"My Darling Clementine"

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Wyatt Burp

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I love this film, even though the only thing it has in common with the real Earp/Tombstone story is the names of the people. It's total fiction. Muscular Victor Mature is the healthiest looking tuberculosis victim of all time. And he's a surgeon, not a dentist here. But forget all that. The cinematography of this movie is breathtaking. Freeze any frame and it looks like a beautiful charcoal drawing, purposely filmed with extreme contrasts between black and white. John Ford purposely puts the horizon line low on the screen making the sky and clouds costars to the movie. Henry Fonda is great as a fictionalized Earp and he wears a real nice higher riding gun rig. And Walter Brennan makes a very sinister bad guy. He and his brood dress very realistically. One of my favorites even though Victor Mature's Doc Holliday is an immature crybaby everyone except Earp has to walk on eggshells around for fear of getting shot. My review: Four trigger fingers up!
 
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Never seen it. May try YouTube.

I recall Victor Mature mainly for his role as a white hunter besieged by Mau-Mau terrorists in, "Safari" in the mid 1950's. I was a small kid but already wanting to hunt in Africa and studying animals, rifles, British Colonial politics, etc. I was the only person I knew, adults included, who knew what a Masai sword (simi) looked like or who knew who Dedan Kimathi was and why he was hanged. (Very deservedly!)

I think Mature was also in some Biblical extravaganza, but would like to see, "Safari" again. Probably too non PC now to find it often. It was my first look at a Sten gun, BTW. Not all the shooting in Kenya in those days was with .416 Rigbys at Cape buffalo and lions...

Victor Mature as Doc Holliday is ridiculous, but that's Hollywood. It hasn't changed in that regard.

I'll look for the movie.
 
Texas Star said:
Never seen it. May try YouTube.

I recall Victor Mature mainly for his role as a white hunter besieged by Mau-Mau terrorists in, "Safari" in the mid 1950's. I was a small kid but already wanting to hunt in Africa and studying animals, rifles, British Colonial politics, etc. I was the only person I knew, adults included, who knew what a Masai sword (simi) looked like or who knew who Dedan Kimathi was and why he was hanged. (Very deservedly!)

I think Mature was also in some Biblical extravaganza, but would like to see, "Safari" again. Probably too non PC now to find it often. It was my first look at a Sten gun, BTW. Not all the shooting in Kenya in those days was with .416 Rigbys at Cape buffalo and lions...

Victor Mature as Doc Holliday is ridiculous, but that's Hollywood. It hasn't changed in that regard.

I'll look for the movie.
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Victor Mature played Samson in the glossy yet really entertaining "Samson & Delilah". And he looked just like Samson in cowboy clothes coughing all the time in "Clementine". One of the worst casting in a western. Ward Bond plays Virgil Earp and he's really good in it.
 
Texas Star said:
Never seen it. May try YouTube.

I recall Victor Mature mainly for his role as a white hunter besieged by Mau-Mau terrorists in, "Safari" in the mid 1950's. I was a small kid but already wanting to hunt in Africa and studying animals, rifles, British Colonial politics, etc. I was the only person I knew, adults included, who knew what a Masai sword (simi) looked like or who knew who Dedan Kimathi was and why he was hanged. (Very deservedly!)

I think Mature was also in some Biblical extravaganza, but would like to see, "Safari" again. Probably too non PC now to find it often. It was my first look at a Sten gun, BTW. Not all the shooting in Kenya in those days was with .416 Rigbys at Cape buffalo and lions...

Victor Mature as Doc Holliday is ridiculous, but that's Hollywood. It hasn't changed in that regard.

I'll look for the movie.
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Here ya go, buddy. Fifteen bucks and its all yours!

Amazon.com: Safari: Janet Leigh, Victor Mature, John Justin, Roland Culver, Liam Redmond, Earl Cameron, Terence Young, Irving Allen: Movies & TV@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZbMtOla6L.@@AMEPARAM@@51ZbMtOla6L
 
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As noted, it has NOTHING to do with the actual war between the Earps and the Cowboys, but it's still an archetypal pre-'50s western. I prefer Errol Flynn's westerns because they make no pretense of historical accuracy.

The DEFINITIVE "OK Corral" movie (and my all time favorite western) is of course "Tombstone".
 
As John Ford Westerns go, it has a number of fine moments but overall in its story it's boring.
 
It's making the rounds on the Encore Western cable channel this month. Re:Mature. Some guys just don't make good cowboys. Cagney, Bogart and Milland for example.
 
Donn said:
It's making the rounds on the Encore Western cable channel this month. Re:Mature. Some guys just don't make good cowboys. Cagney, Bogart and Milland for example.
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Very true, and John Wayne made an awful Genghis Khan and an ancient Roman officer.

Roles need logical casting, but Hollywood issues often preclude that.
 
Wyatt Burp said:
Victor Mature played Samson in the glossy yet really entertaining "Samson & Delilah".
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He also played Demetrius in "The Robe." Frankly, I never thought actors like him and Richard Burton were enjoyable to watch. They were so "dramatic" they didn't seem real to me.
 
GKC said:
He also played Demetrius in "The Robe." Frankly, I never thought actors like him and Richard Burton were enjoyable to watch. They were so "dramatic" they didn't seem real to me.
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I guess the emperor has no clothes, is that it? That may be the first time I have ever seen Victor Mature and Richard Burton in the same sentence, much less likened to one another.
 
Marshwheeling said:
I guess the emperor has no clothes, is that it? That may be the first time I have ever seen Victor Mature and Richard Burton in the same sentence, much less likened to one another.
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Carl Panzram would have been a more believable Doc Holliday than Victor Mature. But he was pretty good strangling lions with his bare hands impressing Heddy Lamaar in Samson.
 
I find it to be an enjoyable movie despite having no relation to the real events. Actually, I don't think that most movies about historical events have much relation to the real events. Real life events are pretty boring, truth be known.

Would anyone watch "Adam 12" if Reed and Malloy rode around, handed out a few traffic tickets, took a few reports on past crimes, had lunch, rode around and went home? :)

The acting in My Darling Clementine was good, the plot was OK, the character development was pretty good, and the villains were dastardly. What more could you want?

Henry Fonda was a great actor, Ward Bond was a very good actor who died at what should have been the height of his career, Victor Mature was eye candy for the ladies in the audience, and Walter Brennan was his versatile self as an actor.

Brennan was perhaps the best supporting actor in the history of movies. He played second banana to Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and John Wayne in a variety of movies.

Between 1936 and 1941 he was nominated four times as Best Supporting Actor and won three times. He's best known for The Real McCoys, but did so much more.

As I said, it's an enjoyable movie as long as you enjoy it for what it is.
 
Yep, good movie. Of all the actors mentioned in this thread I think Walter Brennan was the best and most versatile. :)
 
RonJ said:
Yep, good movie. Of all the actors mentioned in this thread I think Walter Brennan was the best and most versatile. :)
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"Was you ever bit by a dead bee? You know, a dead bee can bite you just as bad as a live one, 'specially if he was mad when he got kilt."
 
I too enjoy "My Darling Clementine" for the same reasons as Wyatt Burp.

I watched a lot of Victor Mature movies when I was a kid and remembered "Safari" and recently bought one of the re-issues from ebay. The story was a lot worse than I remember it as a kid, but so is/was the T.V. show "Combat".

I read somewhere that Victor Mature did not consider himself an "actor", he just played roles and made money. He supposedly was surprised that he was paid to do what he did.

My favorite Earp/Holiday movie is "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Again not very accurate but just a good movie to watch.

And Rhonda Fleming was good to watch also. I have heard that in her real life she was a class act.
 
The most recent, (mid 90's), productions, Tombstone and Wyatt Earp touched real life events more closely, especially Earp, if you believe Stuart Lake's writings. Were it not for Lake, Earp would just be a footnote in history, not the iconic figure he became.
 
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