329-2012--Week 9 Questions/Comments

Things the movie got right
'''Some of the names. I think they filmed closer to the historic location than Last of the Mohicans did. That's about it.''' --Carrie Carrie, let us not forget the saloons for drinking, the abundance of the towns (as mentioned by Clementine since she traveled to so many) and the woman that were in the saloons to entertain. But...yeah I agree with you. -Kayle

The only thing that the movie got right was the names of some of the historical characters and some of their mannerisms from what is known historically. In the film, Doc Holiday coughed from tuberculosis and had problems with alcoholism. Wyatt Earp is portrayed as a gambler and lawman.—Paige This movie got very little right. The locations seemed pretty legitimate, I could tell they were in the Southwest. The names of most of the characters were right and diversity was shown with some Native Americans and Latinos. -Amanda&#160;

We can clearly see the importance of gathering places like bars and brothels to assimilate and congregate. -JRemy

The popularity and the social importance of the brothels in a West. --Olivia The movie does have some of the real characters, Ike, Newman, Wyatt, Doc, Virgil, and Morgan. In the most general way possible, they have included some of the true American West: cattle ranching, gambling, diversity [the smallest amount they could do]… and… wait that’s it. Oh damn, I thought of something, Clementine thought Chihuahua was beneath her which does show how women who lived in these mining towns were thought to be disreputable. -- Brooke The only thing I could think of (other then the handful of historically named characters) were the events. Granted, they didn't happen in order, but at least the creators didn't leave them out! -pmccloy Cowboys, wild west towns, lawlessness, saloon life, and ladies... otherwise it fell flat on accuracy. Historical names were thrown in to give the movie a purpose and keep it from blending in with any old John Wayne or Roy Rogers western.--Mary O. The booze and guns changed the Indians. They were looked down upon. '''Wyatt buffalo billed people. - Hannah''' References to “camp meeting” were period-appropriate. As quickly as Tombstone grew up, it would make sense that they might not have a full-time preacher and established church and congregation. As such, they would have taken advantage of the services of a roving minister who provided these revival-style worship events. (Of course, in the movie, Tombstone was getting their own real church.) -Sara G. '''A handful of details from the original event are represented. Some of the same players appear--the Clantons, Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil. Also the lifestyle which many in the west led appears as well with some nice detail--gambling, brothels, etc. The Earps make a living at least in this period as cowboys, and then become local sheriffs, which is more or less accurate, or at least not straight up erroneous.''' --Mary Quinn

The gambling and fraternizing with criminals and prostitutes was correct, as was the fact that there were several Earp brothers. There was tension between the Earps and the Clantons leading up to the shootout, and I’m sure they rode horses and that there was a lot of dust in Tombstone. ~ Laura-Michal

'''"What kind of town is this? Selling liquor to Indians?" He then later gets the Indian out of the building and tells him to stay out of that area. I thought this little detail was similar to how Anglo-Americans and the government forced Indians out of the area into reservations; eventhough we didn't see another Native American throughout the movie.''' Also, definitely saw a lot of buffalo in the beginning. --Aqsa Z.

Wyatt and his brothers as well as Doc Holiday and the Clanton family were shown and it had a realistic, for film sets, set design.''' The bar life seemed to be accurate and the scenes with the actor seemed right. If the town’s only entertainment did not show up I would riot as well.''' - Emily

Things the movie got wrong
I feel like this movie was more about the love and romance then it was about the history. '''This is probably the most romanticized movie we have seen. With the beautiful women who are clean and moderately dressed, and the surgery that Doc performs on Chihuahua, with no blood and she still looked beautiful after the surgery. The film seemed to focus more on the love triangle between Chihuahua, Clementine, Doc Holiday and eventually Wyatt Earp'''. The only thing that seemed to be historically accurate was that the shooting at the OK corral only lasted about 30 seconds. –Paige

Clementine Who the heck was Clementine? None of the girls that we talked about in class were mentioned in the movie, but in rides Clementine that has been searching the west for Doc Holliday. Though by the end of the movie she is in love with Wyatt? I kept wondering if she was based of one of the other women, but honestly I think that she was added so they could include the song. -Kayle P

Other Characters The movie makes Wyatt Earp seem respectable, other than a little gambling. While in the lecture we learned he was seen more as outlaw. --Olivia.

Rants '''Oh goodness, where to start... Oh, right. This movie was very awful. Wyatt Earp was an outlaw, not this honest hero who becomes a marshall because his brother is killed. Also, Doc Holiday was a dentist, not a surgeon so it is unlikely he would have been able to operate on Chihuahua. Clementine wasn't a real person and honestly shouldn't be a real name, its a fruit people (seriously, it'd be like calling your kid Apple). Besides that, the film had very little details right, like the names of all of the women. The battle at the O.K Coral was short, well the fight was. They sure did want to talk a lot before they started shooting. Anyway, this movie was pretty awful, both from an entertainment perspective and a historical perspecitve.''' -Amanda&#160;

Everything. Where the hell where the McLaury guys, for instance? Or the women we learned about? Hell, where is the STORY we heard on Tuesday? Instead of the truth, we get some hokey tale that tries to make the Clantons seem like terrible people so we’ll hate them, a random love triangle between Doc, Chihuahua, and Clementine, and people dying left and right. Also, where were the Native Americans? I think maybe Chihuahua was supposed to be one…? The only few I saw were either drunkards (Indian Charlie) or were giving Wyatt two horses to run after Doc. And can we please talk about this ?

This movie was annoying. '''It was sort of about Wyatt Earp, who is really only a supporting character, but it was also about Dr. John Holliday, who can quote Shakespeare and seems to be self-flagellating for Something. Clementine shows up, somehow making her way through the west. Alone. And is able to find Holliday successfully. She loves John, but has an easy enough time falling for his sidekick Wyatt, and then is not sad when John dies. Actually, nobody was sad when John died. Also, there's a Mexican (prostitute?) played by a white actress.''' Then the gunfight happens, and then the movie over, and all the characters were sort of indifferent about everything. This movie is wrong for me, and wrong for America. Although it probably filled some sort of post-WWII emotional void that only a western can fill. --Stef L. Wrong for you and wrong for America? "I'm Stefanie Lilly, and I endorse this message." Hahaha! - Sara G.

It seems like just because they can trace a name back to an actual person and found a 'biography', wow this is a great start for a history film! '''Although based in the period with a few names, I think this film was mainly made for pure entertainment, regardless of the historical accuracies. Setting aside the events, for the most part it seemed as though they didn't even get the issues of daily life correct'''. pmccloy

'''I am not a big fan of completely trashing movies I can usually find some redeeming qualities about bad movies. Unfortunately this movie falls into the rare category of just being an awful unredeemable movie.''' The movie should have been 20 minutes long the only time the plot advances is during the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes while the hour and ten minutes in the middle seem to be completely useless. The movie gets virtually none of the historical aspects right and the deviation from the historical facts do not create an interesting or entertaining movie. In other movies we have watched this semester when directors have steered away from historical truths there was usually a logical payoff that rewarded the audience, however this is not the case with My Darling Clementine. - Jason Milton

'My feeling about this movie is the same as our discussion about&#160;The Patriot''. This felt like a story set upon a Western background with some basis in truth. That being said, this may have had a few more historically accurate details, but not enough to redeem itself in my eyes.' I want to sit down and compare this movie to&#160;Tombstone&#160;and&#160;Wyatt Earp&#160;''sometime. --NJenn

'''How come Clementine was traveling alone through the West? How are you supposed to have a cattle ranch on that land? Doc was the main character and the Clinton vs. Earp tension wasn't as big of a plot as it should've been. It focused on the love triangle/square. Wyatt was portrayed as this hero who was going to rid the town of it's evils.''' -Hannah

Like my classmates have pointed out, Wyatt was not a respectable man in real life; however, Ford took MAJOR liberty in presenting him in a heroic light. --Ellen S.

'Population Tombstone, AZ? ''1 crazy, drunk Indian, 1 old Mexican lady, 0 black people, a zillion white people. Yeah, that’s about right.'''

The people? '''Seven years his senior, James was Wyatt’s older brother. Not sure why they chose to portray him as an 18-year-old in the movie – nearly half of Wyatt’s age. The movie implies that Wyatt and Doc Holliday were strangers when they met in Tombstone, but they were already good friends by then.''' &#160;And why did they have to turn him into a surgeon when he was a perfectly good dentist?

The gunfight? Well, the number of shots fired was close to right. I counted about 35. That’s about where the accuracy ends. The actual gunfight didn’t take place at sunrise, but at 3 p.m. Virgil wasn’t killed before the fight *or* during the fight. He lived to the ripe old age of 62. “Old Man” Clanton died months before the fight, so he certainly wasn’t the only survivor. Especially since he wasn't even there. And so on, and so on. - Sara G.

To list all of the things that this movie got wrong would take hours. The relationships were wrong, was confused as to whom Clementine was and the whole situation of the shootout was wrong. This movie was purely for entertainment and had no historical value. - Emily

Other comments &lt;p&gt;In the Shakespeare scene guns are used for stupid reasons, in class it was mentioned that guns were hardly used to settle disputes. --Kendall

In the movie, the town of Tombstone is surrounded by Monument Valley which is located in northern Arizona, and the actual town of Tombstone is in southern Arizona which has a flat landscape. Also the year in the movie was 1882, and the gun fight took place the year before in October of 1881. Sadly Doc Holliday didn't offer to be anyone's "huckleberry" --Mary O.

The movie as a primary source about the time/people who made it
This movie tells me that people in the 1940s liked Westerns, romance, and that there should be pretty women in films, but for guys it could go either way. &#160; &#160;This represents gender bias at the time, especially when you look at the accuracy of male names versus the accuracy of the female names. Also, fun fact, Doc Holliday was related by marriage to Margaret Mitchell. -Amanda&#160;

Good point, Amanda. This movie might have been a lot more fun if it had included Doc Holliday's real-life common law wife, "Big Nose Kate." For real! -Sara G.

The Old West is something of a nostalgia (Old South anyone?) We think cowboys, shoot em ups and the duty romances that made my grandma fight for the television set. These images show a society that was looking for entertainment rather than historical value. -JRemy

It continued the romanticized image of the Old West from the backdrop of Monument Valley, to the stereotyped roles each character fills. All of which ignores the harsh realities of moving West. pmccloy

'''It would seem from my limited exposure that movies made in the 1940s seemed to care little about historical accuracy. Both this movie and Gone With the Wind do a terrible job of being historically accurate. At the very least Gone With the Wind created memorable characters that you can become attached to or care about while My Darling Clementine does not achieve this. While one of the worst criticisms we have levied against the more modern movies we have watched was that they were movies focuses on a cast of characters that used an historical event as a backdrop. These more modern movies still managed to deliver a movie that got the larger more important historical details correct.''' - Jason Milton

Defenses/explanations

&lt;p&gt;That '''audiences wanted to remember the past fondly, in a way they could be proud of. It seems historical movies were pretty popular as long as they were romantic, entertaining, the good guys won, and it gave them a history they could stand behind. Historical accuracy was a bonus as long as it met this criteria.'''-- Kendall

'''Because this film was released the year after World War II and just a few short years after the Great Depression, John Ford chose to depict this western world in a positive light while compromising historical facts in the process. This is a prime example of desired "escapism" for the audience.''' --Ellen S.

Yes, this movie is wildly, wildly different from the actual events on which it's based. No doubt about that. But '''I honestly don't believe that John Ford's intention in making this movie was to actually portray the historical particulars of the shootout at the OK Corral. He's telling an American myth, which is a whole diffferent matter. Everyone knows about the OK Corrall as a kind of foundation story in which a man goes and shoots the lawless bandits and brings law and order to the town, and a lot of little details in the movie are very pointedly symbolic of this (the church being built, townspeople coming together and forming a community, Clementine staying to be a schoolteacher for the next generation.) In the end I think that it's more helpful to understand the movie in that light than to assume that the filmmakers where deliberately misrepresenting an event to cater to their audience.''' As far as being a primary source about the 1940s then, "...Clementine" follows the same pattern as many other westerns of the time, showing how people were fascinated and inspired by legends (because it's hard to call it history) about the expansion and taming of their country. --Mary Quinn

Other concerns

I was stunned to learn that this film is on the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. This purpose of this list is to identify "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films" each year, showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation. “My Darling Clementine” was inducted in the registry in 1991. I was even more stunned to read this glowing review, published in the New York Times in December 1946 about this film. Reviewer Bosley Crowther didn’t think too much of the tired old story, but he found the acting and the scenery just amazing. When I compare this with Gone With the Wind, I cannot imagine why he would have such a favorable impression. I do, however, understand why they didn’t spring for Technicolor. -Sara G.

'''The virgin/slut dichotomy is pretty easy to see in the characters of Chihuahua (seriously, Chihuahua?!) vs. Clementine (sweet and natural connotations). Wyatt Earp isn't even interested in Chihuahua because he's a "principled man." I'm reminded of those WWII propaganda posters about vernal disease when I try to contextualize why the filmmakers would have these two women characters in the film.''' -Zhen Chen

&lt;p&gt;The scene I found most telling of the time is when Wyatt arrives in town and is trying to get a shave and a drunk Indian opens fire, which forces Earp to "take care" of the situation. He drags him out by his feet, scolds the towns people for giving him liquor and then literally kicks him out of town. The whole movie was a little over the top but this scene plays into the racist attitudes that were common for the 19th c. in the west and still in the 1940s. This goes along the same lines as Gone with the Wind and the perception and of how the filmmakers believed and still continued to view non-whites. -Rachel T.

An example of the romanticized notions of life in the West or on the frontier was James wanting to be like Wyatt. The movie was based on Wyatt Earp's "biography." Wyatt was portrayed as a gentleman not a trouble maker. The opening song set the romantic stage for the movie, mentioning words like miner, gambling, and cattle. - Hannah

Comments on the reading versus the movie
The movie was not as gritty as the readings were. The readings portray the West as a place that was rough and a person would have to quickly become accustomed to death in their everyday life, whether it was people or livestock. The movie makes it seem hard but with a glamorous spin. --Olivia

'''In the readings, the thing that jumped out at me the most was how hard the lifestyle out west really was... it didn't matter if you were farming or in town or riding cattle, your life basically sucked. It was incredibly hard and incredibly violent, and nobody was really exempt from that, Marshall Badge or not. So when the movie whitewashed that, it was a really radical departure; the violence was Hollywood-ized, in that you had dramatic gunfights in which only the bad guy or the Lancer is shown getting shot, along with Improbable Aiming Skills  like nobody's business. Also, for what was supposedly a fairly ethnically diverse country, as described in the readings, there were an awful lot of white people with very few Latinos or Native Americans''' --Carrie

'''Many of the readings that we read for this movie was about women and their travels across the west and the struggles they went through on the isolated plains. This was NOT EVEN touched about in the film. They seemed to be very well dressed, and none of the women seemed to be looked down upon because of their careers. It creates a misinterpretation that women out in the west had all the amenities that we are used to having today, providing a romanticized version of the west that is a lot cleaner, healthier, and easier than it historically was'''. –Paige

This film did not even scrape the surface of the challenges that women faced upon heading west. The readings, esp the Mary Abell letters, conveyed the endless hardship and general misery they faced. This was a missed opportunity by the filmmakers. Clementine went west searching for John, moving from camp to camp, and none of this was captured on film or even described. This would have been a good chance to show the hardship she endured. --Stef L.

'''The reading, “Six Months in the Gold Mines” stood out against the “gritty” accounts. This excerpt told the story of justice in a mining town. This was a little closer to what we learned on Tuesday with Wyatt Earp as Marshal. Edward Gould Buffum talks about how the town treats crimes. No one was murdered or injured during their robbing, yet the men faced flogging. Later, during a hearing, the drunken crowd wanted the men to be hanged. There basically were no legitimate systems for determining crimes—it was the citizens’ choice it seemed. The movie did show some of the lawlessness and carelessness of the Marshals and doling out “justice.”''' -- Brooke

It seems that in Westerns the romantic way to die is in a gunfight or due to some sort of calamity. Very few people are ever depicted of dying from a disease. Only in the movie&#160;Tombstone&#160;have I seen someone die of diesase, in this case Doc Holiday dying of TB. Guess Val Kilmer decided to go against the Western norm and said, "I'm your huckleberry." --NJenn

'''Though I don't imagine it was John Ford's aim - the film doesn't do a very good job at representing the hardships (like disease, poverty and lawlessness) that people faced on a daily basis. Clementine is the perfect example. She just hopped a ride out to check on John, and ultimately decided to hang around and become a school marm. Based on the readings, this would be a *very* unlikely choice. She would have skeedaddled back to Boston post-haste, if she had 1) even come at all, 2) survived the ordeal. I guess she survived because she's imaginary and has a cool name'''. - Sara G.

The readings concerning the Indians were heartbreaking. The US Government broke so many promises to them and then turned around and call them lazy and cut their rations even further. The USFG also showed signs of the same paternalism that slave owners showed to their slaves. "Of course its for their own benefit that we are forcing them to get rid of their culture, language and most importantly their lands!" Then its a series of rationalizations for these acts. "Germany is doing the same to Alsace and Lorraine! Its not like the French will ever want revenge for that!" "They clearly were the aggressors at Wounded Knee, so the women and children ought to die as well!" The movie meanwhile features a drunk indian shooting randomly. -Zhen Chen

'''Even during the "Wild West" period there was already a fascination/glorification of hardened outlaws. People flocked to see executions and dead bodies of famous outlaws. Other tropes of western movies seem to have existed back then as well: savage Indians being a constant threat to travelers.''' We can't blame the movie industry for this romanticization of the West. Roosevelt is helped do that job for them. - Zhen Chen