GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
SoTrumpBelieve
Must See Movie...
AshUnow
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Wuchak
Released in 1957 and directed by John Sturges, "Gunfight at the OK Corral" stars Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in a loose adaption of the events that led up to the famous shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881. Rhonda Fleming and Jo Van Fleet are on hand as the protagonists' respective babes. Earl Holliman is noteworthy as Earp's deputy in Dodge City while John Ireland plays Johnny Ringo. DeForest Kelley (Bones from Star Trek) has a small role as one of the Earp brothers while a young Dennis Hopper plays Billy Clanton. This is a dialogue-driven production that reflects the era in which it was made, hokey opening cowboy song and all. If you can acclimate to its 'world' there are a lot of rewarding elements, particularly the growing friendship of Wyatt and Doc, which starts out shaky, to say the least. It's their relationship that anchors the story, which has trouble working up suspense since it takes place in three distant locations—Fort Griffen, Texas; Dodge City, Kansas; and Tombstone, Arizona. By the time the Earp brothers & Holliday relocate to Tombstone there are a mere 50 minutes left in the movie, which means there's only a small measure of time to establish the villainy of Ike Clanton (Lyle Bettger) & his 'Cowboys' outlaw gang and subsequently build-up to the climatic shootout. Speaking of which, the real Tombstone gunfight only lasted about 30 seconds; here's it's 16-times longer at 8 minutes. Most other versions are more accurate on this count, e.g. "Hour of the Gun" (1967) (which, by the way, is Sturges' sequel to this one, albeit with a different cast and a more accurate gunfight at the OK Corral), "Doc" (1971), "Tombstone" (1993) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994). Speaking of "Tombstone," one of the reasons it was a hit is because it had well over an hour to build up to the main shootout and did so expertly; "Wyatt Earp" less so, but then "Wyatt" excels in areas that "Tombstone" doesn't, like mundane realism and exposition on the title character. Besides the anchor of Wyatt and Doc's relationship "Gunfight at the OK Corral" does try to work-up suspense through a fictitious growing rivalry between Doc and Johnny Ringo. While this is a talky Western it's interspersed with nigh shocking violence, like a knife-to-the-chest in the opening act. Nevertheless, it IS dialogue-oriented so to get the most out of it you'll have to (1.) listen closely or (2.) use the subtitles, like I did, which helps you keep track of names and various important (mumbled) statements. I shouldn't close without mentioning Rhonda Fleming and her whoa-man beauty in a fictitious peripheral role. The film runs 122 minutes and was shot in Old Tucson and other Arizona locations, as well as Paramount Ranch and Paramount Studios, California. GRADE: B-
TxMike
Man, they drank a lot of whiskey in the 1880s. I caught this movie on the 'Movies!' TV network. I probably have seen parts of it over the years but today I saw all of it, beginning to end.The basic story and characters are all based on fact, but there are some liberties taken with the timeline and how certain events went down. Still it is a very good old 'western' that holds up well almost 60 years alter.Burt Lancaster, in his early 40s, is Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas, just about 40, is Doc Holliday. In real life they became friends when Holliday saved Earp's life in a saloon confrontation, and that scene is depicted in the movie.From the title we know exactly where the story arc will end up, but there is a lot of good movie leading up to it. Earp is portrayed as an honest, dedicated lawman, some even call him "preacher." In real life he probably wasn't quite as awesome as the movies make him out to be. Holliday was a dentist turned gambler, a shady character to be sure, but he ended up assisting Earp.Beautiful Rhonda Fleming, in her early 30s here, plays a fictional character Laura Denbow, a traveling gambler, that Earp falls for and has to decide whether to stick with her or follow his duty to get the outlaws, commonly called "cowboys" in that era.The big gunfight at OK Corral in Tombstone involved the Clanton gang. It was actually a 30-second fight but the movie makes it much more drawn out than that. Lyle Bettger is Ike Clanton, the leader of the cattle-rustling gang. His younger brother is a very young Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton who dies at OK Corral, his only gunfight. The movie has Ike dying there also but in fact he died 6 years later in a different altercation.It is a movie so the excursions away from historical fact are minor and fine, it is a very fine movie and both Lancaster and Douglas are in great form.
James Hitchcock
There are at least five films I am aware of based upon the notorious Gunfight at the OK Corral; the others are "My Darling Clementine", "Hour of the Gun", "Wyatt Earp" and "Tombstone". This film and "Hour of the Gun" from ten years later were both directed by John Sturges. The later film can be seen as a sort of sequel to this one, although it does not star the same actors. "Gunfight at the OK Corral" starts with the earlier history of Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday, and then moves on to events in Tombstone, with the Gunfight as the climax of the film. "Hour of the Gun" starts off with the Gunfight and then moves on to the subsequent feud between the Earps and the surviving members of the Clanton gang."Gunfight at the OK Corral" takes a number of liberties with history, although not as many as the notoriously inaccurate "My Darling Clementine". Some of these seem to be derived from the earlier film. As in "My Darling Clementine" the Earps are intent on revenge for the death of their younger brother James, murdered by the Clantons. In reality James was the eldest of the Earp brothers and was not murdered; he lived to die of natural causes at the age of 85. As in the earlier movie, the Gunfight is shown as taking place at dawn rather than in the afternoon. Johnny Ringo is shown here taking part in the Gunfight, in reality he was not present, although he was an associate of the Clantons. A fictitious character is introduced in the form of Laura Denbow, a lady gambler who serves as Wyatt's love interest. All the Earp brothers had bushy moustaches, but here they are portrayed as clean-shaven. (Male stars of the forties and fifties were often reluctant to wear facial hair, even when it would have been historically appropriate. The commercial failure of "The Gunfighter", a biopic of Johnny Ringo from 1950, was sometimes blamed upon the moustache worn by Gregory Peck).Historical accuracy, however, is not always a reliable guide to the quality of a film; there are plenty of excellent movies which bear little relationship to the historical events they purportedly depict. Often departures from historical fact can be justified on good dramatic grounds. The actual Gunfight itself, for example, probably lasted for less than a minute and was fought at close range. Any attempt at an accurate depiction of this even would doubtless have resulted in the film ending in a disappointing anti-climax; the full-scale shootout lasting several minutes shown here is far more dramatically satisfying.And this is a large-scale dramatic film that needs a large-scale dramatic ending. Apart from Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp" this is the most epic treatment of this particular story, certainly far more so than "Clementine". It is a Western of the wide-open spaces; the tone is set by that opening scene in which a wagon drives across the prairies to the accompaniment of that muscular but at the same time mournful theme song, the work of that greatest of all Western film composers, Dimitri Tiomkin. (Remarkably, Tiomkin was not a Westerner or even American by birth; he was originally from Kremenchug in the Ukraine). There is plenty of attractive photography of the Western landscapes and, unlike "Clementine" where John Ford relocated Tombstone from Arizona to Utah in order to pander to his love of shooting in Monument Valley, this is generally appropriate to the location- prairies around Dodge City, desert around Tombstone.There are two impressive, and contrasting, performances from Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, close friends who appeared together in several movies. Lancaster portrays Wyatt Earp as a courageous and incorruptible lawman whose one weakness seems to be his friendship with Doc Holliday, a man who has earned a reputation as a gambler and gunslinger. This leads to a disagreement between Wyatt and his brothers, especially Morgan, who distrust Holliday, but this distrust is eventually overcome and Doc joins the Earps in the final shootout with the Clantons. Douglas's interpretation of his role, however, does bring out his character's moral ambiguity, far more than Victor Mature did in "My Darling Clementine"; his Holliday is certainly a potentially dangerous character, but also one who is capable of restraint, as when he resists Ringo's attempts to provoke him to a fight. In my view Lancaster is the best cinema Wyatt and Douglas the best Doc with the possible exception of Val Kilmer in "Tombstone". There is another good contribution from Jo Van Fleet as Doc's mistress Kate Fisher.Overall, I would regard this as the best movie version of the story. The film is well paced and the action sequences well handled, with the final firefight coming as a stunning climax. John Sturges might not today attract quite the same adulation as Ford; at his worst he could churn out some dreadful stuff, such as that misfiring "comic" Western "The Hallelujah Trail", which also starred Lancaster, but at his best he was capable of some sublime work. "The Great Escape" is one of the greatest war films ever made, and "Bad Day at Black Rock" one of the greatest modern-day Westerns. "Gunfight at the OK Corral" is not quite in the same class as those two masterpieces, but it is not far behind. 8/10
mark.waltz
If all of a sudden, the "Road" movies usually with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were taken over by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, the film would still be a success even if they weren't comics or singers. These two have great chemistry, and in a beautiful, Technicolor western, it makes no difference that the real-life incident they dramatize here is totally changed to fit the star's personalities, so I simply look on it as an entertainment, nothing more, nothing less.In this variation of the classic western gun battle that took place in 1881, dentist Doc Holliday (Douglas) and Wyatt Earp (Lancaster) are two total opposites who strike up a reluctant friendship even though Wyatt is annoyed by the Doc at first. But every time Earp gets into a jam, Doc is there, and even when Earp warns the Doc to stay out of Dodge City, he doesn't heed the warning. It's a good thing, too, because they seem to suit each other, even as opposites, and when the men take off for Tombstone to fight the notorious Clanton gang. Jo Van Fleet chews the scenery as Doc's drunken mistress who betrays him with the gang yet never gives up hope they'll get back together, and Earp finds himself enamored of a beautiful red-headed gambling lady (Rhonda Fleming). The actual gunfight is strikingly filmed and sticks to some, if not all, the facts.Any movie which opens up and continues playing a Frankie Laine song will be as equally dramatic as it is action packed, and Laine's singing of the title song all throughout the film, ties everything together. Some future TV stars (Earl Holliman of "Police Woman", DeForrest Kelley of "Star Trek" and Martin Milner of "Adam-12" fame) appear, and are surrounded by some great character players like Frank Faylen, Dennis Hopper, Lee Van Cleef and Lyle Bettger. As Hollywood got away from the second feature, the westerns began to improve, and classics like this, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "Ride the High Country" were made on a more epic scale.
