Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Leon Uris
Directed by John Sturges
Starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland, Dennis Hopper, DeForest Kelley, Martin Milner, and Lee Van Cleef

Released by: Paramount
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Fans of the genre buy it. All else rent.

Doc Holliday (Douglas) rolls into Tombstone, looking to make a little money at poker after his last game ended with a knifing of his opponent. He immediately runs afoul of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp (Lancaster), who has come to Tombstone to settle down and get out of the gunslinging business. Before long, both men have had run-ins with the dangerous gang of Ike Clanton (Lyle Bettger). As tension in the town escalates, Doc's lover Kate (Van Fleet) complicates matters by taking up with Clanton's hired gun Johnny Ringo (Ireland). With this last straw, a chain of events is set in motion that will leave three men dead, two men wounded, and a myth in the making.

In thirty seconds of noise and smoke on October 26, 1881, nine men forged one of the most enduring legends of the American West: the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Re-enactments still occur daily of the event, in which the Earps (along with John "Doc" Holliday) square off with the Clantons and McLaurys. The event has spawned countless retellings in print and on screen. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral puts forth the second-best depiction of the event ever filmed, second only to Tombstone.

Douglas and Lancaster are fantastic as Doc and Wyatt, though if I had to pick a favorite, I think Douglas carries any scene he's in. The supporting cast is loaded with some amazing talent, including the VERY young Dennis Hopper as unfortunate Billy Clanton. Lee Van Cleef's short cameo as Ed Bailey seems like a waste (I think he'd have been better as a Clanton, and one of them could have taken the shank to the ribs in the first reel). The weakest of the principals is probably Jo Van Fleet, whose neurotic Kate Fisher doesn't really come across very believable. Part of this is probably due to the unavoidable (and unfavorable) comparison to the same role portrayed in Tombstone by Joanna Pacula.

This brings me to one of the more interesting aspects of watching this film. As a huge fan of the Russell/Kilmer version of the story, I was a bit unprepared to see how much of their film was a direct homage to this predecessor. There are shots and scenes throughout this film that are imitated and improved on in the later version to great effect. The largest difference between the two films is historical accuracy. Gunfight is rife with inaccuracies and outright fabrications, some for the sake of action and others for no apparent reason at all. Why is Johnny Ringo at the O.K. Corral? Why would Earp hunt Billy down? Why does the gunfight last twenty minutes? All of these questions could be posed, but it seems a bit much to ask from an early Western to bother with such details. Later filmmakers seemed to take the genre more seriously, attempting to create historical dramas that just happened to involve six-guns, rather than larger-than-life cowboy pictures that were more tall-tale than period recreation.

Unless you're an accomplished nitpicker, you'll likely never know the difference anyway. Despite its historical flaws, the movie is an entertaining Western, pure and simple, with lots of fisticuffs, gunslinging, poker playing, and wisecracking keeping things rolling along until the climactic shoot-out to close the film. Western fans will at least want to rent it, and those that don't mind the history mistakes might well want to keep this one the shelf, as it features two of the genre's best performanes in Lancaster and Douglas.