Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

film by Sturges [1957]

Written by Lee Pfeiffer

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Article History

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, American western film, released in 1957, that was loosely based on the shootout (1881) that made mythical heroes of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

The film begins in Fort Griffin, Texas, where lawman Wyatt Earp (played by Burt Lancaster) first encounters Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas), a gambler and gunfighter. After being arrested on a questionable murder charge, Doc is saved from a mob by Wyatt. The two men later meet in Dodge City, Kansas, and Doc comes to Wyatt’s aid on several occasions. They then head to Tombstone, Arizona, where Wyatt’s brother Virgil (John Hudson), the local marshal, is facing a crisis. The Clanton family has stolen a herd of cattle and is desperate to transport them via the Tombstone rail station. Virgil intends to stop the rustlers, and he is joined in his efforts by Wyatt, their brothers James (Martin Milner) and Morgan (DeForest Kelley), and Doc. The Clantons target Wyatt for assassination, but the attempt goes awry, and James is killed instead. His death sets the stage for the legendary gunfight at the nearby O.K. Corral, from which the Earps and Holliday emerge victorious.

Similar to John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), which tells largely the same story, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took considerable artistic license, though it stays closer to historical fact than Ford’s film. Lancaster and Douglas were in top form. John Sturges, the film’s director, had originally planned to cast Humphrey Bogart as Holliday, but the actor was in poor health and later died shortly before the film’s release in 1957.