Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (film) Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (film) Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is a 1957 American western film starring Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday, loosely based on the actual event which took place on October 26, 1881. The picture was directed by John Sturges from a screenplay written by novelist Leon Uris. The shootout was portrayed in the movie as a protracted, heavily armed firefight that took place at medium range. The actual event began in a narrow wide empty lot between the Harwood house and C. S. Fly's 12-room boarding house and photography studio.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral escape, was the beginning of increasingly bad feelings between the Earp brothers and Cowboy factions. Wyatt Earp and Cochise County sheriff Johnny Behan were interested in the same sheriff's position and also may have shared an interest in the same woman, Josephine Marcus, known as Sadie. Citizens of Tombstone believed that Behan and Marcus were married, but Behan was a known womanizer and had sex with prostitutes and other women. In early 1881, Marcus ended the relationship after she came home and found Behan in bed with the wife of a friend and kicked him out, although she used the