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 (film) battle." Richard L. Coe of "The Washington Post" deemed the film "just what its title suggests — blood-thirsty, empty-headed and good fun of its sort." "The Monthly Film Bulletin" called it "carefully and lavishly mounted, but it is ultimately overlong and overwrought. Leon Uris's script dulls the final scene of action by the introduction of too many minor climaxes, which never blend." The film was a big hit and earned $4.7 million on its first run and $6 million on re-release. Its Dimitri Tiomkin score, featuring the song "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", with lyrics by Ned Washington, sung by