western tradition, black and white. The shootout is a lot of fun as is the suspense leading up to it. It's certainly not a biopic, but it's a really fun Western.

No, this is not the way it really happened at the Ok Corral in Tucson but since when has Hollywood ever been totally accurate and true to history? The chemistry between Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster works extremely well. This movie works because of great stars and a solid cast of great actors. The score is outstanding featuring Frankie Lane singing the title song. The photography is very realistic compared to most westerns of that era. The gunfight at the Ok Corral is worth waiting for. If you like westerns, you will especially like The Gunfight At Ok Corral.