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
Family feuds in the United States least one ballad and play, as well as through music recorded by John Hartford. Feud descendant and author Brandon Ray Kirk has written a history of the feud titled "Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy", which draws primarily upon twenty years of research including oral histories with other feud descendants, newspaper accounts, and courthouse documents. The Earp vendetta ride arose as a result of coordinated attacks (in December 1881 and again in March 1882) against the Earp brothers. These ambushes were in retaliation for their involvement in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona. The noted gun-battle