My Darling Clementine (1946)
(John Ford, US 1946, 97 min., 35mm)
Part of the Ford, Fonda, and the Duke series that Jack Garner programmed at the Dryden in 2014, My Darling Clementine is perhaps the most famous retelling of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), driving cattle with his brothers through Arizona, stops into the town of Tombstone for a drink. When he gets back to camp to find his brother murdered, Wyatt decides to accept an offer to become Marshall of the territory and bring his brother’s killer to justice. Enlisting the help of his remaining brothers and Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), the investigation leads to a shootout with the Clantons. Director John Ford met Wyatt Earp when the gunfighter moved to Hollywood late in his life, and Ford claims the representation of the shootout in this film is just as Earp described it. The western was a very important genre to Jack—a comfort that he would return to again and again.