Sfida all'O.K. Corral

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.

'Gunfight at O.K. Corral' is one of the many films that have told the tale of the famous showdown between the Earps and the Clantons, but setting this version apart is the ideal casting of Burt Lancaster as the straight-shooting Marshal Wyatt Earp, and Kirk Douglas as the sardonic, dying gambler, Doc Holliday. As in all their pairings, there is a chemistry between them that makes even mundane scripts seem magical!

Lancaster, continuing his rule of alternating between heavy drama and action films, researched the historic Earp extensively, speaking to many who knew him, and his performance is restrained and assured. Douglas, on the other hand, fresh from playing Vincent Van Gogh in 'Lust for Life', knew he needed a splashy hit film, and played Doc Holliday as larger than life, swaggering, diseased, and charismatic. His portrayal is far closer in spirit to the interpretations of Holliday by Val Kilmer, in 'Tombstone', and Dennis Quaid, in 'Wyatt Earp', than Victor Mature, in John Ford's 'My Darling Clementine'.

The film, co-written by Leon Uris, author of 'Exodus', is a historically fanciful but very entertaining exploration of the friendship between Earp and Holliday, as the lawman moves from Dodge City to Tombstone, followed by the gambler, covering a 'blood debt', after Earp saves his life. The climax is, naturally, the infamous gun battle between the Earps (with Holliday) versus the Clanton family and their allies. While purists will quickly note that the shoot-'em-up presented is totally fabricated (watch 'Wyatt Earp' or 'Tombstone' if you want accuracy), it certainly is rousing!

Other aspects of the film to enjoy...Dimitri Tiompkin's magnificent musical score, highlighted by Frankie Laine's unforgettable performance of the title tune, throughout the film...Excellent supporting players, including Jo Van Fleet as Holliday's mistress, John Ireland as evil Johnny Ringo, a young Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton, and Rhonda Fleming as the gambler girlfriend of Wyatt (based on Earp's actual wife, Josie)...Cameos by Kenneth Tobey as Bat Masterson, DeForest Kelley as Morgan Earp, Martin Milner as James Earp, and Frank Faylen as the corrupt sheriff.

The director, John Sturges, revisited the Earp saga some years later in 'Hour of the Gun', with James Garner as Earp, and Jason Robards as Holliday, but while the later film may be more correct, historically, 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' is a far more enjoyable film.

I strongly recommend it to any western fan!

One of Hollywood's major offerings of 1957, "Gunfight" contains all the ingredients one would expect of a blockbuster - big stars, big budget and a storyline calculated to capture the public's imagination. For me, however, the film doesn't quite work. In the final analysis, the whole thing is a little too sluggish, a little too formulaic.

To be sure, it contains fine things. Burt Lancaster is stolid and unyielding as hard lawman Wyatt Earp. Sturges films him with the camera at ground level as he rides onto the screen, making him seem superhuman in his larger-than-life moral certainty. He faces down the armed drunk without the faintest twitch of fear, the embodiment of a strong, righteous enforcer of the law. The friendship between the paragon and the wastrel is cleverly done, with Earp and Holliday (Kirk Douglas) each seeing something to admire in the other, very different, man. Character is also to the fore as a plot-driver when Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet) is forced by the dynamics of her relationship with the Doc into ever more wretched behaviour. By comparison, the Earp-Laura love story is cold and staid. Both Lancaster and Rhonda Fleming are terrific to look at, but hard to warm to. Though the film takes an eternity to get to the shoot-out which is its raison d'etre, when the climax finally comes the suspense is built superbly. In a nice symmetry, we see the women of both sides dreading the fatal clash as Ma Clanton and Virgil's wife separately mourn the departure of their respective menfolk. Douglas made a career out of playing generous-spirited bad guys, and one of the best things in this film is Doc Holliday's heroic effort of will, rising from his sickbed to stand beside his friend in the face of mortal danger. Shot in a rich Technicolor palette, the film's images are strong and clean, and at times even beautiful, for example the barn fire, or the approach of the Earp faction, with Cotton standing facing them, his body framed by the corral building.

Other elements are not so well done. Wyatt is too unrelenting a hard man to win the audience's unqualified sympathy, as in the scene when he tells the all-too-human Cotton, "If you can't handle it any more, turn in your badge." The Frankie Laine ballad, almost de rigeur in 1950's westerns, is simply not up to scratch ("Boot Hill, Boot Hill, so cold, so still ...") There is an ugly shadow eclipsing Ike Clanton's face throughout his most important scene. Billy (a very young Dennis Hopper) is 'converted' by Wyatt far too easily.

There exists a wide spectrum of opinion on the question of how loyal a work of fiction should remain to the historical event which inspired it. One camp would argue that the artist has total freedom to rework a popular legend such as The Gunfight, while the other extremity would insist on documentary accuracy. This film is interesting, in that it takes a well-known incident for which contemporaneous records abound, and virtually disregards the historical truth.

In the film, the decent, clean-shaven Earp boys are merely 'doing what a man has to do'. We know that the Clanton-McLaury gang is mean and duplicitous, and that there will have to be a showdown between Right and Wrong. The shoot-out, when it comes, happens over several minutes of time on a clear, bright day. There is an athletic battle of movement, with the Earps in particular manoeuvring for position, and finally trapping the Clantons in and around a burning wagon. The strategic intentions of the good guys are clear and easy to follow.

The reality of October 26, 1881 was quite different. Two gangs of walrus-mustachioed men confronted each other, standing face-to-face in a built-up street. The shooting lasted a maximum of 30 seconds, and when the smoke cleared, three of the so-called "cowboy faction" lay dead or mortally wounded, whereas the Earp faction sustained only minor wounds. Wyatt was totally unharmed. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne, two of the cowboy leaders, had in fact run away when the guns opened fire.

This was no tussle between Good and Evil. Wyatt Earp was not a US Marshall, as the film tries to insist. He was Virgil's assistant with purely local authority, little more than his brother's pinch-hitter. Doc Holliday held no office of any kind. This was a clash between two Americas - the Earps representing the urban, northern, republican culture which had won the Civil War, while the Clantons stood for the freebooting, democratic, open-range mentality whose sympathies lay with the vanquished South.

A motion picture has a span of something like 90 minutes in which to set out its stall. Perhaps such a narrow intellectual space imposes so many constrictions that the true flavour of a historic event can never be properly represented. Or maybe the limitations of the medium set the film-maker free to create a better, more poetic "reality". I don't know the answer. There probably isn't one.

"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."

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.