Tombstone: The City That Won't Die

This Week: Tombstone, John Ford and My Darling Clementine

1. Tombstone: The City that Won’t Die

   

Perhaps no town better epitomizes the rough and tumble of the untamed West than Tombstone, AZ.  Not only does the town’s rich history come alive in its dusty streets, but the legends that fuel its reputation are revealed in the preserved facades of its century-old storefronts that line the main drag. No longer a draw for outlaws and prostitutes, Tombstone has become a pilgrimage point for pop history buffs. Here you can learn all about the legendary gunfighters lawman Wyatt Earp and his companion Doc John Holliday as well as the Clanton gang, whom they famously fought in 1881 at the O.K. Corral. Only in Tombstone can you buy t-shirts bearing the faces of the fabled Earp and Holliday, watch loud gunfights with recreation actors and have your 1880s style portrait taken. Yet, what we also gather is that there is more to the story, not least of which Earp and his gang were in fact accused of a kind of vigilante justice and tried for murder.  And perhaps this is where Tombstone is its most fascinating - where the myth of the old legends meets reality.

Unlike many old western towns, Tombstone today is alive and well. Or, at least alive. Congregating in its ancient beer halls, bearded bikers laugh over their sixth or seventh beer. Small houses neighboring the main historic drag ward off curious tourists with “Private Property” signs on their slanted fences. Weathered locals dressed in cowboy gear tend to half empty tourist shops that they have serviced for decades on end.  The oldest building in town, the Birdcage, a theatre built in 1881, doesn’t appear to have changed much in over 100 years either. Operated by the same family since the 1930s, tourists can pay a small price to enter inside and view its collection. Less a museum and more a crowded depository for dusty artifacts, such as the original grand piano, an authentic 1880s poker table and a fake mermaid skeleton, it offers a raw glimpse at the raucous debauchery of the Old West. Yet, it's charming and seemingly unaffected by the corporate polish you would find in a larger city. I can only cross my fingers that no fire will consume its treasures; its creaking boards indicate a cinder box of old wood waiting to explode. 

The whole town seems untouched by the cultural fads and technological advancements of the past decades. The O.K. Corral museum still showcases a historama narrated by Vincent Price, complete with tiny wax figures and models of old Tombstone that light up and make noises, telling the infamous and dramatic tale of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Many would find it archaic, but it does touch on the fact that the Earp story is a mix of fact and legend. In truth, it may be in part because Earp moved later to Hollywood that the Earps became the good guys, and we see reference throughout the city to the many versions of Tombstone that Hollywood has told over the years.  But visiting the famed Boothill Cemetery, we also can see reminders of the other side of the story, with pennies tossed lovingly to the graves of Old Man Clanton and his sons. Clearly, they still have some fans, among them being the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who planted Confederate flags on their graves, probably many years ago. 

History is a funny thing that comes alive in strange ways. Tombstone offers something you can’t find in a typical museum.  Walking through the dusty streets of the tiny downtown, one could almost swear to hear the faraway gunshots between the Earps and the Clantons - as well as the echo of our famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

2. What Makes My Darling Clementine Poignant

Considered to be among the finest westerns ever made, My Darling Clementine (1946) is John Ford’s take on the legend of Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral. Cited on the BFI’s Sight and Sound polls of favorite films among directors, it was also President Harry Truman’s favorite film. During my recent trip to Tombstone, I wanted to see another fan favorite, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, for comparison. It’s different take on the events leading up to the 30 second gunfight that made Tombstone famous. In a sequence of events that came to symbolize the triumph of order over chaos, lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers and Doc Holliday, and the Clanton gang met at the O.K. Corral to settle some personal debts. I thoroughly enjoyed Gunfight, which got me thinking: what is it that makes Clementine a great film and Gunfight merely an effective western?

Gunfight is only one of many adaptations that we could compare Clementine to. Other famous adaptations include Hour of the Gun (1967), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994). Historical inaccuracies and long exposition scenes aside, Gunfight is an entertaining film propelled by compelling performances by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Earp and Doc Holliday, respectively. So why is Clementine more highly regarded? Is it Joseph MacDonald’s dramatic black and white cinematography, John Ford’s signature pacing, or perhaps Winston Miller and Samuel Engel’s taut script? 

Let’s have a look.  The first difference one can note is the name: Clementine versus Gunfight. This already suggests that there’s something more to this film than simply the actual battle. More romance, perhaps? Except this isn’t the case. Clementine Carter is the schoolmarm who arrives at Tombstone to save the Doc, whom she had a past romance with. When it doesn’t pan out, Henry Fonda’s lanky Earp makes awkward advances toward her but their relationship is fundamentally chaste. In the original ending, Earp doesn't even kiss Clementine, as he does in the released version; he just awkwardly shakes her hand. After eliciting laughter from preview audiences, Twentieth Century Fox head Darryl Zanuck ordered that a kiss be inserted - and that single shot was added by director Llyod Bacon.¹ According to historian Joseph McBride, Ford was never pleased with the change.²

 Instead, as Roger Ebert and others have effectively argued, Clementine represents the arrival of “civilization.” And how Ford explores this idea is genius. Ebert writes that “most Westerns put the emphasis on the showdown. ‘My Darling Clementine’ builds up to the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, but it is more about everyday things--haircuts, romance, friendship, poker and illness.” Indeed, while Gunfight puts more emphasis on the events leading up to the famous confrontation, Clementine deals less with the backstory and is more of a “mood piece” dedicated to exploring the character of the tiny, exposed strip of a city called Tombstone.  It is a community on the precipice of becoming “civilized.” Barely even a city, it looks particularly fragile juxtaposed against the majesty of Monument Valley.  When Fonda’s Earp first arrives in the town, he can’t even get a decent shave without being disturbed by gunfire. “What kind of town is this?” he asks as he throws a pistol-crazed drunk out of the saloon. What kind of town indeed? Many scenes help to build up the aura of Tombstone: Fonda lounging on the porch of the hotel, the rowdy crowd at The Birdcage, and the smoky mise en scene of the saloon hall, where danger festers.

Clementine’s arrival marks a shift to the beginning of civilization.  When Earp quietly escorts Clementine to a town dance, it ironically takes all his courage to ask her to dance, which Fonda does with a peculiar mix of grace and awkwardness. In a humorous moment before the dance, groomed by his barber in anticipation of the festivities, Earp says hello to Clementine. Taking a whiff of the air, she remarks how she loves “the scent of the desert flowers,” to which Earp replies, “that's me.”  All the frolicking aside, the gunfight is the main event of the film, and it's a brutal one. Doc Holiday and the Clantons are dead, and with his job done, Earp knows he has to move on.  But before riding off into the distance, he laments to Clementine that he’ll look her up if he ever comes by Tombstone again. 

There is a reason that we laugh at Earp as he tries to court her at the dance and a reason that the original goodbye was a mere handshake. Earp doesn’t belong in the same place as Clementine. Like Ethan Edwards of The Searchers, Ford’s most notorious protagonist, Earp is the type of man who makes the West safe for civilization, but himself belongs in the untamed wilderness. And that is to where he returns. Part of what makes Clementine so poignant then is the way Ford depicts Tombstone through these small, seemingly unimportant bits - but which add up to a microcosm of the west. The reality for gunslingers like Earp is that as history moves on, they will be stuck in the past, forever roaming. However, unlike Tom Doniphon, the forgotten gunslinger in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford’s last great film, Earp’s legend indeed does live on.

1. Darryl, Zanuck, “Zanuck Letter to Engel,” Ford, J. Mass, Lilly Library, Indiana University.  

2. Joseph McBride, DVD Commentary, My Darling Clementine, The Criterion Collection, 2014. Also see Joseph McBride, Searching for John Ford, 436.