305 - My Darling Clementine, United States, 1946. Dir. John Ford.
Tombstone.
Biggest graveyard west of the Rockies.
Doc Holliday runs the town. He informs the new Marshal, installed today, that he and each successive marshal get along as long as they understand this. He asks Earp what he would do if Holliday were to take a notion to break the law himself, hypothetically, of course. Earp informs him that Holliday has already broken the law. By running a poker player out of town.
"That's none of your business," Earp informs him.
"I see we're in opposite camps, Marshal," Holliday returns.
These men are not friends.
Holliday pulls a gun on Earp at the bar and challenges him to draw. Earp shows that he is unarmed. Yet when Holliday asks the bartender to loan Earp the bar's rifle, Earp's brother slides his pistol down the bar instead. Earp introduces Holliday to his two brothers at the bar, and Holliday realizes he is outmanned. He relents. He offers the room a round of drinks on him.
How will these two men, who meet as enemies, eventually come together?
A common enemy.
The Clanton gang.
Old Man Clanton. And his sons. Billy. Sam. And Ike.
Old Man Clanton is played by Walter Brennan. You may know him from the TV series The Real McCoys. But did you know that he won three Academy Awards? THREE.
He won for supporting roles in Come and Get It (1937), Kentucky (1939), and The Westerner (1941). (He was also nominated for an Emmy in 1959 for his work on The Real McCoys). So he had already won them years before appearing in this film.
Only six people have won three or more Oscars. Katharine Hepburn, who won four, Daniel Day Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, and Walter Brennan. That's some company.
Wyatt Earp and his three brothers, Morgan, Virgil, and James, were driving cattle on their way to California when they met up with the Clantons, Old Man and Ike. They had a friendly conversation. Old Man offered to buy the cattle. He upped his price. Wyatt turned him down. The three older Earps went into town for a shave and a haircut (two bits!), and a beer, leaving kid brother James to watch the cows. James has a silver medallion.
The town they found was a wreck wrapped in turmoil drowning in mayhem.
And that is on the good days.
When Wyatt reclines (i.e. is thrown down) in the new-fangled barber chair, bullets whiz into the shop and shatter the mirrors. The barber flees. Wyatt is left lying in the chair, half-shaved
He and his two brothers run outside. The sheriff quits. The shaving-cream-faced, cutting-cape-wearing stranger is offered to be, on the spot, the new sheriff.
Welcome to town.
No, thank you.
They leave. They return to their cattle. The cattle are gone. James is dead. Lying face down in the mud. His silver medallion gone.
Who did this?
Why?
Wyatt takes the job as the sheriff.
Game on.
Doc Holliday has a girl named Chihuahua.
But he used to have another girl. And she appears. Suddenly. Out of the blue.
Her name is Clementine.
Oh, my Darling.
How did you know I was here?
I didn't. Finding you hasn't been easy. From cow camp to cow camp. . . . You should at least be flattered that a girl has been chasing you.
Imagine that.
Two people from Boston. With some kind of past. He is secluded in some nondescript stagecoach stop in frontier Arizona, 2,600 miles away. In 1881.
And she searches. With no leads. Until she finds him.
What is going on inside that heart to make that happen?
To make a woman seek at all costs to find a man?
Everything is falling apart.
Wyatt Earp has lost his brother.
He has become sheriff of a town wild with vice and crime.
He and Doc Holliday do not get along.
Doc Holliday is dying. He has tuberculosis. He is coughing up blood.
Two women are fighting for him. Fighting potentially to the death.
The Clantons are on the loose.
Doc flees.
And one of the women, Chihuahua, is turns up with that medallion. The one that belonged to the dead brother James.
How did she get that? Who gave it to her? And what does that mean?
How will it all go down?
How will it all end?
Who will live? Who will die? Who will be lost and gone forever?
Bodies start falling.
Tensions are rising.
Events are escalating.
To a final showdown.
A Gunfight.
At the OK Corral.
* * * * *
Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, 48 years after the Gunfight at the OK Corral. He died at age 80. He longed for someone to tell his story and vindicate him. He told his story to a man named John Flood, who tried to write his official, authorized biography. Apparently, however, Flood was a terrible writer and Earp's wife Josephine intervened with her own opinions to make it even worse. No publisher would publish Flood's book.
Earp loved the movies, and he thought a movie might help him. He wrote a letter to his friend William S. Hart, the leading cowboy of the early silent pictures, asking him to make a picture that would tell Earp's story as he remembered it. Hart never made the movie, but he did write a letter to The Saturday Evening Post, asking them to publish the biography written by Flood. They did not. No one would publish it!
Could he have asked a better writer? Wyatt Earp knew Jack London. . . .
The first "biography" of Earp, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, was not published till after his death, in 1931, and it was largely fictionalized. Apparently, Josephine tried to intervene in the writing of this book as well. Several of the Wyatt Earp films, including this one, are said to have been based in part on this fictionalized book.
The more one digs into the historical facts of these events, the more he discovers how difficult it is to find them. The stories are replete with contradictory statements. The facts have been largely lost in the legend.
But here is something interesting.
In his retirement, Wyatt Earp, who lived in Los Angeles, would go down to the silent movie sets and hang out. He spent a lot of time on John Ford sets. He and John Ford were friends!
Wyatt Earp told John Ford his story.
Imagine that.
Before any books had been written, before any movies had been made, Wyatt Earp told John Ford personally what had happened.
John Ford recounts these memories to Henry Fonda himself.
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAObTxfEOH0
That is an amazing thought.
Is it true?
John Ford could be lying. Or he might be telling a story he has come to believe. Or his point may be limited to the choreography of the Gunfight. Perhaps Ford took that piece from the sketch Earp made, and then made up the rest.
Is a reliable history of this story even possible?
If the truth is lost in the legend, maybe this legend is as good as any of the others.
One thing we do know--
There was no Clementine.
She never existed.
She is a fictional character.
Dreadful sorry.
* * * * *
The actors playing Doc Holliday and Chihuahua come straight out of Film Noir.
Victor Mature - I Wake Up Screaming (1941), The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Kiss of Death (1947), Cry of the City (1948), Gambling House (1950), Dangerous Mission (1954), Violent Saturday (1955), Pickup Alley (1957),
Linda Darnell - Summer Storm (1944), Hangover Square (1945), Fallen Angel (1945), No Way Out (1950), The 13th Letter (1951), Night Without Sleep (1952), Second Chance (1953), and Zero Hour! (1957).
Meanwhile, Cathy Downs, who plays Clementine, played in at least one film noir, The Dark Corner (1946), starring none other than Lucille Ball.
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