My Darling Clementine - 1946

My Darling Clementine Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.
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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.