Goofs

When Wyatt is playing poker, Chihuahua puts her leg up on a chair showing her dark stockings. A few minutes later, when Wyatt catches her signaling the gambler, he pulls her outside and pushes her in a horse-trough and she's no longer wearing stockings.

At the beginning of the film when Wyatt Earp is preparing for a shave, the lather is yet to be applied by the barber. A second after the gunshot strikes the mirror, Earp's entire chin is lathered, even though the barber is still preparing to apply it.

When Clementine looks around Doc's room, Wyatt admires a picture of her, which in medium-long shot is clearly a full-length photograph of a woman. When the camera shows a close-up of the photograph, it is a head and torso shot of a woman.

Before Doc begins to operate on Chihuahua, without anesthesia, a cloth is placed in her mouth and she's told to "bite real hard." A moment later, when the scene has cut to a longer shot, and Doc has started, we hear Chihuahua cry out "Oh ma!" She couldn't have spoken with the cloth in her mouth.

At least twice, gunshots start lantern-fuel fires in dry, close-spaced wooden buildings in a hot dry desert climate; the fires flare right up as expected. No one can react because of the gunfights, but there are no further mentions of fires, and all of the buildings remain standing and unscathed.

The movie shows James Earp killed (murdered) with his marker showing "born 1864 died 1882". However, James Earp was in fact born in 1841 and died in 1926 of natural causes. It was Morgan Earp who was murdered on 18 March 1882.

Doc Holliday did not die at the O.K. Corral. He died six years later from tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs Colorado.

Wyatt Earp was never the town Marshal of Tombstone. Virgil Earp was.

The film shows Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and John "Doc" Holliday (Victor Mature) meeting for the first time in Tombstone, AZ. In reality, Earp and Holliday were good friends by the time they came together in Tombstone, as they had met years earlier at Fort Griffin, TX.

In the film, "Old Man" Clanton (Walter Brennan) is shot and killed after the gunfight. In actuality, "Old Man" Clanton died in August 1881 - before the gunfight - and was not a principal in the gunfight itself or in the events immediately prior to the gunfight.

When "Indian Charlie" is shooting up the saloon, the original town marshal quits his job and surrenders his badge to the town mayor. Seconds later, Wyatt Earp approaches them to complain about his shave being interrupted. Wyatt turns to the now-badgeless ex-marshal, whom he had never seen before, and says "You're the marshal, ain't you?" One might think that Wyatt would have no way of knowing the ex-marshal, but he was just feet away from the marshal when he turned in his badge.

During the shootout, which supposedly occurs at sun up, the men's shadows are shorter than the men themselves, indicating the scene was shot much closer to noon.

The marshal's salary offered to Wyatt of $250/mo then is the equivalent of over $7k/mo today. the average marshal monthly salary in the 1880's was around $50 though generally came with room and board.

John Ford filmed this picture , as he did so many of his films, in Monument Valley. So there are all of these familiar mesas, buttes, and pillars throughout this film. BUT the problem is the setting: Tombstone. Tombstone is in the south of Arizona while Monument is on the northern border of Arizona: the two polar opposites of the state.

John Ford filmed this picture, as he did so many of his films, in Monument Valley. So, there are all of these familiar mesas, buttes, and pillars throughout this film. BUT also throughout the film are saguaro. The problem being is that the Saguaro only grows in the Sonoran Desert, which is in Southwestern Arizona and Northern Mexico, NOT northern Arizona: the two opposite ends of the state.

Doc Holliday was supposed to be a surgeon in the movie. In fact, he was a dentist. On March 1, 1872, the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in Philadelphia, conferred the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery upon twenty-six men, one of whom was John Henry Holliday.