Hour of the Gun

Hour of the Gun is a 1967 Western film depicting Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday during their 1881 battles against Ike Clanton and his brothers in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and the gunfight's aftermath in and around Tombstone, Arizona, starring James Garner as Earp, Jason Robards as Holliday, and Robert Ryan as Clanton. The movie was directed by John Sturges.

Sturges had previously directed a fictionalized version of the same events in the film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas but Hour of the Gun attempts more historical accuracy than most motion picture accounts of the events and is based on the non-fiction book Tombstone's Epitaph by Douglas D. Martin, with a screenplay by Edward Anhalt. In Hour of the Gun Ike Clanton is shown, correctly, to have survived the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, whereas previous films had him killed at the gunfight.

Plot
Outnumbered but determined, Wyatt Earp (James Garner), his brothers Virgil (Frank Converse) and Morgan (Sam Melville) and ally Doc Holliday (Jason Robards) confront and clearly get the best of the Ike Clanton gang in a violent shootout at the O.K. Corral in the Arizona town of Tombstone.

Ike (Robert Ryan), a rustler, conspires to have the Earps charged with murder and tried in a court of law. When they are cleared, Virgil runs for Tombstone City Sheriff, but is ambushed and maimed by some of Clanton's hired guns. Morgan elects to run for the office in his brother's place, but he is assasinated.

While seeing his family off to California for their safety, Earp kills Frank Stillwell, foiling an attempted ambush orchestrated by Clanton. An appointment as a federal marshal then gives him the authority to pursue the others involved in the attacks on his brothers. Doc Holliday, a gambler who has been on the wrong side of the law himself more than once, assembles a posse to support the pursuit. The men locate Pete Spence, "Curly" Bill Brocius and Andy Warshaw. However, in each case, Earp manipulates the circumstances to get his target to draw a weapon rather than simply surrendering, thus enabling Earp to legally kill them rather than merely arresting them. Holliday calls Earp out on his tactics but his strength gives out due to his tuberculosis and Earp transports him to a sanitarium in Colorado.

With Clanton weakened, wealthy interests in Tombstone step forward to end the dispute, buying off the men supporting Clanton, which leads him to hide out in Mexico. They then offer to make Earp the top law enforcement official in the territory. Earp declines to give his answer to the offer immediately but tells Holliday that he's going back to Tombstone to accept the job. Holliday doesn't believe him and knows Earp is really going to Mexico to track down Clanton. Holliday again joins Earp on the mission, which ends with a final showdown in which Earp shoots Clanton dead.

Earp returns with Holliday to Colorado and says goodbye to his unlikely friend, telling him this time he really is returning to Tombstone. As he leaves, though, Earp admits that he's leaving the Southwest altogether, intending never to be involved in law enforcement again.

Cast

 * James Garner as Wyatt Earp
 * Jason Robards as Doc Holliday
 * Robert Ryan as Ike Clanton
 * Albert Salmi as Octavius Roy (prosecuting attorney)
 * Charles Aidman as Horace Sullivan (defense attorney)
 * Steve Ihnat as Andy Warshaw (Clanton man)
 * Michael Tolan as Pete Spence (new Tombstone city Sheriff)
 * William Windom as Texas Jack Vermillion (Earp posse member)
 * Lonny Chapman as Turkey Creek Johnson (Earp posse member)
 * Larry Gates as John P. Clum
 * William Schallert as Herman Spicer (judge)
 * Bill Fletcher as Jimmy Bryan (Cochise County Sheriff)
 * Karl Swenson as Dr. Charles Goodfellow
 * Austin Willis as Anson Safford
 * Monte Markham as Sherman McMasters (Tucson Sheriff and Earp posse member)
 * Richard Bull as Thomas Fitch (attorney)
 * Sam Melville as Morgan Earp
 * Jon Voight as Curly Bill Brocius (Clanton man)
 * Robert Phillips as Frank Stilwell
 * Frank Converse as Marshal Virgil Earp

Production
This is the second film by John Sturges about these events, following the fictionalized film from ten years earlier, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which had featured Burt Lancaster as Earp and Kirk Douglas as Holliday. However, Ike Clanton is killed at the end of the earlier film (during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral itself). In Hour of the Gun, Clanton not only survives the gunfight, but is a major antagonist thereafter. Where Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is more about the main gun battle, this film begins with the gunfight and moves forward from there. Because Hal B. Wallis had scripted everything in the earlier Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Sturges was disappointed with that film. Hour of the Gun is more of a psychological "melancholy character study".

James Garner also played the lead as Wyatt Earp in a different movie filmed more than two decades later, Blake Edwards's Sunset (1988), a comedy thriller based on the 1920s period during which Earp was a technical adviser for silent films. Bruce Willis, in his second theatrical film, portrays Tom Mix. The film's music is composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Hour of the Gun was filmed in the state of Durango, Mexico; at Estudios Churubusco Azteca (studio) in Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico; San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico; and in Torreón, Coahuíla, Mexico.

Reception
Bruce Elder, at Allmovie, calls Garner's portrayal of Earp as "taciturn, emotionally repressed, deeply troubled and torn", but criticizes Edward Anhalt's script as being too strict to historical facts and confining the actors, especially Garner. Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, says: "Garner turns in one of his best performances."

DVD
Hour of the Gun was released to DVD by MGM Home Video May 17, 2005.