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TOMBSTONE – Bruce Broughton
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Very few events in the colorful and sometimes fanciful history of the American West capture the imagination like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The event did take place, in the boom town of Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881, and it did see the brothers Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, plus their friend Doc Holliday, shooting it out with a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys, led by Ike Clanton. The real gunfight lasted just seconds, resulted in the deaths of three Cowboys, and was probably no different from many of the other gunfights that were regular occurrences in the old west. However, for some reason, the Gunfight, the story of the Earp family, and the subsequent Earp Vendetta Ride, have become near-mythical events in the romantic history of the period. Tombstone was at least the eighth film to depict these events on the silver screen, after such legendary western movies like 1946’s My Darling Clementine starring Henry Fonda, 1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and 1967’s Hour of the Gun starring James Garner. Read more…


