What Is The First Movie to Feature The So-called Gunfight at The O.K. Corral?

 October 27, 2026

   When Stuart Lake finally caught up with Wyatt Earp in Los Angeles in August of 1928, he found a taciturn, old man, who seemed to answer every question with one of three replies: "Yep." "Nope." "Don't recall." And then after a couple interviews, Earp up and died (January of 1929). Perfect for a writer! Now he could have him say so much more. And, Boy Howdy, did Lake ever do that!

   The back story of Sadie trying to sell Hollywood on Wyatt's story is painful and pathetic. Bordering on clownish. But the aging soiled dove did score some points in the final making of the legend.

So When Did the Turn Begin?

   Stuart Lake is the one who turned the tide in 1931 with the publication of "Frontier Marshal" (it's a little ironic that Lake wanted "Frontier Gunfighter" as the title, but Sadie would not have it). Prior to this, Wyatt Earp was primarily known in the press as a "Gun Man" not as a lawman. And the O.K. Corral incident was more often than not described as the "Earp-Clanton feud," as in the Hatfield & McCoys embroglio. So Lake's prose and Sadie's restraint helped create the stalwart lawman we know today.

   Oh, and there was one other development that finally sealed the deal. In 1927 the first official gangster film, Underworld, depicted the rise and fall of a Chicago mobster and it did very good box office. 

   As Mark Cousins points out in his ten part series, The History of Cinema, in the first Westerns, the town—society—is just being born. In gangster movies, the town, the city, is dying. The world is dark. No one remembers the law being made. 

   In the early thirties, we get The Public Enemy, Little Caesar and Scarface. This was during the Prohibition era when urban crime landed in the public spotlight, and now the Earp story was finally ready for its close-up and with Law & Order the Wyatt Earp story finally landed. And, it had legs, as they say.

Law & Order, 1931

The first film to feature the so-called Gunfight at The O.K. Corral

“It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.”
—Old Vaquero Saying