Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die
                                                                                                                    
Director: William McGann
Year: 1942
Rating: 5.5
I am not sure how it got into my head but for some reason a few months back I decided to see all the Wyatt Earp films I could find. Maybe it goes back to watching the TV show with Hugh O'Brian as a child in my basement. It lasted for six seasons when Westerns were everywhere on TV like termites in an old house.

 Now sing along with me.


Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,
Brave courageous and bold.
Long live his fame and long live his glory
and long may his story be told.

Brings back memories for some of you I bet if you are as old as hell like I am. This film is a pretty old-fashioned rendition of the Wyatt Earp Tombstone episode and sticks as close to the truth as I did when I used to date. Ballpark. It begins with one of the more bizarre narratives I have come across. It is from the state of Arizona telling us what a great place Arizona was except for the damn crooks but thanks to men like Wyatt Earp it was cleaned up. Thank you, Mr. Earp. He and his brothers Virgil and Morgan roll into Tombstone intending to become ranchers, but when a young boy is shot down by hooligans - the Clanton gang and the Curly Brocious gang - Wyatt and his brothers sign the dotted line. He had already cleaned up a few other towns like Dodge and Wichita.


 

Wyatt is played by Richard Dix - that great deep voice of his starts at his heels and works its way up - but he was on the slow slope to B movies with drink becoming a problem. Most surprising is who plays Curly - the wonderful Edgar Buchanan - a comic sidekick in loads of Westerns - after giving up being a dentist at the age of 36. He is terrific in this - bad but personable. Kent Taylor takes on the role of Doc Holiday without a cough. Enmity begins quickly between the Earp brothers and the Clantons and Curly leading to the money shot - the gunfight at the OK Corral. From what I have read, they play that fairly close to the vest though what happens afterwards is pure fiction. The truth is actually better as Wyatt goes on a revenge tour and guns down all the bad guys. A solid addition to the Earp films coming in at 80 minutes.