I loved this movie! I cannot believe I missed it - I made it to this age without seeing a classic John Ford western. This one does not star John Wayne, but Henry Fonda. Henry Fonda is not one of my fav actors. I like him best in Once Upon A Time in the West because he was such a great bad guy. Often I find him too cold or too earnest. But not in this movie.
Here he a good guy, Wyatt Earp, with an interesting character. This movie, with a name that sounds like it belongs to a musical, is about the fight at the OK Corral. It is very inaccurate in terms of facts: Doc and Wyatt met before Tombstone, there was no Chihuahua as far as I know, Doc was a dentist and the movie shows him as a surgeon, and I think Clementine is fiction. The biggest bit of artistic license? Doc did not die at the OK Corral. He died of his longtime illness, TB, in a sanatorium in Colorado. (I added Doc Holliday's dental college graduation photo here - he was 20.)
If you have seen Tombstone, you've seen a decent re-telling of this story, but Tombstone is Doc Holliday's movie, as played by Val Kilmer. This movie is Wyatt Earp's show. And John Ford takes the time to let us watch Earp as a person (as played by Henry Fonda). He is laconic and sweet and nervous and he doesn't take himself too seriously. When he is too nervous to ask Clementine to dance, we get to watch his face display that. John Ford also focuses on Fonda's legs. Fonda was a tall, thin man, with long legs. He stands and sits down in a studied manner, and leans back in his chair with those legs out, or balances them against a post. It's fun to watch.
Much of the movie is filmed in Monument Valley, so the scenery is great. Doc Holliday is totally miscast - Victor Mature is more of a gangster type than a southern dentist turned gambler. But I loved it - I'm watching it again.
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