The day-by-day inside story of the making of Tombstone (1993) as told to the author by those who were there--actors, extras, crew members, Buckaroos, historians and everyone in between. Historical context that inspired Kevin Jarre's screenplay is included. Production designers, cameramen, costume designers, composers, illustrators, screenwriter, journalists, set dressers, prop masters, medics, stuntmen and many others share their recollections--many never-before-told--of filming this epic Western.

THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Tombstone is written in a distinctly American voice." —T.J. Stiles, The New York Times “With a former newsman’s nose for the truth, Clavin has sifted the facts, myths, and lies to produce what might be as accurate an account as we will ever get of the old West’s most famous feud.” —Associated Press The true story of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the famous Battle at the OK Corral, by the New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Wild Bill. On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, eight men clashed in what would be known as the most famous shootout in American frontier history. Thirty bullets were exchanged in thirty seconds, killing three men and wounding three others. The fight sprang forth from a tense, hot summer. Cattle rustlers had been terrorizing the back country of Mexico and selling the livestock they stole to corrupt ranchers. The Mexican government built forts along the border to try to thwart American outlaws, while Arizona citizens became increasingly agitated. Rustlers, who became known as the cow-boys, began to kill each other as well as innocent citizens. That October, tensions boiled over with Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne confronting the Tombstone marshal, Virgil Earp, and the suddenly deputized Wyatt and Morgan Earp and shotgun-toting Doc Holliday. Bestselling author Tom Clavin peers behind decades of legend surrounding the story of Tombstone to reveal the true story of the drama and violence that made it famous. Tombstone also digs deep into the vendetta ride that followed the tragic gunfight, when Wyatt and Warren Earp and Holliday went vigilante to track down the likes of Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius, and other cowboys who had cowardly gunned down his brothers. That "vendetta ride" would make the myth of Wyatt Earp complete and punctuate the struggle for power in the American frontier's last boom town.

The gunfight at the OK Corral occupies a unique place in American history. Although the event itself lasted less than a minute, it became the basis for countless stories about the Wild West. At the time of the gunfight, however, Wyatt Earp was not universally acclaimed as a hero. Among the people who knew him best in Tombstone, Arizona, many considered him a renegade and murderer. This book tells the nearly unknown story of the prosecution of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holiday following the famous gunfight. To the prosecutors, the Earps and Holiday were wanton killers. According to the defense, the Earps were steadfast heroes—willing to risk their lives on the mean streets of Tombstone for the sake of order. The case against the Earps, with its dueling narratives of brutality and justification, played out themes of betrayal, revenge, and even adultery. Attorney Thomas Fitch, one of the era’s finest advocates, ultimately managed—against considerable odds—to save Earp from the gallows. But the case could easily have ended in a conviction, and Wyatt Earp would have been hanged or imprisoned, not celebrated as an American icon.

In the 1800s, Tombstone was a rowdy silver-mining camp and the scene of a famous gunfight that enhanced its wicked reputation. When the rich silver mines were tapped out, Tombstone managed to survive and lived up to its motto, "The Town Too Tough to Die." The movie industry enhanced this wild reputation by portraying legendary gunfights at the O.K. Corral--which never actually took place at that location. For many years, the town has used its history to attract visitors by giving them a sense of life in the Old West. This volume includes many of the postcards tourists mailed home depicting romanticized and legendary views of Tombstone.

The true story of the American West on film, through its shooting stars and the directors who shot them... Howard Hughes explores the Western, running from John Ford's 'Stagecoach' to the revisionary 'Tombstone'. Writing with panache and fresh insight, he explores 27 key films, and draws on production notes, cast and crew biographies, and the films' box-office success, to reveal their place in western history. He shows how through reinvention and resurrection, this genre continually postpones the big adios and avoids ending up in Boot Hill...permanently. Major films covered include the best from genre giants John Ford, Howard Hawks and John Wayne, plus classics 'High Noon', 'Shane', 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'. 'Stagecoach to Tombstone' makes many more stops along the way, examining well-known blockbusters and lowly B-movie oaters alike. It examines comedy westerns, adventures 'south of the border', singing cowboys and the varied depiction of Native Americans on screen. Hughes also engagingly charts the genre's timely renovation by Sam Peckinpah ('Ride the High Country' and 'The Wild Bunch' ), Sergio Leone ('Once Upon a Time in the West') and Clint Eastwood ('The Outlaw Josey Wales' and 'Unforgiven'). Presented too are the best of western trivia, a filmography of essential films - and ten aficionados and critics, including Alex Cox, Christopher Frayling, Philip French and Ed Buscombe, give their verdict on the best in the west.

Focusing on two Arizona towns that had their origins in mining bonanzas—Tombstone and Jerome—historian Eric L. Clements offers a rare study dissecting the process of bust itself—the reasons and manners in which these towns declined as the mining booms ended. Tombstone was the site of one of the great silver bonanzas of the nineteenth century, a boom that started in the late 1870s and was over by 1890. Jerome’s copper deposits were mined for much longer, beginning in the 1880s and enduring until the 1930s. But when the mining booms ended, each town faced its decline in similar ways. The process of decline was more complex than superficial histories have indicated, and Clements discusses the role of labor unions in trying to stave off collapse, the changing demography of decline, the nature and expression of social tensions, the impact on institutions such as churches and schools, and the human responses to continued economic depression. But bust involved more than a steady decline into ghost-town status, Clements discovers: the towns' remaining residents employed numerous strategies to survive and reduce household expenses. In the end, both towns reinvented themselves as late-twentieth-century tourist attractions.