On this day in 1881, around 3PM, the infamous Gunfight At The O.K. Corral took place in Tombstone, Arizona. It involved Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday taking on the Clanton-McLaury gang. In a lead-filled 30 seconds, three men (Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers) were killed.
Here’s a couple shots from John Sturges’ 1957 take on the event, Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, starring Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. It’s just one of many films to deal with the shootout, and to theorize on how it actually happened. It’s more likely that they came up with a good action sequence and left it at that. This one gets extra points for the simple fact that Lancaster spends a lot of time running around with a sawed-off shotgun.
This seems like a good time to post the lyrics to Gunfight‘s theme song, written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington, and sung by Frankie Laine. It’s woven throughout the film very effectively.
There the outlaw band make their final stand
OK Corral
Lay down my gun or take the chance of losing you forever
Duty calls
My back’s against the wall
Have you no kind word to say
Before I ride away
Away
Your love, your love
I need your love
Keep the flame, let it burn
Until I return
From the gunfight at OK Corral
If the Lord is my friend
We’ll meet at the end
Of the gunfight at OK Corral
Gunfight at OK Corral
Boot Hill, Boot Hill
So cold, so still
There they lay side by side
The killers that died
In the gunfight at OK corral
OK corral
Gunfight at OK corral
As always,
Thanks for the reminder. I’ll pop in my DVD (backed by The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) and have a lot of fun.
Sometimes I think it’s that song (turning up during dramatic transitions throughout the movie) that really makes GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL.
If the 50s Western hadn’t had Frankie Laine, it would have had to invent him.
I fully agreed with Blake that the intermittent playing. of the song heightened the tension.leading to the shoot out. Regards.
I am going to go way off topic here but this post does have a sort of
“real West ” angle. Last night (on UK BBC 4) I watched Rich Halls
“Inventing The Indian” his take on Native Americans.
This was a brilliant follow up to his take on Country Music,Westerns
and The Deep South.
Inventing The Indian was the best of the lot with acerbic Rich on
blistering form.Many sacred cows crumble before his ire!
I love it when Rich goes off into a rant;loved his take on “celebs”
who suddenly discover they have very distant Native American “roots”
The BBC is buried in an avalanche of phosphate at the moment but as
long as we get helpings of Rich on a semi-regular basis them I am more
than happy to pay the licence fee!
As a Brit I learned a heap of stuff I did not know;show alternated between
being sad,tragic with Richs dark brand of humor throughout.
I am off now for a couple of weeks;I am going to re-discover my
Muswell Hillbilly roots.
One of my favorite 50s Westerns … if not my absolute favorite.
This is a very, very excellent 50s western. I enjoy watching it every few years and am old enough that I saw it in a theater when it was first released. However, having some historical purism in me I also have to say I just ignore the fact that history is stretched to the limit in this movie and I just ignore that and consider it a wonderful piece of western fiction.