For those hording toilet paper

Just a brief snippet from a thought I had while watching Gunfight at the Ok Corral during Kirk Douglas' Summer Under the Stars tribute by Turner Classics (this ended the August calendar for the network, Douglas being the final actor slated with films in his honor). I left home after my son's birthday party with my family, playing board/card games while my ailing stepfather still recovers from hip surgery, watching Rio Bravo with my autistic son. It was fitting that Ok Corral was on, considering, much like Rio Bravo, it features a big shootout at the end where plenty of gunfighters wind up bullet fodder:

“Gunfight at the OK Corral” (1957) is one of my personal favorite westerns and it is so funny that even when you love a film such as this sometimes you are reminded of specific things that perhaps left your mind for a bit until you return again for a particular viewing. Of course, Burt and Kirk’s chemistry as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, respectively, is key to me for how much I love the film, I am also a big fan of director Sturges’ (although I readily admit that he has a whole host of films I haven’t watched yet, which is actually fine by me as I hope to eventually someday) westerns—though his best film, Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), isn’t a western, necessarily—so that factors into my overall enjoyment as well. As much as I groove to Charles’ Lang’s photographic work, the lighting of night scenes involving Lancaster, the bravura, well-orchestrated gunfights at the end in the bloated, but nonetheless gripping battle between the Earp and Clanton parties, Douglas’ scene-chewing as the wide-grinning (when not nearly coughing up a lung due to his character’s ever-worsening tuberculosis) Doc with a never-leaving complex to take cowboys’ poker money in saloons, bicker and kvetch in ongoing disputes in the love/hate relationship with Kate, draw that pistol with relative ease on anyone that pushes the wrong button or threatens Wyatt’s life, or gnash inside as adversary Johnny Ringo (Ireland, who is delish as this looking-for-a-fight asshole) challenges him, and Lancaster’s slight humor just surfacing enough to tell us Doc amuses his Wyatt with their back-and-forth banter when not dead-serious about making sure gun violence isn’t the norm in whatever town he happens to wear a tin star on his shirt; I often forget that Dennis Hopper has a special little part as young Billy Clanton, the tragic youth trying to prove a point to his big brother and family, even as he cops to Wyatt that he isn’t much of a gunfighter, or even wants to be, really. Hopper, the kid hoping to impress his peers, won’t chicken out or hide from the titular gunfight of the film. He will stay the course even as it will lead to his inevitable undoing, his demise most assured. And even when Wyatt begged Billy off, Doc had to step in and shoot the kid when it appeared there was no other alternative. Hopper’s scenes opposite Lancaster—of a kid realizing he’s not well suited for gunfighting or standing tall in a real shootout while the respected and knowledgeable lawman who has seen his share of bloodshed and coffins filled with dead men tries to convince him to avoid the same fate as them—really articulate unavoidable tragedy where no manner of wisdom shared, despite the well-meaning tone and intent offered, will detour a young man’s goal to seek approval and validation, even if the end result is a grave in Boot Hill Cemetery.