dual personalities

According to Wikipedia, “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a roughly 30-second gunfight that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Cochise County, of the United States. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were killed; Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, and Doc Holliday were wounded and survived. Wyatt Earp was the only individual who came through the fight unharmed. It is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West.”

So in honor of this famous gunfight that took place 130 years ago this week, our Friday movie pick is My Darling Clementine (1946)–one of my top-10 favorite movies of all time.

Beautifully shot in black and white in Monument Valley by Joseph MacDonald and directed by John Ford, it is a subtlely nuanced western. (Oddly enough, it was one of Sam Peckinpah’s favorite westerns. Go figure.) Henry Fonda, who is not one of my favorite actors, gives his best performance ever (besides The Grapes of Wrath, also directed by John Ford). He is manly, yet sensitive, and remarkably sexy. Victor Mature is also wonderful as Doc Holliday, especially when quoting Shakespeare. Walter Brennan, who won three supporting actor Academy Awards–but surprisingly not for this picture–is menacing and scary as the abusive father, Ike Clanton. Even Linda Darnell puts in a solid performance as Chihuahua, despite the worst hairdo in movie history. Never has an actress been photographed so lovingly as Linda in her death scene. Directors nowadays no longer make the effort to make their stars look so beautiful. Pay attention when you watch this movie–it’s a great one! (My Darling Clementine was named the Best Foreign Film of 1948 by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists. They got it right.)

There have been many movies made about the O.K. Corral–most of them dreadful. When I was little I was a big fan of 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, directed by John Sturges and featuring a screenplay written by novelist Leon Uris–mostly because of the terrific theme song by Dimitri Tiomkin. The song holds up, but the movie does not! It is enjoyable on a certain level, when you are in the nostalgic mood for a 1950s western, but Burt Lancaster is unusually wooden in his depiction of Earp as a puritanical good guy. Kirk Douglas, on the other hand, chews the scenery in his over-the-top portrayal of Doc Holliday, but I love the scene where he attempts to beat the truth out of his girlfriend, Jo Van Fleet, and has to stop due to a coughing attack. And he gave this family a famous and oft-quoted line: “Was it Riiingo?!”

Hour of the Gun (1967) with James Garner is unwatchable. The most recent re-dos, one with Kevin Costner and one with Kurt Russell just take themselves too seriously and are pretty bad. So take my advice and stick with My Darling Clementine. Wow, is it good.