Simply A Masterpiece

Perfectly adorable

Absolutely amazing

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

In the dusty town of Fort Griffin, Texas, Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) is hounded by Ed Bailey and his two friends looking for revenge. Kate Fisher (Jo Van Fleet) begs him to run away. Marshal Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) arrives looking to take two prisoners but the local sheriff had already released them. Doc was previously Wyatt's dentist and not that friendly. Doc is arrested for killing Ed with a knife throw. Wyatt and Kate help Doc escape from an approaching lynch mob. Back in Dodge City, Kansas, Wyatt leads his brothers as the town's law. He tries to send newly arrived Doc away. Wyatt arrests Laura Denbow (Rhonda Fleming) for being a female gambler.This old fashion western directed by legendary John Sturges is led by two top level Hollywood stars. They are able to drive the story through its long winding road. Along with the old stars, there are younger actors like Dennis Hopper and DeForest Kelley. It's not necessarily breaking the mold. The action is mostly straight forward. The running time is a little long but it does end with a solid gun fight at the O.K. Corral.

This account of the events leading up to and including the historical shootout between Wyatt Earp and the former dentist come gambling gunfighter afflicted with tuberculosis (that becomes the Marshal's friend) Doc Holliday versus Ike Clanton and associates in Tombstone, Arizona is notable for the on screen relationship portrayed between its two leads, Burt Lancaster as Marshal Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Dr. John 'Doc' Holliday.Directed by John Sturges, with a screenplay by novelist Leon Uris from an article by George Scullin, this slightly above average Western received an Academy Award nomination for Warren Low's Editing; its Sound Recording by George Dutton was also Oscar nominated.According to this film, Wyatt Earp was a lawman above reproach, with an enviable moral code of conduct. He was so well thought of that the association which develops into a friendship between him and the gambler, who's also a notorious gunfighter, known as Doc Holliday threatens to tarnish the Marshal's reputation. Rhonda Fleming plays Laura Denbow, a gambling woman who temporarily interests Marshal Earp enough for him to consider settling down and retiring from the law. Jo Van Fleet plays Kate Fisher, a floozy and longtime girlfriend of Doc's; her loyalty wanes as he is weakened by his disease and promise to the Marshal not to kill anyone since they'd become friends. The situation is exacerbated when Kate takes up with Johnny Ringo (John Ireland), one of Ike Clanton's hired guns that exploits the situation.Clanton (Lyle Bettger) is a powerful cattle rustler who owns the less lily white county sheriff Cotton Wilson (Frank Faylen); Earl Holliman plays Earp's somewhat green Deputy Sheriff Charlie Bassett whereas a very youthful looking Dennis Hopper plays Clanton's youngest boy Billy. Whit Bissell plays the head of Tombstone's citizen council, which backs Wyatt and his brothers Virgil (John Hudson) and Morgan (DeForest Kelley); Martin Milner plays the youngest, greenest Earp brother Jimmy, whose murder by the Clantons leads to the personal showdown in this fictionalized account of the events. Don't blink or you'll miss Kenneth Tobey as Bat Masterson near the beginning of the film (sitting on a porch with Wyatt); would be Western movie veteran Lee Van Cleef appears a little less briefly as the disgruntled Ed Bailey, whose skirmish with a knife throwing Holliday is short-lived. Jack Elam might be hard to spot as well; he plays one of the McLowery brothers that's allied with the Clantons in the climactic (lengthened to a cinematic six minute) gun battle with the Earps and Holliday.As a producer, Sturges would follow-up this story ten years later by directing Hour of the Gun (1967) with James Garner and Jason Robards in the Wyatt and Doc roles, respectively.

Before this movie was released My Darling Clementine (1946)was the most unabashedly absurd movie ever made about the famous gunfight. Both movies were laughable and appalling and a waste of talent. This The Gunfight at the OK Corral had as much to do in reality with the actual gunfight as the re-enactment on Star Trek did. There are no saguaro cacti as far south as Tombstone. Both movies use them as props. When you enter Tombstone from the north the cemetery is on your left, not right as in both movies. The fight lasted less than 30 seconds. It was not a running gun battle. If America cared about history our defense forces would call in an air strike on Hollywood.

Unfortunately this big production western is over-inflated. That's an endemic problem for movies of this expensive type. It's a star-studded cast, which means the headliners, Lancaster, Douglas, Fleming, and Van Fleet (coming off an Oscar for East of Eden {1954}), must get appropriate screen time. The result here is that the story gets stretched out into too many subplots and a leisurely pace. Of course, the gunfight at OK Corral should be the centerpiece. Instead, however, it's simply one more episode in an episodic narrative. First, we have to get through the many other gunfights and romantic interludes that stretch out the 2-hour run-time. Thus, the big showdown loses much of its in-built suspense. It also doesn't help that the Clanton's, with the exception of Billy (Hopper), are underwritten. In short, the bad guys are not etched strongly enough as individuals, which would have made the shootout more personal and suspenseful.That's not to say headliners Douglas (Holliday) and Lancaster (Earp) are not excellent in their roles. They are. It is to say that the Laura (Fleming) role should have been junked as unnecessary, glamour value or no, while Kate's (VanFleet) role should have been reduced since we get the idea early on. Of course, Hollywood was still trying to out-compete TV in 1956, which likely explains much of the movie's unnecessary sprawl. What the movie does do well is develop the friendship between Earp and Holliday, without sentimentalizing it. Also the VistaVision makes for an impressive visual experience that TV could not emulate. Nonetheless, I'm afraid this version of the celebrated gunfight, suffers in comparison with John Ford's tightly done, My Darling Clementine (1946), even if the latter is filmed in lowly b&w.(In passing—I don't go to movies for historical accuracy, nor do I expect it from an industry whose overriding object is profit.)