The movies sure do love telling and retelling the story of the OK Corral shootout. Most versions never do it with any degree of accuracy. This film is one of the least accurate, but maybe one of the most poetic. That's almost a given when you consider John Ford directed it.
My Darling Clementine is based on the book Stuart Lake wrote as an official biography of Wyatt Earp. A year or two before Earp died, he gave a series of interviews to Stuart Lake and gave his version of his life. The book is a good account of all the events of Wyatt Earp's life, his whole life as a frontier marshal before and after the OK Corral affair. Earp outlived just about all his contemporaries on the western scene so he got the final word in for the most part. There have been revisionist stuff done that show that the brothers Earp might not have been as noble as all that. But saying the Clantons and their satellites were any model citizens is just plain ridiculous.
20th Century Fox bought the rights to the Lake book and made two other films entitled Frontier Marshal in 1934 and 1939 starring George O'Brien and Randolph Scott respectively. Basically they bought the rights to the Earp myth, because none of this is in My Darling Clementine. Note also those are the ONLY Wyatt Earp films that are credited to the Lake authorized biography.
The myth of Earp is so overwhelming that you can't play it any other way but noble. Henry Fonda is certainly no exception here. But it's a good portrayal of the cowboy hero. Doc Holiday is always the character that is most complex and Victor Mature does well by Holiday. He's a surgeon here, not a dentist as in real life and part of the plot calls on him to operate on his girl friend Chihuahua played by Linda Darnell. Her death is what compels him to join the Earps in their meeting with the Clantons.
The best acted role in this film belongs to Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. In real life Old Man Clanton was killed several months before the OK Corral gunfight, but Brennan is fascinating as one evil human being. His portrayal of the Clanton patriarch makes his Academy Award winning Roy Bean in The Westerner look like Mary Poppins.
John Ford got a great performance from Brennan, but it was the one and only time they ever worked together. Brennan refused to ever work for him after that. Ford could be a bully on the set and sometimes downright sadistic. Some actors took to him, some didn't and Brennan with Academy Awards under his belt felt he didn't have to.
I've seen My Darling Clementine, dozens of times, but I still jump when Brennan kills Virgil Earp played by Tim Holt by shooting him in the back. Actually the scene as great as it is shows one weakness in the screenplay. Virgil Earp would NEVER have ridden up to the Clanton ranch alone as he did, he was an experienced peace officer in his own right. But when Brennan takes that shotgun from under the blanket draped over his lap and shoots as Holt is leaving, I guarantee you will jump with fright. It's a great cinematic moment, but Ford should have had a better premise leading up to it.
My Darling Clementine is a wonderful poetic retelling of the great western myth about the OK Corral, a great classic western.
My Darling Clementine is based on the book Stuart Lake wrote as an official biography of Wyatt Earp. A year or two before Earp died, he gave a series of interviews to Stuart Lake and gave his version of his life. The book is a good account of all the events of Wyatt Earp's life, his whole life as a frontier marshal before and after the OK Corral affair. Earp outlived just about all his contemporaries on the western scene so he got the final word in for the most part. There have been revisionist stuff done that show that the brothers Earp might not have been as noble as all that. But saying the Clantons and their satellites were any model citizens is just plain ridiculous.
20th Century Fox bought the rights to the Lake book and made two other films entitled Frontier Marshal in 1934 and 1939 starring George O'Brien and Randolph Scott respectively. Basically they bought the rights to the Earp myth, because none of this is in My Darling Clementine. Note also those are the ONLY Wyatt Earp films that are credited to the Lake authorized biography.
The myth of Earp is so overwhelming that you can't play it any other way but noble. Henry Fonda is certainly no exception here. But it's a good portrayal of the cowboy hero. Doc Holiday is always the character that is most complex and Victor Mature does well by Holiday. He's a surgeon here, not a dentist as in real life and part of the plot calls on him to operate on his girl friend Chihuahua played by Linda Darnell. Her death is what compels him to join the Earps in their meeting with the Clantons.
The best acted role in this film belongs to Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. In real life Old Man Clanton was killed several months before the OK Corral gunfight, but Brennan is fascinating as one evil human being. His portrayal of the Clanton patriarch makes his Academy Award winning Roy Bean in The Westerner look like Mary Poppins.
John Ford got a great performance from Brennan, but it was the one and only time they ever worked together. Brennan refused to ever work for him after that. Ford could be a bully on the set and sometimes downright sadistic. Some actors took to him, some didn't and Brennan with Academy Awards under his belt felt he didn't have to.
I've seen My Darling Clementine, dozens of times, but I still jump when Brennan kills Virgil Earp played by Tim Holt by shooting him in the back. Actually the scene as great as it is shows one weakness in the screenplay. Virgil Earp would NEVER have ridden up to the Clanton ranch alone as he did, he was an experienced peace officer in his own right. But when Brennan takes that shotgun from under the blanket draped over his lap and shoots as Holt is leaving, I guarantee you will jump with fright. It's a great cinematic moment, but Ford should have had a better premise leading up to it.
My Darling Clementine is a wonderful poetic retelling of the great western myth about the OK Corral, a great classic western.