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
Cochise County Cowboys when Virgil Earp attempted to disarm the cowboys before the Gunfight at the OK Corral. After the gunfight on October 26, 1881, in which three Cowboys died, the Earps and Holliday had to defend themselves against murder charges filed by Ike Clanton. The defendants cited the weapons ordinance during the preliminary hearing held by Justice Wells Spicer. In his ruling exonerating the lawmen of murder, Judge Spicer described Frank McLaury's insistence that he would not give up his weapons unless the marshal and his deputies also gave up their arms as a "proposition both monstrous and startling!" Virgil Earp had