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
Earp Vendetta Ride famous gunfight in the history of the American Wild West. The lawmen killed three of the Cowboys during the gunfight. Ike Clanton filed murder charges, and after a month-long preliminary hearing, Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer found that the lawmen had acted within their duty. But Spicer's finding did not end the matter for Clanton and other Cowboys. At about 11:30 pm on December 28, 1881, just over two months after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, three men ambushed Virgil Earp as he walked from Schieffelin Hall back to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where the Earps had moved for