Tagline: The Roaring West At Its Reckless Best!
My Darling Clementine movie storyline. Wyatt Earp and his brothers Morgan and Virgil ride into Tombstone and leave brother James in charge of their cattle herd. On their return they find their cattle stolen and James dead. Wyatt takes on the job of town marshal, making his brothers deputies, and vows to stay in Tombstone until James’ killers are found. He soon runs into the brooding, coughing, hard-drinking Doc Holliday as well as the sullen and vicious Clanton clan. Wyatt discovers the owner of a trinket stolen from James’ dead body and the stage is set for the Earps’ long-awaited revenge.
My Darling Clementine (1946) is one of the greatest classic Westerns of all time, directed by one of Hollywood’s most honored directors, John Ford. This film foreshadowed other great, more complex westerns that Ford would later direct – The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). It was filmed in his favorite locale – Monument Valley in northern Arizona, in only forty-five days. The film’s title was not chosen in honor of any of the central characters or the shoot-out, but after the name of Earp’s civilizing, female acquaintance in the town of Tombstone.
The film’s screenplay, by Samuel G. Engel, Sam Hellman and Winston Miller, was taken in part from the 1931 novel Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake. Although the book claims to be an accurate account of Earp (an historical, heroic Western character) and of the legendary O.K. Corral incident from the US past – it imaginatively includes a number of fabrications. Ford’s film similarly retells the violent episode of the gunfight-shootout at the O.K. Corral (an actual historical event that occurred on the afternoon of October 26, 1881), the story of the duel between two families – the good one represented by the Earps and the notorious one represented by the Clanton family.
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Directed by: John Ford
Starring: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Ward Bond, Alan Mowbray, John Ireland, Roy Roberts, Jane Darwell, J. Farrell MacDonald, Grant Withers
Screenplay by: Samuel G. Engel, Winston Miller
Cinematography by: Joseph MacDonald
Film Editing by: Dorothy Spencer
Costume Design by: René Hubert
Set Decoration by: Thomas Little
Art Direction by: James Basevi, Lyle R. Wheeler
Music by: Cyril J. Mockridge
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: December 3, 1946
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