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But we disregarded that we just started from scratch and made up our story.We talked out every single scene.Actually, if you analyze that picture, there were a lot of flaws in the construction. "John Ford and I sat around for five or six weeks kicking this thing around, trying to cook up a story." screenwriter Miller later told historian Robert Lyons, "Twentieth had once made a picture based on Wyatt Earp, and everybody in town had taken a shot at Earp, one way or another. In any event, the producer agreed to all three demands. Perhaps he simply felt that "accuracy" was the best way to sell Zanuck on a new script. The screenplay he created with Winston Miller errs in details large and small - including the number and respective ages of the Earp brothers. He was avid scholar in western history, knew Wyatt Earp personally, but apparently had no intention of being faithful to the facts of Earp’s biography. After missing out on Donna Reed, and trying an unsuccessful attempt to get Anne Baxter for the role, the director settled on Zanuck-favorite Cathy Downs.įord's third condition is a bit puzzling. Mature’s dark complexion and deep-set eyes projected exactly the kind of brooding Ford wanted to emphasize in Holiday. When Zanuck suggested Victor Mature play Doc Holliday, Ford enthusiastically approved. His first choices for Doc Holliday and Clementine were James Stewart and Donna Reed, but both were busy making It's A Wonderful Life for Frank Capra. The rest of the director's cast proved more difficult. At this point in his career, Fonda was Ford's favorite collaborator and the star's casting was the first sign that Ford intended to buy into the Earp mythology - placing him somewhere between the laconic righteousness of Abraham Lincoln and the awakened activism of Tom Joad. The first condition comes as no surprise.

He had to be allowed to produce a new script, as the existing one was only "about 40 percent accurate" He wanted to shoot the film in Black and White rather than Technicolor He had to have Henry Fonda play Wyatt Earp He agreed to screen the Dwan’s film.Īfter seeing Dwan's movie, Ford told Zanuck that he would remake it on three conditions: It had been seven years since his last one ( Stagecoach), and he thought reprising his genre roots might prove productive. The idea of returning to the western interested him, too. The real Earp had served as a technical advisor on some of his early silent westerns, and the young Ford had heard the tale of the OK Corral from the man himself. The producer suggested that Ford do a Technicolor remake of Allan Dwan's Frontier Marshall, a film about western legend Wyatt Earp. Zanuck objected, feeling the material was too controversial (Ford would later make the film for Republic Pictures as The Sun Shines Bright). The director wanted to remake one of his earlier Will Rogers vehicles, Judge Priest, to insert a scene that had been cut by censors in 1933 - that of an angry southern mob attempting to lynch a black man. Zanuck was pushing Captain From Castile, a big-budget costume adventure starring Tyrone Power, but Ford had little interest in the project. But, before he could dive into Greene's fable of lapsed Catholicism, released the next year as The Fugitive, he still had unfulfilled obligations at Fox. World War II had just ended for John Ford in terms of service (in the Navy's Field Photographic Unit) and screen (he'd just wrapped the wartime drama They Were Expendable), and he was excited to get to work on a film adaptation of Graham Greene's The Power and The Glory for RKO. Fonda sits in a chair with his legs propped up on a pillar and a satisfied smile on his face––I really envy that rapport between Ford and Fonda." "Look at Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine: motionless and expressionless––there is the greatness of John Ford.