At the beginning of the film, Wyatt Earp and two of the brothers go into Tombstone to check it out, only to return to their camp to find their youngest brother, James, murdered, and the cattle stolen. When Wyatt buries him, The tombstone says he was born in 1864, and died in 1882, with Wyatt saying he was only 18 years old. This is historically inaccurate for a number of reasons. The first reason being that James Earp was not the youngest brother of the Earps; he was the oldest. The second reason is that James was born in 1841, and he died in 1926. The third reason is that when he did die, it wasn't because he was murdered; he died of natural causes in California. https://www.legendsofamerica.com/james-earp/ –Robert Dallas

James Earp, who’s murdered at the beginning of the movie while still in his teens, actually lived to be 84. –Lindsey Sowers

In the film, it shows Doc Holliday dying of gunshot would at the battle at O.K. Corral when he actually died of Tuberculosis in 1887. – Courtlyn P.

The battle at the O.K. Corral was not a noble cowboy shootout, but instead was a gunfight in an abandoned lot near the O.K. Corral with only some of the Clantons and Earps present. The Clantons are also portrayed as lawless ranchers in opposition to the lawful Wyatt Earp, but in reality Earp was a more unsavory character who jumped from town to town and gambled often. Chihuahua and Clementine are also not real, but are likely based on women like Josephine Marcus, prostitute turned Earp's girlfriend. It is interesting that Earp has almost nothing to do with the women in this movie, since he was very close to Marcus in real life. In regard to “Matewan”, there's no evidence of a Joe Kenehan who led these men in strike. –Erin Shaw

Old Man Clanton wasn't at the OK Corral, he had been killed a few months before. Also, the film takes place in 1882 when the shootout actually took place in 1881, and there was no reason to change the year. –Jessie Fitzgerald https://truewestmagazine.com/ambush-at-guadalupe-pass/

In the opening scene, Wyatt Earp and his brothers are seen driving cattle. The Earp family was known to be lawmen with mostly all the family having involvement in law enforcement, not cattle driving. -Kyle Moore

The actual gunfight at O.K. Corral lasted about 30 seconds, and the only ones who died were Frank & Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton. –Maryanna Stribling

The movie takes the names of historical figures and places in order to create a fictional story around them. The shooting is one example of their misleading history in film- the shooting lasted less then a minute, and the Erap's were the first to fire. Making it seem as though they were an honorable banned of brothers looking for justice and laying down the law with harsh but effective tactics is not characteristic of the time period the movie is meant to take place in, but the time in which this fictional film was made and the industry which capitalizes on this era of history but adding “Mexican standoffs” to create a dramatic effect. – Grace Corkran

This movie got a lot of the general characters and their sides of the conflict correct. They may not have had all of the correct details, but the names, motivations, and partnerings were correct. – Carolyn Stough

Doc Holliday was well know to Wyatt Earp well before Wyatt came to Tombstone. Wyatt also did a number of jobs before even becoming a deputy marshal. Doc also did not die in the gunfight but several years later. These are just a few of the basic factual errors that were found all throughout the film. –Jack Hagn

There is a clear distinction between gender roles for women in the West and in the East. Chihuahua is not proper in the way she acts and dresses. She also speaks more freely. Clementine, on the other hand is very proper. Women in the West could push boundaries because of the “lawless” environment. -Maddie Shiflett

Men came first in the migration to establish a way of life for their families to settle into. –Lindsey Sowers

In class we talked about how men like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were “sporting men” or gamblers, and in the movie were depicted as such. Being shown around a poker table a few scenes in the movie. –Caroline Collier

In the film, the Clantons are said to be ones who run the cattle and as cattle ranchers. This is accurate because “Old Man” Clanton and his sons were cattle ranchers. - Courtlyn P.

In regard to “My Darling Clementine”, the Earps, Clantons, and Doc Holiday were all real people who lived in Tombstone at some point in their lives. In regard to “Matewan”, most of the key facts of the company's reaction to the strike and the massacre were accurate. They used real people's names, like Sid Hatfield and Few Clothes Johnson, and the company was represented by Baldwin-Felts. This was an integrated union, and the company did try to evict the people of Matewan from their homes after the strike began. –Erin Shaw

We see Chihuahua singing in a local saloon. This was very typical of women in the west during this time period. As we discussed in class, men were the first to migrate west - mainly to work and establish themselves before bringing their families along. When they would go back east to get their families, women were often reluctant due to the nature of working in saloons and brothels that it entailed. –Maryanna Stribling

In the scene where Wyatt is in the bar playing eight-handed poker, the band is playing a song called “Buffalo Gals.” Since this song was first published in 1844 and was popularized by traveling minstrel shows, it's highly probable that such a song would be played in bars in the post-Civil War American West. Source: http://www.balladofamerica.com/music/indexes/songs/buffalogal/index.htm ~Will Everett

The movie did portray the feud between the Clantons and the Earps which was factual. The film also took a lot of liberties with the story of the O.K. Corral shootout. They did get some of the surroundings correct as the background and the clothes. –Jack Hagn

This movie contains all of the classic elements of a good Western. The main message is that good triumphs over evil. There is a righteous hero and an evil villain However, one thing that John Ford does differently is that he gives his characters a much more human and emotional side. Even though Old Man Clanton is ruthless and bad, at the end his humanity is revealed when he mourns for his sons. The characters in this film are stock characters that are always found in Westerns. However, they are much more developed than characters I have seen in other classic Westerns. -Maddie Shiflett

In the movie the Chihuahua had been shot and Doc Holliday was seen medically assisting her gun inflicted wounds, but Doc Holliday was a dentist, so I thought it was interesting he portrayed him a surgeon type doctor. https://glidewelldental.com/education/chairside-dental-magazine/volume-7-issue-2/biography-spotlight-figures-in-dentistry-doc-holliday/ –Caroline Collier

Wyatt Earp apparently visited some of John Ford's early movie sets (w john wayne as the prop boy), and Earp told him about and described the OK Corral to Ford. How much of these meetings translated onto the screen in the film? -Jessie Fitzgerald https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/04/09/while-working-as-a-prop-boy-john-wayne-met-wyatt-earp-he-later-credited-his-walk-talk-and-persona-to-his-acquaintance-with-earp/

How did the hispanic community react to this movie? The movie tries to make Chihuahua seem like a good character at the end, and it is sad when she dies- however it is clear that she is a women of questionable character and that there are not any “good” Hispanic characters in the film. Clemintine is definitely juxetaposed to Chihuahua's charactere with their very different levels of modesty. – Grace Corkran

The characters in this movie interacted with a Native American once, while he was drunk and shooting up a saloon. We talked about in class how this group of people were one of the majority groups out west, surely an they would have interacted with an Native American more than they did. -Erin Andrewlevich

The death of Doc Holliday in the film–which in actuality, as others have already pointed out, did not occur at OK Corral, but of consumption in 1887–can be seen as the culmination of his long-standing disregard for his own life. Not until Chihuahua dies does Holliday approach Wyatt and offer to help him fight the Clantons at the OK Corral–not until his last hope for self-redemption had been denied. What does the fulfillment of this desire to seek out death mean about how mental illness was perceived at the time in which this movie was set, or the time in which it was made? ~Will Everett

What this movie says about the 1940's is that people wanted to be entertained and wanted to celebrate classic American heroes. Westerns were very popular at this time because, as a genre, they generally take pride in America's past and focus on what we consider to be a very exciting time and place. The Wild West is heavily romanticized on screen. -Maddie Shiflett

This film really is a product of its time when it comes to the concept of women. This film was released a year after World War 2, and there was a lot of unease (especially in the male community) about the roles women would play in their lives now that many of them had done the work they weren't around for, and had been influenced by propaganda such as Rosie the Riveter to empower themselves as more than just obedient ladies to the men who fought the war. This movie, in that regard, can be seen as a way to promote (or maybe even assure) that women belong in submissive roles; they can be smart and charming sure, but at the end of the day, the feats of greatness and hard work belong solely to the men. –Robert Dallas

This movie is focused heavily on a romanticized version of the west, highlighting pretty girls, an Indian here or there, and gun shots and saloon fights every 5 minutes. This movie probably reinforced beliefs that people in the 1940’s believed to be true about the “wild west”. -Erin Andrewlevich

Not only does the movie portray an idealized American cowboy archetype for post-war audiences, but it also plays into the “hard work” rhetoric that was spewed during the Great Depression and WWII. Towards the beginning of the film, Chihuahua sings of the western struggle to create a profit in the west. This relates to the typical “Keep Hope” and morale boosting properties of films during war times. –Jessica Lynch

Choosing to make a character like Chihuahua be played by a white woman, really shows the lack of representation in movies in the 1940s. Diversity at the time really was not seen as a priority especially with the main cast. Throughout the movie, the only time you really see people of color are just thrown into the backgrounds of scenes without really giving them lines. – Ellora Larsen

This movies shows the prejudices against Native Americans at the time it was made. The only Native that has any “lines” in the film is drunk and shooting guns in the bar. This is a stereotype that all Natives have and alcohol problem. The movie makes no attempt at trying to understand the struggles of Native Americans at this time or the actual relationship between Native Americans and westward migrants.– Grace Corkran

In an article by Richard Hutson, he defines Wyatt Earp as a character made in the post-war era who is “serene but resolute” and “designed to alleviate anxiety about the irrelevance of the past for the new era. After WWII, Americans were nervous about the state of the country and the world and whether or not progress could happen. With the fears and anxieties, artists, writers, film-makers, and optimists imagined a progressive and successful civilization through their statements and work. My Darling Clementine and Wyatt Earp were part of the revitalization of America’s confidence by showcasing its difficult yet glorious past. -Lake Wiley

Hutson, Richard. “John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946).” Representations 84, no. 1 (2003): 200-12. doi:10.1525/rep.2003.84.1.200.

This movie has the classic characters, heroine, villan, lovers quarrel, bartenders. My favorite line in the movie was, when Wyatt asks the bartender, “Mac, you ever been in love?” and he responds, “No, I've been a bartender all me life.” This movie maintained its comedy throughout and its charm by the intimate interactions between all the characters, like Wyatt and the bartender, and the end scene when Wyatt tells Clementine goodbye with a kiss. Anyways, what I'm trying to say, is that the 1940s movies had this compelling storytelling ability, they were black and white, they had action and romance, with comedy sprinkled throughout. Ford did a wonderful job and Fonda gave one of his best roles in this film. -Amiti Colson

One of the aspects of this film that shows that it is a source of its time is its treatment of women. One way in which I like to look at the treatment of women in films is through the Bechdel test. For a film to pass the Bechdel test it must have three things: 1) two named female characters 2) these characters must have a conversation with one another 3) the conversation needs to be about something other than a man. Not surprisingly, this 1946 film does not pass this test. Yes, there are two named women. Yes, they do have a conversation. But their conversation lies in the subject that Chihuahua wanted Clementine to leave because Clementine threatened Chihuahua’s future with Doc Holliday. In this film, women are portrayed as love interests for the main heroes and only that. – Carolyn Stough

Many women wrote of their hardships moving west. Chihuahua sings of “10,000” gone astray who end up “broke.” This parallels Mary Abell's account, who “expected corn and hay to sell to have paid all our debts here,” yet got “no pay with the coarsest living.” Many moved west with the hope to make money, yet they ended up broke when it turned out that the soil and climate was not conducive to harvesting large crop yields and there wasn't enough wood to make adequate fences. –Jessica Lynch

It seems that they used Debs as a reference for Kenehan, because a lot of the things in Debs's “Outlook for Socialism in the United States” reflect what Kenehan was saying in the film. Also, it was interesting to read Taylor's piece-rate system proposal, because it is almost exactly what Danny describes in his sermon about paying men for their labor. In his sermon, he discusses a passage in the Bible which focuses on men doing more labor than others but all being paid the same. I would be curious to know if Danny and the other union men would like the piece-rate system more. –Erin Shaw

It was interesting to look at the reading about Native Americans in the west compared to how Native American were portrayed in the movie. In the readings, it talks about how the U.S. government tried to get tribal groups to assimilate into U.S. society and hopefully become ranchers in the societies and towns that were forming and then turn the lands into homesteads. In the movie, there is only a brief mention of Native Americans in the movie when it would have been a big part of the American West at the time. — Ellora Larsen

This movie reinforces popular understandings about the Wild West. It gives its viewers an image of the West that they want to see. Also, it is an extremely entertaining film that reveals more about pop culture of the 1940s than the time period and history that it portrays. -Maddie Shiflett

I'm curious as to what the goal of “Matewan” was, since it was an independent film. It appears to have a Socialist goal in mind, given that Kenehan is portrayed as nearly perfect and the company men are unquestionably cruel and evil. Having Kenehan die at the end cements this, as it creates a martyr for the union's cause. They even mention this a few times when other characters die, but none of them seem to have the impact that Kenehan does, even though he was not a real person. It seems the creators thought up the perfect Socialist and put him in the story. –Erin Shaw

The movie is simply one that says that it is historically accurate—is not—but is an awesome western film that resonates with viewers. Rather than serving as a secondary source of the gunfight at the OK corral it mimics Gone with the Wind in that it shows a romanticized version of its setting—in Clementine’s case, the West. -Lake Wiley

One of the aspects of this film that shows that it is a source of its time is its treatment of women. One way in which I like to look at the treatment of women in films is through the Bechdel test. For a film to pass the Bechdel test it must have three things: 1) two named female characters 2) these characters must have a conversation with one another 3) the conversation needs to be about something other than a man. Not surprisingly, this 1946 film does not pass this test. Yes, there are two named women. Yes, they do have a conversation. But their conversation lies in the subject that Chihuahua wanted Clementine to leave because Clementine threatened Chihuahua’s future with Doc Holliday. In this film, women are portrayed as love interests for the main heroes and only that. – Carolyn Stough