Best movie ever!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I'm not a huge fan of the Western genre but there are a few Westerns that really enjoy - this film goes into the my liked Western films. It is highly fictionalized version of the events that lead up to the famous gun fight but really fun to watch.I have to say I enjoyed the entire cast which is one of the reasons why I like this film - it's not just the story and action on screen but the actors themselves that makes this particular film worth watching to me.Binnie Barnes as Jerry - she really tickled me, constantly trying to keep up her tough exterior but in the end we saw the softer side of Jerry. A character I really liked watching.Scott and Romero were good together. While Carradine, Chaney and Sawyer was made a great trio of "villains". You can't but to laugh as some of the things that happens - in particular when Doc Halliday (Romeo) gets Pringle (Chaney) to dance... lol.Anyway, this one worth checking out if you haven't seen it already. Fictionalized Fun.8.5/10

One of umpteen Hollywood films that exploited the well recognized names of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to attract an audience to a show that had little to do with their historic realities. We had to wait until the 1990s("Wyatt Earp", "Tombstone") to get a reasonably authentic telling of Wyatt and his association with Doc. Wyatt's widow reportedly bullied Fox into deleting Wyatt's name from the title. The planned title was the same as the fanciful biography it was based upon.This film was released in that magical year for Hollywood films: 1939. It's the year Fox released their big budget Technicolor western 'Jesse James", in addition to this low budget B&W, which nonetheless included a number of reasonably high profile actors. Young Nancy Kelly was the leading lady in both films. John Carradine played the chief villain in both. Randolph Scott played a major character in both films: the lead in this one. Cesar Romero was employed as a handsome Latino version of the historically blondish-headed Holliday, whose name was altered to Halliday, perhaps to diffuse any objections to the fictionalization of his period in Tombstone. Romero's speech gave no hint of Holliday's Georgia upbringing. However, he did occasionally exhibit his semi-namesake's frequent coughing fits from his TB. Holliday had guessed correctly that moving to an arid climate might extend his life, after his doctor predicted he would die within a year. Unlike portrayed in this film and the subsequent "My Darling Clementine", Holliday was trained as a dentist, not medical doctor. This fictionalization provided an opportunity for more dramatic heroics for the character: in this case, saving the life of a Mexican boy accidentally shot in an assassination attempt on Wyatt.Cast as the good-time saloon girlfriend of Doc's, Binnie Barnes(Jerry) livens up this otherwise rather somber tale, with her streetwise flamboyant personality. Her character has a historic basis in 'Big Nose' Kate: Holliday's longtime girlfriend in the West, and frequent prostitute and madam. Although she didn't look it, Binnie was twice the age of her 18 y.o 'good girl' competition: Nancy Kelly, who seems remarkably mature for her age. Nancy had long been a child actress in films and was now experiencing her peak in adult roles. She plays Doc's former girlfriend in the East: a nurse, who's been hunting all over the West for Doc, after he decided it was best for both if he left for unknown parts without saying goodbye. Doc wants her to leave, saying he's a completely different person(gambler and gunslinger) than the man she knew. But, Wyatt convinces her that Doc will change his mind and find her the only reason to keep on living. Well, Wyatt doesn't change Doc's mind. Instead, Doc unexpectedly gets on the stage for Tucson, which happens to include Wyatt, as shotgun, and is scheduled for a holdup by Ben Carter's gang(Ben owns the saloon where Binnie works). Doc is wounded, but Carter is killed in the ensuing gun battle. Back in town, Binnie and Nancy vie with each other to attend to Doc's wound(reminds me of the competition between 2 women to restore Jimmy Stewart, after shot up, in "Far Country".) Poor Binnie: all her plans to get rid of Wyatt, because he dumped her in that horse trough for being obnoxious, and because her boss wants him gone, have gone awry. First, she convinced her old flame, Doc, to come to Tombstone to do in Wyatt. Instead, they became buddies. Then, she talked up the stage holdup, with Wyatt aboard, hoping Wyatt would get shot. Instead, Doc got shot. The last insult is that Doc is shot dead in the street by 'Curley' Bill and the remainder of Carter's gang. She gets a small measure of revenge in shooting 'Curley' Bill during the subsequent gunplay between Wyatt and Carter's gang, before deciding Tombstone is getting too tame for her, hence warranting a relocation. Nancy unexpectedly decides to stay in Tombstone, with the very slim suggestion that Wyatt may be Doc's replacement in her life(grossly overplayed on the DVD jacket!)Eddie Foy Jr. is present in parts of the middle portion, recreating the type of stage entertainment his father was famous for, back in the days of the actual Wyatt and Doc. He gets shoved around in the competition between 2 saloons for his entertainment services, and decides Tombstone is too dangerous for him.When playing the hero, Scott didn't quite always follow the formula of ending up with the 'good' girl. For example, in "Abilene Town", clearly his tempestuous relationship with the flamboyant saloon entertainer(Anne Dvorak) was more important to him than his flirtation with the 'good' girl(Rhonda Fleming}. Among the most glaring departures from history are: the absence of Wyatt's 2 brothers or the Claytons, the nonexistent Ben Carter as the chief villain, the death of Doc from assassination, and the ridiculous version of the shootout near the OK Corral. 'Curley' Bill was a historic person, whom Wyatt eventually killed, blaming him for his brother's assassination. All in all, not a bad horse opera, centered more around Doc and his problems than Wyatt. In one scene, Doc is drunk in the saloon, sees himself in the big mirror, says "I hate you", and shoots at his image, shattering the mirror.

Hollywood made a bunch of bad historical films about the old west which just goes to prove that the public seemed to want to see this ridiculously romanticized version of cowboys and frontier justice. In particular, the studios made a ton of films about Jesse James and other bigger than life characters and villains from the west and almost none of these films were in any way accurate. The biggest problem is that the films took very minor characters and events and made them seem much more important than they really were. And, to spice things up, they used a lot of license with facts to make the films interesting. For example, Billy the Kid and Calamity Jane, to be quite blunt, were exceptionally ugly people--nothing like the pretty folks who portrayed then in films. But, ugly folks don't sell tickets--nor would a typical gunfight from this era--most of which involved one idiot shooting another in the back--not the heroic 'shootout in the town square' usually portrayed! Here in "Frontier Marshall", the film is about Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral--probably THE most bastardized event on the frontier--and an event that was portrayed at least 173418 times in movies! There are the famous versions like "My Darling Clementine" and "Gunfight at the OK Corral" and lesser-known ones like "Frontier Marshall"--and quite a few in between. While my 173418 is a total exaggeration, IMDb lists at least 50 times he was portrayed--about 49 times too many if you ask me. If you care, "Frontier Marshall" was apparently the first to portray him--so it can be blamed for this proliferation!! And to think...all this for a shootout that only lasted about 30 seconds (seriously)! And, the truth be told, Earp and Doc Holliday was NOT seen as heroes at that time but as villains. Although the jury acquitted them, the judge commented that Earp used poor judgment and excessive force during the altercation in which two of the three killed by him and his deputies were unarmed!!! Now THAT'S the sort of film I want to see! In this film, Earp is played by handsome Randolph Scott and Holliday (billed as 'Halliday' in this movie) is played by equally handsome Cesar Romero. As for Scott, he seemed to play Randolph Scott (which he was very adept at doing)--not Earp. In the film, Holliday is at least playing a doctor--a surgeon (he was actually a dentist but they needed him to be a surgeon in order to save the cute kid!) and drank because of a woman he lost (he actually most likely drank to cope with the symptoms of tuberculosis). But no matter--despite being about 80% wrong, the characters are quite entertaining and I am pretty sure the real life Earp AND Holliday would have loved this sort of heroic characterization.The film is competently made but occasionally a bit heavy-handed such as poor little Pablo being shot...and then saved by the Doc as well as the lady on main street shooting it out! Yep, you didn't know that the famed gunfight involved a gun-slinging woman--at least in this film. And, Holliday dies in the fight--at least in this film. And, there really is not gunfight at any corral in this movie either! If you can completely ignore the fact that it's all poo, it's watchable and not much more. The bad and anticlimactic ending sure didn't help with either.

Randolph Scott, as Wyatt Earp, rides into Tombstone thinking about starting a stagecoach line. But Indian Charlie, drunk, starts shooting up the local saloon. The local marshal (Ward Bond) is afraid to go in and roust Charlie, so Earp dons a badge, goes in and drags him out by the feet. Earp becomes the full-time marshal. He meets Doc Halliday (Caesar Romero), a tubercular physician, gambler, and gunman, and after an initial wary brush, the two become more or less friends. Romero has a local trashy girlfriend (Binnie Barnes) whom Scott has to dump in a water trough. Doc gets liquored up, pulls his gun at the bar, and Earp knocks him out to save his life. An old flame of Doc's (Nancy Kelly) shows up in town, having pursued Doc all across the West, but Doc dumps her unceremoniously because he loathes what he's become. He redeems himself, however, by saving a badly wounded patient, only to be killed by Curly Bill and his gang as he walks out of the saloon door. There follows a shootout at the OK Corral in which Scott makes mincemeat of the bad guys. Binnie Barnes leaves town on the stage, and Kelly stays behind, probably not unaware of the moon eyes Scott has been casting her way.Sound at all familiar? Seven years later it was remade as John Ford's "My Darling Clementine." It isn't a bad movie, better than the majority of Westerns being made at the time. Yet one can't help wondering what makes Allan Dwan's "Frontier Marshal" an above-average Western and Ford's "My Darling Clementine" a classic.Small things first. Dwan's movie is short on creativity in the wardrobe and makeup departments. Like most of the other principals, Scott dresses in an echt-1939 suit, only with a cowboy hat and gunbelt. The women's makeup dates badly, with dos out of the late 1930s and pencilled eyebrows and big lashes. It isn't that "Clementine" is extremely good in those respects -- it's just better. The photography and location shooting don't reach the bar set by "Clementine" either. The photography isn't bad at all but it hardly fits into a Western frame. Almost the entire movie is shot at night, with no more than a handful of daylight scenes. The location isn't Monument Valley but it is, after all, Movie Flats which has been used expressively before. Here, it's not really present in any utilitarian sense because you can't SEE it at night.Acting. Caesar Romero is probably as good as Victor Mature was in the later version. Binnie Barnes and Linda Darnell (in the same hooker role) are equally good, although they give us two quite different versions of what a hooker is like. Barnes is older, tougher looking, a bit treacherous. Darnell is younger, more Hispanic, tousle-haired, tempestuous, and childish. Scott is a competent actor, but Fonda is on the other hand outstanding. Throughout "Clementine" Fonda wears an expression that has something of puzzlement in it. When he whacks a guy over the head with the barrel of his pistol, he looks up from the unconscious body as if he's slightly surprised at what has happened and hasn't got a very clear idea of what's going to take place next. Above all, there is the difference in direction. Dwan was a forthright story teller, a pioneer in the movies, and he does a good job. But Ford goes beyond the story, almost into visual poetry. "Clementine" has not only the family, but two opposing families, which gives the characters added depth and more intense motives. "Clementine" also has the familiar Ford opposition between the wilderness and the garden, which in Dwan's film is given very short shrift indeed. There is nothing in "Frontier Marshal" like the scene in which Fonda escorts Cathy Downs to the half-built church and awkwardly dances with her. What a celebration of community. Dwan's story deals with individuals who have conflicting ideas of how to get ahead. A couple of people know one another but there is little sense of a "town" in Dwan's movie. I won't go on about Ford's touches of roughhouse humor except to mention that they add another element lacking in "Frontier Marshal." There's an intentionality behind these brief incidents. Instance Fonda's dance with his feet against the porch post, or Darnell throwing a pitcher of milk in Ward Bond's face after he whinnies at her. Still -- allright, so it's not a classic. But "Frontier Marshal" is better than most. And it's worth seeing for its historical value, a kind of lesson about how to make a good movie into a very good movie indeed.