The Gunfighter turned it down, despite having expressed a strong desire to play the part, because of his longstanding hatred for Columbia's president, Harry Cohn. Columbia sold the rights to Twentieth Century Fox, where the role went to Peck. Wayne's final film, "The Shootist" (1976), is often compared to "The Gunfighter" and contains numerous plot similarities. The script was loosely based on the purported exploits of an actual western gunfighter named Johnny Ringo, a distant cousin of the outlaw Younger family and a purported survivor of the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral against Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers. As in
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral the painting and other contents of the museum were sold at auction by John's Western Gallery of San Francisco. The estimated auction price for the painting had been $200,000 to $300,000; the final sale price on June 25, 2004 was $40,250. It was put up for auction again on June 14, 2014 with an estimated selling price of $40,000–$60,000 but failed to sell. Less than a month after the shootout it was described by a local newspaper as the "Gunfight at The O.K. Corral". William Breakenridge in his 1928 book "Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite" described it as "The