Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die

Here's Paramount's production of the Gunfight at the O. K. Corral, offering Richard Dix as Wyatt Earp, Kent Taylor as Doc Holliday, and after that, it departs from the legend, both in real characters, including third-billed Edgar Buchanan as Curly Bill Brocious, and fictional ones, like Don Castle's Johnny Duane. It offers the story as more complicated and nuanced than usual, and the usual big guns don't hold center stage as they typically do. The overall arc is a long-running feud between Wyatt Earp and Brocious; the Clantons are offered as Brocious' uppity henchmen, and the central character theme seems to be the redemption ofCastle's character, through a desire to court Frances Gifford, a saloon singer with a heart of gold; she sings one song, the anachronistic "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay".

It's one of Paramount's A Westerns, and it shows in Russell Harlan's brilliant outdoors photography -- although the final shootout in the Alabama Hills shows the exact same rocks western fans have seen two hundred times. The net effect is good -- with a cast like this, it's hard not to be engaging, but it's too diffuse to be great. Director William C. McGann had a hand directing two more features, then spent the last decade of his career working in the special effects department. He died in 1977, aged 84.

This film would probably have made a great two or three stories. In fact, if you chopped the movie into three stories, they would have made great 30 minute western TV episodes. But this is the early 40s and years before TV.

The film reeled me in with the promise of Richard Dix as Wyatt Earp in yet another tale based on the Tombstone Legend. Yes, not all of the Earp brothers who were in Tombstone are in the film and Doc Holliday is completely healthy, but then none of the filmed versions of this western tale have ever been totally accurate.

What is bothersome is how the much the script just changes course using hackneyed themes. The film starts out with what seems to be a head villain, Curly Bill Brocious (Edgar Buchanan) menacing the town and Wyatt accepting the job of sheriff to rein him in. Bill has a kind of "headquarters" out of town and is discussing how to get rid of Wyatt when in walks a completely fictitious character, Johnny Duane, who is looking for a job and doesn't care if he works for Mr. Evil (Bill) or not. His job is to get close to Wyatt, and work for him if he can, and ultimately kill him. So then bad guy Bill totally disappears and this becomes all about Johnny Duane and how conflicted he is over good versus evil, Wyatt versus Bill. Then it segueys into a romantic conflict when Wyatt sends for Johnny's girl and they break up after a heated argument. Next thing you know Johnny's girl is working as a saloon girl??? In 21st century terms that would be the equivalent of a CPA breaking up with her boyfriend and deciding the way to get even is to change careers and start slithering around a pole unclothed in a seedy nightclub. What the???

So in come the Clantons and the McClowerys, the historic shootout at the OK Corral, and yet Ike Clanton (Victor Jory), who is portrayed as a cowardly little weasel (my apologies to weasels everywhere, they make great pets), is just told to get out of town after shooting at law enforcement???? In probably the strangest development in the entire film - and there is lots of competition - Wyatt is simultaneously indicted for murder in the OK Corral shootout AND named a US Marshall. How this is resolved is never explained.

Then there is Doc Holliday apparently shot to death by a cowardly assassin in a pool hall, and then bad Bill Brocious - back from a vacation? - reappears for the big finale, which I have to admit was cleverly done and not just your generic shootout. However the still gray and double-minded Johnny Duane is still hanging around Wyatt, who says that Bill was one villain that he respected???Huh???

Totally weird western that is one part Bill Brocious versus Wyatt, one part Johnny Duane versus himself, one part western romance, and one part the traditional shootout at the OK Corral story. The writer definitely should be run out of town. Actually, the writer was Charles Reisner, a director of early talking comedies at MGM that were not half bad. The western genre, or maybe writing, is definitely not up his alley.

Kudos to Edgar Buchanan as bad Bill. I'm used to seeing him as sedentary Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction and I never knew he could move so much. This film appeared on the Starz Western channel, obviously restored. I can't believe with so many first rate Paramounts in their library, Universal would choose this one to clean up for modern audiences.

I agree with Frankfob's comment on this film. It's nicely made, with some interesting actors. The only point I would carp about is the unlimited number of bullets that Curly Billy and his gang fire off early on in the film without appearing to re-load their revolvers.

Perhaps Richard Dix is a little old for the film, and he doesn't convey the machismo that Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper retained in middle age, but he does well enough.

Don Castle has a great screen presence - lots of charisma, and it's interesting to note that he later had a minor role as a drunk cowboy in "Gunfight at the OK Corral". The love interest is reasonably muted and Frances Gifford doesn't have too much screen time.

And Edgar Buchanan as Curly Bill doesn't mumble, as he was inclined to do later in his career

This is an unheralded little gem of a western. Full of rock-solid actors, but no big stars (Richard Dix, the biggest name in the cast, was beginning to settle into character parts after a long career as a leading man), this tight little western moves like lightning. Director William McGann made his name as an action specialist and second-unit director at Warner Bros. (it definitely has the Warner Bros. "look" to it, even though it's from Paramount), and he proved here that he was more than capable of handling a bigger-budget western. Tightly paced, full of rousing action and good performances, it deserves to be better known than it is.

Truth to tell, I had never heard of Director William McGann but I do not feel too ignorant after watching this rather wayward part of the Wyatt Earp saga in the Old West.

Richard Dix plays Wyatt - nowhere near as memorably as Joel McCrea in WICHITA or Burt Lancaster in GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL, among other worthies - but the real show stealer is Edgar Buchanan as Curly Bill Brocius, a hard-drinking and fast-robbing cattle rustler.

Good B&W cinematography by Russell Harlan, terrific editing by Lewis and Rose, and entertaining script from Le Vino and Paramore make this unusual Western a must-see for any lover of Westerns. 7/10.