Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

  Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster

'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' is a Western adventure movie, one of the major movies of 1957, and stars Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The movie depicts a real event, the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, which took place between Wyatt Earp and the Clanton gang in October, 1881.

The movie was directed by John Sturges and was not the first film version of the famous battle. But Sturges's film is a little more accurate than John Ford's 'My Darling Clementine' in 1946. Ford, for example, has Earp's associate Doc Holliday killed in the battle; in fact he survived six more years.

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'Gunfight at the OK Corral' is a slick production, technically excellent and with a big budget, and it benefits from a fine cast. Burt Lancaster is full of authority as Earp, at times chilling in his determination. By contrast, Kirk Douglas has great fun with the consumptive Holliday, flashing a ready smile but deadly as a snake. There is also strong support from Jo Van Fleet as 'Big Nose' Kate, Doc's put-upon woman, and John Ireland as gunslinger Johnny Ringo, together with Rhonda Fleming, Dennis Hopper, Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Star Trek's DeForest Kelley. The movie was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Sound, Recording.

The melodious score, by Dimitri Tiomkin, who also did the music for other town-taming Westerns such as 'High Noon' and 'Rio Bravo', made a considerable contribution, and Frankie Laine's theme song was a big hit. However, those wanting a more realistically down-beat treatment of the Wyatt Earp story shoud watch Sturges's 1967 sequel, 'Hour of the Gun, with James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Jason Robards as Holliday, in which the incident at the OK Corral is just the start.