After dying out in the late 70s, the Western enjoyed a comeback in the 90s with such Oscar-laden hits as Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves. One such Western of that era which has since become a firm favourite of film fans is Tombstone. Featuring a star-studded cast headed up by Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, the 1993 movie draws on the true stories of some legendary historical figures from America’s old west. Join us as we holster our guns and become hired fact-slingers for this underrated movie.
1. The lawmen, outlaws and events depicted in the film were real
Tombstone is based on historical events that took place in Tombstone, Arizona during the 1880s. This includes the legendary Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which was a 30-second shootout between lawmen and a group of outlaws. But this is not one of those films that rehashes history to be more explosive on the silver screen. In fact, the film is painstakingly faithful to the lives of its characters and the events that take place, and it’s all the better for it.
Many of Doc Holliday’s lines – such as the infinitely quotable “you’re a daisy if you do!” – are taken almost word-for-word from contemporary newspaper reports. Plus, Wyatt Earp really did wade into a creek in a barrage of gunfire, delivering justice to Curly Bill. Overall Tombstone isn’t quite as accurate as Kevin Costner‘s rival film Wyatt Earp (released after Tombstone in June 1994), but most fans and critics agree it’s a much better film.
2. Willem Dafoe was fired from the cast over the controversy surrounding his role in The Last Temptation of Christ
Early in Tombstone’s troubled production, Willem Dafoe had been set to star in the film as Doc Holliday. Unfortunately for the Platoon star, he was about to be swamped by an all-too-predictable controversy. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, based on the provocative novel of the same name, depicts a fictionalised version of Jesus’ life in which he imagines being tempted by sex and sin. In the film, Willem Dafoe plays Christ.
On the film’s release, some cinemas were shamed by Catholic protestors into dropping The Last Temptation of Christ, and the movie is still banned in Chile, the Philippines and Singapore. The studio behind Tombstone, Disney’s Buena Vista, were so shaken by the controversy that they dropped Dafoe from their cast, replacing him with Val Kilmer. In 1993, the actor would instead star in Body of Evidence, the widely panned erotic thriller and Madonna vehicle.
3. Kurt Russell secretly directed the film after the original director was fired on-set
Tombstone’s screenwriter Kevin Jarre made his debut as a director on the film, but was quickly overwhelmed by the day-to-day running of a film set. When the project quickly fell behind schedule, Jarre was fired to be replaced by George P. Cosmatos, a more seasoned director who had most recently worked with Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra.
However, in 2013, Kurt Russell told True Western magazine that he was the real director of Tombstone. Russell says he told Cosmatos, “‘I’m going to give you a shot list every night, and that’s what’s going to be.’ I’d go to George’s room, give him the shot list for the next day, that was the deal.” The actor says Stallone had made the same deal on his films with Cosmatos, and also swore he would never speak openly about this in the director’s lifetime (Cosmatos died in 2005).
4. Russell cut a number of his own scenes from the shooting script just to win the trust of his co-stars
In order to gain the trust and respect of the actors he wound up (unofficially) directing, Kurt Russell cut out 20 pages from the Tombstone script, including several of his own scenes. Russell recalls, “We needed to lose 20 pages… there’s only one way I’m going to get the trust of these actors and that is to cut myself out of this goddamn movie.” He opted to “make Wyatt an ‘aura’ character,” in the vein of the taciturn heroes portrayed by Clint Eastwood.
Russell’s co-star Val Kilmer later praised Russell’s selfless approach. “I watched Kurt sacrifice his own role and energy to devote himself as a storyteller,” Kilmer wrote in a 2017 blog post, as compiled by the Hollywood Reporter. “Kurt is solely responsible for Tombstone’s success, no question.”
5. Val Kilmer went method for his role as Doc Holliday
After reaching stardom with Top Gun, Val Kilmer was still establishing himself as an actor to be taken seriously. So when he was offered the role of Doc Holliday, the actor jumped at the chance to prove his mettle and endeavoured to make his performance as gambler-gunfighter-dentist Doc Holliday as realistic as possible. For one, Kilmer exhaustively practiced his quick-draw, becoming the best in the Tombstone cast at the esoteric skill.
Kilmer also chose to imbue Holliday with a Southern aristocrat’s drawl, and for good reason: Holliday was a cousin of Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell. It’s rumoured that Mitchell even modelled the character of Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable in the celebrated movie) on Holliday, which gave Kilmer good reason to use that distinctive voice.
6. All of the moustaches in the movie are absolutely genuine – except one
Tombstone actors Kurt Russell and (in particular) Sam Elliott have often boasted impressive facial hair throughout their careers, but the same wasn’t true for all their co-stars. However, to enhance period accuracy, all the Tombstone actors stepped up and grew real moustaches for the film – although according to Johnny Ringo actor Michael Biehn, at least one of the film’s moustaches was not genuine.
Biehn told Movieweb in 2010, “everyone was pretty proud that they grew their own moustache,” except one: “There was one guy, Jon Tenney. He didn’t get to grow his own moustache because he had a job right before that. They had to put a fake moustache on him. I think he always felt a little bit like the small dog of the group.”
7. Billy Bob Thornton improvised every single one of his lines
Billy Bob Thornton makes an early appearance as Johnny Tyler in Tombstone, but originally his character wasn’t originally given any dialogue. However, Thornton was instructed by the film’s ghost-director, George P Cosmatos, simply to “be a bully” when facing Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp. Subsequently, every word Thornton utters during his confrontation with Russell’s Wyatt Earp was improvised.
After this small role, Thornton rose to stardom in the late 90s via such films as Sling Blade, A Simple Plan and Armageddon. He also attracted tabloid interest from his short-lived marriage to Angelina Jolie.
8. Val Kilmer really can roll a coin across his knuckles
Seeing Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday rolling a coin across his knuckles is even more impressive when you consider that the actor was doing it for real, without any camera trickery to assist him. Whether or not the real Doc Holliday could perform this parlour trick is up for debate, but in the film it has clear function: to tell the audience that this isn’t Holliday’s first gambling rodeo.
Kilmer had already demonstrated his digital dexterity on film before Tombstone. We also see him walk two quarters across his knuckles in 1985’s Real Genius, and in Top Gun he did the same thing with a pen, as well as famously balancing a volleyball on his fingertip.
9. A love scene between Wyatt Earp and Josephine was cut
Like any good Hollywood film, Tombstone has a love story at its core. For Wyatt Earp, his affair with Josephine Marcus is his motivation for staying alive in a town he regards with apathy. Originally, the love story between Russell’s Earp and Dana Delaney’s Marcus was originally going to be a bigger part of the film. In fact, the two actors shot a sex scene which was ultimately cut from the movie.
Of all the characters in the film, Josephine is perhaps the most fictionalised; at one point we see her posing for a nude photograph, ‘Kaloma’, in Fly’s photographic studio. It’s now disputed that the woman in the photograph is even Josephine Earp. Furthermore, it’s likely that Josephine wasn’t even in Tombstone at the time of the Gunfight at the OK Corral – but what’s a western confrontation without beautiful women looking on?
10. Val Kilmer laid on a bed of ice to shoot his death scene
Doc Holliday is a tragic character, and Val Kilmer plays him as such. It’s heavily hinted at the outset that Holliday is dying of tuberculosis, a common affliction of the time, and he effectively saves Wyatt’s life by taking his place in the duel with Johnny Ringo. Sadly, tuberculosis waits for no man, and Holliday ultimately dies of his illness in the film. Despite swearing he’d die with his boots on – that is, in combat – Holliday instead dies in hospital.
To make his death scene all the more convincing, Val Kilmer requested that he lay on a bed of ice. Stuttering and shivering to simulate the onset of a gruesome death, Kilmer’s somewhat unusual request paid off as the scene proved so effective.
11. Everyone had to wear wool on-set for maximum accuracy
According to 2018’s The Making of Tombstone: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Modern Western, by John Farkis, initial director Kevin Jarre’s obsession with period accuracy sometimes went a little too far. This included forcing the actors to wear era-appropriate wool clothing, even in the sweltering Arizona heat. The actors, even method man Val Kilmer, complained this would not make a difference on camera.
Not only did the actors have to contend with the blazing Arizona heat, but at night they filmed under hot lights. Several crew members became so dehydrated they fainted on set – and they weren’t even the ones who had to wear wool, so we can only imagine how rough it got for the cast.