My Darling Clementine is a 1946 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp during the period leading up to the gunfight at the O.K.
The ensemble cast also features Victor Mature (as Doc Holliday), Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs and Ward Bond.
The title of the movie is borrowed from the theme song "Oh My Darling, Clementine", sung in parts over the opening and closing credits.
Corral on October 26, 1881), Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, and James Earp are driving cattle to California when they encounter Old Man Clanton and his sons.
When the Earps learn about the nearby boom town of Tombstone, the older brothers ride in, leaving the youngest, James, as watchman.
Seeking to avenge James's murder, he takes the open position of town marshal and encounters the hot-tempered Doc Holliday and scurrilous Clanton gang several times.
During this time, Clementine Carter, Doc's former love interest from his hometown of Boston, arrives after a long search for her beau.
Doc, who is suffering badly from tuberculosis and had fled from Clementine previously, is unhappy with her arrival; he tells her to return to Boston or he will leave Tombstone.
Chihuahua dies and Doc decides to join the Earps, walking alongside Wyatt and Morgan to the corral at sunup.
[9] Lake corresponded with Josephine, and he claimed she attempted to influence what he wrote and hamper him in every way possible, including consulting lawyers.
The final script of the movie varies considerably from historical fact to create additional dramatic conflict and character.
Clementine Carter is not a historical person, and in this script, she appears to be an amalgam of Big Nose Kate and Josephine Earp.
Important plot devices in the film and personal details about the main characters were all liberally adapted for the movie.
[13] A significant change is the film's final scene: in the 1946 release, Earp kisses Clementine goodbye; in Ford's original, he shakes her hand.
The website's critics consensus reads "Canny and coolly confident, My Darling Clementine is a definitive dramatization of the Wyatt Earp legend that shoots from the hip and hits its target in breezy style.
"[18] At the time of its release, Bosley Crowther lauded the film and wrote "The eminent director, John Ford, is a man who has a way with a Western like nobody in the picture trade.
From the moment that Wyatt and his brothers are discovered on the wide and dusty range, trailing a herd of cattle to a far-off promised land, a tone of pictorial authority is struck—and it is held.
[15] He wrote it was "one of the sweetest and most good-hearted of all Westerns", unusual in making the romance between Earp and Clementine the heart of the film rather than the gunfight.
In 2004, Matt Bailey summarized its significance: "If there is one film that deserves every word of praise ever uttered or written about it, it is John Ford's My Darling Clementine.
[24] In 2012, director Michael Mann named My Darling Clementine one of his 10 favorite films, stating it was "possibly the finest drama in the western genre" and "achieves near-perfection" in its cinematography and editing.