David Hast: Scott, have you seen My Darling Clementine?
Scott Vander Werf: I have seen My Darling Clementine so many times, I don't even think that I can think of how many times I've seen it. The great John Ford Western, Henry Fonda. I think I probably saw this as a child in the 60s for the first time.
DH: It's considered by many critics to be Ford's greatest Western. I don't know if it's my very favorite, but...but I certainly admire it for its really perfect craftsmanship. But it’s the story of, it’s his version of the legend of Wyatt Earp and the shootout at the OK Corral.
SVW: And also the character of Doc Holliday's in it, the Clanton family's in it, and it takes place in Tombstone as well.
DH: Which is where the actual shootout at the OK Corral did happen in Tombstone, Arizona. But virtually everything else about that story, as many critics and historians have pointed out, are completely blown up into mythology and legend by the movies. The actual shootout was apparently 30 seconds long. Wyatt Earp wasn't nearly the hero that he was made out to be So, I mean, the fight might have even been over like...territory or money. wasn't really some noble thing.
SVW: Actually, it's his brother was the marshal not Wyatt Earp, which is Wyatt Earp is the marshal along with his brothers who are deputized in the in the movie in the real shootout at the OK Corral. It was because Wyatt Earp's brother Victor decreed that people could not carry weapons in Tombstone. You were not allowed to come into town bearing arms. And it was this group of outlaws, so-called outlaws, and it wasn't the whole Clanton family, was just two Clanton brothers were part of the four or five men, and they said, no, we’re packing. And that was the whole thing. was basically they went to confront them to disarm them.
DH: But the important thing is that it's been made into this story that is sort of a myth, like much of the Westerns. John Ford, the director, the greatest director of Westerns and the most famous, was known to a great extent for creating a sort of vision of the West, of what maybe the West could have been. But he knew he was making it up. In fact, John Ford had actually met Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, and he used to show up on silent movie sets. He's buried in Hollywood, I think. He lived the last part of his life in LA. He apparently told his version of the story to Ford, but bottom line, it’s made up, just as Earp made up much of it later in his life. And it's more a way of John Ford wanting to show a sort of version of where a lot of American values came from or played themselves out, the stories that Americans use to identify themselves, that sort of thing. He's doing it very consciously, the most famous one happens later. This movie is 1946, but maybe my favorite movie of his, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is the one where the newspaper editor has the famous line, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And John Ford was doing that for his entire career as a movie maker of Westerns.
SVW: And one thing that should be noted is in My Darling Clementine, the whole shootout at… shootout at the OK Corral is actually just a very small portion of the movie towards the end.
DH: This is what makes the movie so remarkable and maybe partly why people love it so much. It started out, it's 96 minutes long. it's again, another one of those examples that you and I always talk about. We love the 90-minute movies that are very efficient, not pretentious and get to the point. And, actually, it turned out it was about a half hour longer originally. But Darryl Zanuck, the producer of the movie, edited it down after movie audiences didn't like it enough in previews. I read a funny quote that John Ford's daughter said to Ford that he was the second greatest editor in Hollywood, but the greatest was Darryl Zanuck. Because Zanuck knew how to perfect a movie. He knew how to cut out whole scenes to make it right. And it’s boiled down to this movie that is...in many ways it's just about ordinary everyday things, isn't it?
SVW: Really, I the opening sequences after the Earp family comes in to town to get a shave. mean, they’re not coming in to rip things up or whoop it up, you know, they just want to come in and have a shave. And so like everything from the barber to the hotel proprietor to the bartenders and...the theater actor who comes to town and the people, they just want to be entertained.
DH: Yeah, and then the very famous scene when they, to celebrate the building of a new church in town, there's a dance. And that’s when we see Wyatt Earp with the character Clementine, who he's clearly in love with, but he's this naive guy. It seems like he's never had any relationship with women. He's very awkward. They seem like teenagers. And they do this dance, which is very touching, like a square dance kind of thing at the building of the church.
SVW: It's an iconic scene. And that's one of the scenes that I remember when I was in film school. We studied that sequence in one of my classes.
DH: And what it's getting at is that what's happening here as a theme in many, Westerns is that this sort of violent wild West is giving way to civilization and order. And it’s shown in many ways. And Wyatt Earp kind of stands for that by becoming marshal, although interestingly, the only reason he becomes marshal is for revenge.
SVW: It's for revenge. because at the beginning of the film, they have…their catalyst stolen. And one of the younger brother is murdered. And so they stay on and become marshal. He becomes marshal and his other brothers are deputies. And as you say, to get revenge, to find out, it's really not so much about the stolen cattle, but the murder of their sibling.
DH: And as you pointed out, he cast Henry Fonda, not John Wayne. Obviously, the lead that John Ford used the most in his westerns is John Wayne. But he had Henry Fonda in about seven movies, not all them westerns, most famously, The Grapes of Wrath. Henry Fonda's the lead, and he also played Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln. And he would cast Fonda when he wanted someone very noble and soft-spoken and calm. He didn't want someone who was a bigger-than-life hero.
SVW: Yeah, John Wayne in this role would have burned with fire. And instead, Henry Fonda is smoldering beneath.
DH: And I don't know, I think if I were going to tell someone who'd never seen a Western what movie to watch, I'd probably pick either Stagecoach, Ford’s first great Western of the sound era in 1939, or I would pick this one. It's just such a great sort of like, it shows the story very visually. It's shot in Monument Valley. And for those of you that think you've got to see Monument Valley in color, watch this movie. You see amazing shots of Monument Valley in black and white. But none of them purposely like, let's show the landscape. It's just there. And it's also very visual. They pared the dialogue down a lot. The whole way that all the people's feelings are shown by their, the movement of their eyes and their body language, the whole thing with Clementine, him falling in love with her, very few words are spoken.
SVW: And we should mention that Clementine is a former friend, perhaps love of Doc Holliday, who’s portrayed by Victor Mature. And she shows up, she's tracked him down and shows up in Tombstone and Doc Holliday is not happy about that whatsoever.
DH: And he's a great Doc Holliday. You know, he's the drunk and he's got tuberculosis, so he's maybe dying. And this was really the first great version of him in the movies. Of course, one that many people have seen is in the movie Tombstone in the nineties, where Val Kilmer played, fabulously played Doc Holliday. But you know, Val Kilmer watched my darling Clementine a few times.
SVW: And the thing, Victor Mature, along we've been talking about how great Henry Fonda is. He's also very subtle in the way that he portrays Doc Holliday.
DH: Yeah, all the performances are marvelous. Linda Darnell, who plays the prostitute who’s in love with Doc Holliday, who's really his girl now, not Clementine, who he's left. She's a racial stereotype, sort of, which is unfortunate. We could do a whole show on how do you watch classic Hollywood movies that have bits of racism in them that aren't overt like hatred but just stereotyping. \
SVW: And not, in her case, not just racism, but also sexism.
DH: Right, because she plays that, it’s such an archetypal character. You've got the character who's the good woman and she's white, the Clementine, who’s come to find Doc Holliday because maybe they were engaged or something. And then the secondary character is always the one who’s a saloon girl or is in some way faulty. And often that's going to be the character that's going to be like in a Western, she's going to be Mexican or Indian or something like that.
SVW: And then there's also a scene in the beginning of the movie where there's a drunken Indian who basically gets chased out of town by Henry Fonda once he's deputized, deputed, or actually it's before he's officially deputized and becomes marshal. And he makes a comment about what's, you know, what's wrong with this town that you allow an Indian to drink?
DH: Right. So it isn't just that there's a drunk guy who's, who's creating havoc and that he shows that he's the type of guy who could be marshal cause he just takes care of the guy. It has to be the...an Indian and they have to point out that it's because he's an Indian, you know, in a way. It's a small moment in the movie. So I wouldn't want people not to watch this movie because of it, but it's also instructive about the environment that movies were, what movies were in Hollywood in the classic era.
SVW: And really with Westerns, one of the things that has put off modern audiences and watching the classic Hollywood Westerns is the portrayal of Native Americans. One of the, this is the only instance in the entire film where there's a Native American that's in a sequence that unless there's some that are in the background because it, the almost the entirety of the film except for a handful of scenes takes place only in Tombstone.
DH: Right. And you know, we like to talk about good movies on this show and some of the great movies, but the West(erns) there no more I think even today there probably been more Westerns in any other kind of movie made even though so few are made now because so many were made in the entire silent era and into the 30's and 40's and 50's and they were just a staple of the box office and out of that your ordinary Westerns are just full of, I mean, it's just the classic you know cowboys and Indians, murdering Indians, you know and the Indians are always portrayed as savages and all that. But we wouldn't be talking about this movie if we thought it had that kind of racism and it doesn't.
SVW: No, these are in fact I didn't even pick up on the racism around the prostitute character to be honest until we had been talking about the movie prior to Beginning to record today.
DH: Yeah, and they don't say anything to her about like you're the way you are because like they did with the Indian character It's just that she's a stereotype.
SVW: So another thing that's really great about this movie is as I just mentioned, the setting. You talked about Monument Valley being just there because they created the set in Monument Valley, but they really recreate the…Tombstone in a way that sort of rises above the cliche that we have of Tombstone. It's shown to be the wild town that we have in mythology and in that modern Tombstone movie that's a little bit crazier in that film. But like you said, they show you the day-to-day lives of people.
DH: Yeah, and they built an elaborate set. This set, built in Monument Valley, cost a quarter of a million dollars in 1946. So, picture building a set out on a location now for, I mean, you could easily say that'd be equal to about $5 million or something or more now, just for a set that's essentially facades that show a town. So, he put a lot into wanting to get that look.
SVW: And then even though it's just a small portion of the film, the shootout at the OK Corral, they show you how the corrals are set up and each different, it's actually one giant corral that has different sections. And each section has a sign on it. So there's other, when the various participants are circling each other, they're not only in the, the OK Corral is where the Clantons are hanging out. But Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers are coming in from different areas and they're walking through other corrals.
DH: Yeah. You know, one of the reasons to see this movie is this kind of brilliant way that Ford gets you at least to believe that this is probably what the West was like. It isn't full of just, there's plenty of action in it. So, it’s a movie with lots of action and there's shootouts and all this stuff you look for in Westerns. But there's also this very slow, calm pace in the ordinary things of everyday life. And then against that backdrop, very quickly sometimes, are these moments of action. So, I think Ford, he convinces us, doesn't he? It makes it believable.
SVW: Very much so.
DH: Well, great movie. I hope people can see My Darling Clementine.
