Review for My Darling Clementine

Arrow’s bumper Blu-Ray edition of Western classic ‘My Darling Clementine’ is a veritable film course in a box. It’s also the best part of a week’s entertainment packed on to two Blu-Ray discs. It’s just another example of how Arrow (along with Eureka) continues to raise the bar when it comes to physical media releases of great movies. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about ‘My Darling Clementine’ before I wax lyrical about the packs myriad extra features.

Real-life western hero Wyatt Earp has long fascinated filmmakers. Actors from Burt Lancaster and James Stewart to Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner have played the legendary gunfighter, but arguably no portrayal is more definitive that Henry Fonda’s in John Ford’s classic western, ‘My Darling Clementine’.



John Ford’s first Western since his seminal Stagecoach, ‘My Darling Clementine’ tells the story of the ‘Gunfight at the O.K. Corral’, and the friendship between Earp and Doc Holliday. But it’ sa film that is much more than just the sum of its narrative parts. Ford produces a touching melodrama which is visually stunning , filmed in his beloved Monument Valley.

The movie starts with Wyatt Earp on the road with a head of cattle after his famously heroic stunts at Dodge City. He’s moving west but stops off at a small frontier town called ‘Tombstone’ to rest up. But whilst there his cattle are rustled and his kid brother, left in charge of them, is murdered. Determined to track down his killers and serve justice he accepts the town’s plea for him to wear the local sheriff badge and clean up the town. With two brothers in tow, and his friend, big drinker and TB sufferer Doc Holliday, he sets about taking on Old Man Clanton, the head of a local but lawless family who may have been behind his brother’s murder. The ensuing friction concludes with the world-famous ‘Gunfight at the OK Corral’.


Sandwiched in-between all the macho gun-fighting action is some top-grade melodrama. Doc Holliday is a man on the edge, heading for an early grave thanks to incurable TB, he has forsaken his respectable life to leave the love of his life to get on with hers without having to care from him. In the meantime, he’s taken up with a local harlot who’s fallen for him big-time so when his lover arrives in town to take him back to Boston, things get complex. Especially when he leaves town when she refuses to, leaving her to fall in love with Earp.



The film has surely never looked better than this on the small screen – a crystal clear transfer with incredible detail, showing Ford’s eye for dramatic composition as well as detail character close-up to great effect. It’s a 4K digital transfer and there’s a choice of two different cuts; the truncated original theatrical release and a longer ‘pre-release’ cut that was used to play to preview audiences.

The two disc pack comes with more extras than you shake a stick at; not least a second movie in its entirety, also looking incredible after a significant make-over. ‘Frontier Marshal’ is another take on the Earp legend, this time directed by Allan Dwan and heralding from 1939, some years before Ford’s film. Starring Randolph Scott and Cesar Romero (better known now perhaps as the Joker in the Batman 1966 TV series) it’s great fun and, running at a mere 71 minutes, is short enough to watch as a B-picture should you want to.




Here’s what else you get with extras so plentiful that they are surely worth the price of admission alone.

Disc 1

•Commentary on the theatrical version by author Scott Eyman and Earp s grandson, Wyatt Earp III which focuses on a combination of production comments and historic ones relating to the realities of the tale.

•John Ford and Monument Valley – a 2013 documentary on the director s lifelong association with Utah s Monument Valley containing interviews with Peter Cowie (author of John Ford and the American West), John Ford, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart and Martin Scorsese. It’s full of great anecdotes, including some colourful ones from Scorsese who is clearly a huge fan of the movie. Running at the best part of 90 minutes this is a pretty comprehensive review.

•Movie Masterclass – a 1988 episode of the Channel 4 series, devoted to My Darling Clementine and presented by Lindsay Anderson who is on remarkable form in front of a small audience of film students. He is both articulate and passionate about the film which you can’t help but become enthused by.

•Lost and Gone Forever – a visual essay by Tag Gallagher on the themes that run through My Darling Clementine and the film s relationship with John Ford s other works

•Stills gallery

•Theatrical Trailer

Disc 2

•2K digital film restoration of the pre-release version of My Darling Clementine

•What is the Pre-Release Version? – a documentary by Robert Gitt, Senior Film Preservation Officer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, comparing the two versions of My Darling Clementine

•High Definition digital film transfer of Frontier Marshal, Allan Dwan s 1939 Wyatt Earp film starring Randolph Scott

•Two radio plays inspired by Wyatt Earp – a 1947 adaptation of My Darling Clementine starring Henry Fonda as Earp and Richard Conte as Doc Holliday, and a 1949 Hallmark Playhouse production in which Conte played the role of Earp

•Frontier Marshall Theatrical Trailer

The pack also comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw and a really tasty booklet (see watermarked stills in this review) which containing new writing on My Darling Clementine by Kim Newman (author of Wild West Movies) and on Frontier Marshal by Glenn Kenny, plus an extensive archive interview with screenwriter Winston Miller, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

If only all releases offered such transfers and features. Another impressive addition to the Arrow Academy series and essential for serious cinephiles.