89 Fun Facts About Tombstone

Who plays Wyatt Earp in the 1993 film Tombstone?

Kurt Russell. With the shoot in chaos, he and producer James Jacks cut some 30 pages from the script to centre the story on Wyatt's friendship with Doc Holliday.

Which actor plays the tubercular, hard-drinking Doc Holliday in Tombstone?

Val Kilmer. The writer wanted Willem Dafoe for the part, but the distributor refused to release the film with him, so Doc went to Kilmer instead.

In Tombstone, who plays Virgil Earp, the brother who pins on the marshal's badge?

Sam Elliott. Virgil pays for the badge: he is ambushed and maimed, yet the closing narration says he went on to serve as a California sheriff with the use of only one arm.

In Tombstone, who plays Morgan Earp, the youngest of the three Earp brothers?

Bill Paxton. His Morgan is shot in the back and dies on a pool table, the killing that sends Wyatt after the Cowboys with a US marshal's badge.

In Tombstone, Michael Biehn plays which member of the Cowboys gang?

Johnny Ringo. Biehn's gunman calls Wyatt out for a final showdown, but Doc Holliday slips ahead in his friend's place and wins the duel.

In Tombstone, who plays the Cowboys' leader, "Curly Bill" Brocius?

Powers Boothe. His Curly Bill shoots Marshal Fred White dead in the street after a visit to an opium den, then walks free when the case is dismissed for lack of witnesses.

In Tombstone, which screen legend plays Henry Hooker, the rancher who shelters Wyatt's posse?

Charlton Heston. His scenes were shot by the film's original director before he was fired, among the few pieces of that first month's footage to survive into the finished cut.

Whose voice delivers Tombstone's opening and closing narration?

Robert Mitchum. He was cast as Old Man Clanton until a back injury forced him out; the character was cut from the script and Mitchum stayed on as the narrator.

In Tombstone, which actress plays Josephine Marcus, the traveling performer Wyatt falls for?

Dana Delany. The screenwriter had written Josephine for his girlfriend, Lisa Zane, but executives rejected her for the part and it went to Delany.

Which future Oscar winner plays Johnny Tyler, the card dealer Wyatt throws out of the Oriental in Tombstone?

Billy Bob Thornton. Three years before Sling Blade won him an Oscar, he played the armed bully whom an unarmed Wyatt slaps and marches out of the saloon.

Who wrote Tombstone's screenplay and was fired as its director a month into filming?

Kevin Jarre. The Glory screenwriter was shooting his first film in an old-fashioned John Ford style with very few close-ups, fell behind schedule, and was fired after four weeks.

Tombstone's star later said he ghost-directed the film, but who is its credited director?

George P. Cosmatos. The star says he found him by phoning Sylvester Stallone, whom Cosmatos had directed in Rambo: First Blood Part II.

Which card game does Wyatt deal at the Oriental saloon in Tombstone?

Faro. Wyatt takes a quarter share of the Oriental's game and deals it with Doc at his side; now all but forgotten, faro was once played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West.

In Tombstone, which county sheriff, played by Jon Tenney, throws in his lot with the Cowboys?

Johnny Behan. The real sheriff had been living with Josephine Marcus in Tombstone before she left him and took up with Wyatt.

Which composer wrote the nocturne a drunken Doc Holliday plays on the saloon piano in Tombstone?

Chopin. A heckling Cowboy mistakes the piece for Stephen Foster's 'Old Dog Tray', and Doc coolly corrects him by naming the composer, with a curse for a middle name.

Which director cast Tombstone's Doc Holliday as Batman after seeing the performance?

Joel Schumacher. He wanted Tombstone's Doc for Bruce Wayne while Michael Keaton still held the role, so when Keaton walked away in July 1994 the studio named its new Batman at once.

Which line of Doc Holliday's in Tombstone became the title of the actor's 2020 memoir?

I'm your huckleberry. Doc says it twice to the same gunman: first offering to fight him in the street, then when he turns up for the final duel in Wyatt's place.

Which critic missed Tombstone in its opening week, then called its Doc Holliday 'the definitive saloon cowboy of our time'?

Roger Ebert. He caught up only after dozens of readers wrote to him about the performance, and six months later he marked the rival Wyatt Earp down for failing the comparison.

Which Robin Williams comedy, already in its fifth weekend, outgrossed Tombstone's opening weekend?

Mrs. Doubtfire. Tombstone opened third, behind it and The Pelican Brief, with $6.5 million, then grew: its second weekend was 35% bigger than its first.

In Tombstone, Wyatt roars at the fleeing Ike Clanton that he is coming and what is 'coming with me'?

Hell. Wyatt has just shot Frank Stilwell at the train station, and he lets Ike run so that someone lives to carry the warning back to the rest of the Cowboys.

Which star passed on Tombstone to make his own Wyatt Earp film, released six months later?

Kevin Costner. With his agency backing the rival film, Tombstone's producers could not land a star big enough for any studio, and its writer called the move 'an attempt to crush my picture'.

Who directed Wyatt Earp, the rival film released six months after Tombstone?

Lawrence Kasdan. His three-hour epic cost more than twice as much as Tombstone and lost money, while the cheaper film took more than double its budget.

Who composed Tombstone's score, performed by the Sinfonia of London?

Bruce Broughton. He had scored the Western Silverado for the man who went on to direct the rival Wyatt Earp, yet that film hired James Newton Howard and Broughton landed on Tombstone.

On which holiday date did Tombstone open in wide release in the United States?

Christmas Day 1993. The opening slipped a week from 17 December because the troubled shoot left too little time to finish the film, and the studio did not screen it for critics.

Which Western filming location, where John Wayne made Rio Bravo, was one of Tombstone's two main sets?

Old Tucson Studios. Columbia built the town outside Tucson as a set for the 1940 film Arizona, Hollywood kept coming back to shoot Westerns there, and in 1960 it opened to the public as a theme park.

In Tombstone's final act, where does Doc Holliday spend his last days?

A Colorado sanatorium. Doc sends Wyatt away to find Josephine and live, then dies looking down at his bare feet with the words, 'This is funny.'

In Tombstone, what do members of the Cowboys gang wear to mark their allegiance?

A red sash. Wyatt vows to kill any man he sees wearing one, and Ike Clanton survives the vendetta only by renouncing his.

Tombstone opens with the Cowboys shooting up what event in a Mexican town?

A policeman's wedding. The massacre was not in the first director's film: his replacement added the sequence, in which a priest warns of the Four Horsemen before he is shot.

Tombstone's closing narration names which two Western movie stars among Wyatt's pallbearers?

William S. Hart and Tom Mix. Both silent-film cowboys had befriended the old lawman in his last years, and the narration ends on three words: 'Tom Mix wept.'

In Tombstone, the touring actor Fabian wins over the Cowboys with the 'band of brothers' speech from which Shakespeare play?

Henry V. Billy Zane's Fabian delivers the St Crispin's Day speech in doublet and tights, and the first man on his feet applauding is the Cowboys' own leader, Curly Bill.

Which future Lost star plays Tombstone's mayor and newspaper publisher?

Terry O'Quinn. His mayor begs Wyatt, then Virgil, to take the vacant marshal's job, and is told he is barking up the wrong tree.

Which Beverly Hills, 90210 star plays deputy Billy Breakenridge in Tombstone?

Jason Priestley. His deputy is starstruck by the touring actor Fabian, and when the Cowboys murder Fabian he walks out on his own sheriff, saying, 'We got to have some law.'

In Tombstone, Doc Holliday tells the gunman he has outdrawn, 'Poor soul, you were just too' what?

High-strung. The gunman had come to face Wyatt, but Doc went in his friend's place, and he admits afterwards that he 'wasn't quite as sick as I made out'.

Which studio released Tombstone in 1993 through its Hollywood Pictures label?

Disney. The star says a rival's pressure left it the only studio open to the film, and in 2025 Disney's own preservation team restored the Western in 4K.

By the usual account, Tombstone, Arizona, takes its name from what?

Ed Schieffelin's first mining claim. Warned that all he would find in Apache country was his own tombstone, he struck ore in 1877, gave the claim that name, and the camp that grew up beside it took it over.

Tombstone boomed after an 1877 strike of which metal in the hills of southern Arizona?

Silver. The prospector worked the hills alone, hiding from Apache war parties, and once his ore was proved a rush followed that put a town on an empty mesa within two years.

The shootout near the OK Corral began when Virgil Earp tried to enforce which Tombstone law?

A ban on carrying weapons. Visitors had to hand in their guns on arrival, as in Dodge City and Deadwood, so the West's most famous shootout began as an attempt at gun control.

Which Cowboy died alongside the two McLaury brothers in the gunfight at the OK Corral?

Billy Clanton. He kept shooting after he was hit, while his brother Ike, whose drunken threats had brought on the fight, ran from it unarmed.

The gunfight at the OK Corral actually took place in a narrow lot beside what kind of business?

A photography studio. The shooting broke out beside C. S. Fly's gallery on Fremont Street, behind the corral rather than in it, yet the corral's name is the one that stuck.

Roughly how long did the gunfight at the OK Corral last?

30 seconds. Around thirty shots were fired, and the aftermath ran far longer: the Earps and Holliday were charged with murder, and a judge took a month to rule the killings justified.

Why is Tombstone's old cemetery called Boothill?

Its dead 'died with their boots on': many of them by gunfire or the noose. After the town opened a new cemetery the old one fell into ruin, until townspeople re-marked the graves and restored it, and it became a top attraction.

Tombstone's most quoted Boothill epitaph says which man took 'four slugs from a .44'?

Lester Moore. The marker ends 'No Les, no more', and the story goes that he was a Wells Fargo agent shot by a customer furious over a mangled package.

Which Tombstone venue was famed as the wildest, wickedest night spot between New Orleans and San Francisco?

The Bird Cage Theatre. It served the miners as saloon, gambling hall and brothel as well as stage, so the town's respectable theatre-goers took their plays at Schieffelin Hall instead.

Before he turned to gambling, what was Doc Holliday of Tombstone fame trained to be?

A dentist. Diagnosed with tuberculosis soon after he set up practice, he went west hoping the dry climate would ease it and made his living at the card table instead of the chair.

Who founded The Tombstone Epitaph in 1880?

John Clum. The former Indian agent cranked out the first issue on a used hand press in a tent, and explained the morbid masthead by saying that every tombstone needs an epitaph.

As an Indian agent, the Tombstone Epitaph's founder captured and shackled which Apache leader?

Geronimo. The agent seized him at Ojo Caliente in 1877 and took him to the San Carlos reservation, but Geronimo broke out in 1881 and did not surrender for good until 1886.

Tombstone was the first seat of a county named for which Native American leader?

Cochise. For more than ten years he and his followers had eluded the army from strongholds in the Dragoon Mountains, the range that rises near Tombstone.

After a county-wide vote, Tombstone lost the county seat to which mining town?

Bisbee. Voters chose the copper town in 1929 and the move was complete by 1931, leaving Tombstone's courthouse empty until it reopened as a museum and the town turned to tourism.

What nickname does the town of Tombstone, Arizona, go by?

The Town Too Tough to Die. It lived up to the name early: fires gutted half its business district in June 1881 and the other half in May 1882, and each time the town rebuilt at once.

Tombstone's oldest festival, first held in 1929, is called what?

Helldorado Days. It began as the town's fiftieth-birthday party, and by the festival's own account the name comes from a miner's 1881 letter saying men who came for an Eldorado found a Helldorado washing dishes.

What ended Tombstone's mining boom in the mid-1880s?

The mines flooded and the pump house burned. Giant pumps were holding the water back until fire destroyed the Grand Central's works in 1886, and the owners judged them too costly to replace.

Johnny Ringo was found shot in the head in 1882; what do his biographers conclude it most likely was?

Suicide. People who knew him said Ringo had 'frequently threatened' it, and though legend and the 1993 film hand the killing to Doc Holliday, court records place Holliday in another state that week.

In Tombstone's saloon standoff, Doc Holliday and a rival gunman trade barbs in which language?

Latin. Doc opens with 'In vino veritas', the gunman answers in kind, and Doc tells Kate that the man is evidently educated: 'Now I really hate him.'

The real Wyatt Earp died at home in 1929, nearly half a century after the gunfight, in which city?

Los Angeles. He spent his last years in a rented bungalow there, friendly with the movie cowboys and trying, without success, to get his own story onto the screen.

According to Tombstone's closing narration, how did Wyatt's common-law wife Mattie die soon after leaving town?

A drug overdose. The film shows her sinking into laudanum, but 'shortly' bends the record: the real Mattie Blaylock lived six more years before her fatal overdose in an Arizona mining camp in 1888.

In Tombstone, who plays the young Cowboy who heckles Doc Holliday at the piano?

Thomas Haden Church. His heckler later sneers that the 'drunk piano player' must be seeing double, and Doc levels a second pistol at him: 'I have two guns, one for each of ya.'

The real Doc Holliday of Tombstone fame was born and raised in which Southern state?

Georgia. Holliday was born in Griffin in 1851 and grew up in Valdosta, where his father served as mayor, before he went west to Dallas in 1873 and turned to gambling.

What Guinness-recognised record does a Lady Banksia planted in Tombstone in 1885 hold?

World's largest rosebush. Homesick bride Mary Gee planted a rooted cutting her family had shipped from Scotland, and the white rose grew to shade the whole patio of a Tombstone boarding house.

Doc Holliday's Hungarian-born companion in Tombstone is remembered by which nickname?

Big Nose Kate. Born Mary Katherine Horony in Hungary, she outlived Doc by half a century, winning a place in the Arizona Pioneers' Home despite its citizens-only rule and dying there in 1940.

Which president's love of Tombstone's Doc Holliday pushed a leading critic to finally see the film?

Bill Clinton was reported to have loved the performance, and the critic, who had skipped the film for lack of a screening, caught up with it and recommended it.

Which action star's younger brother, Frank, appears in Tombstone as a character named Ed Bailey?

Sylvester Stallone's brother Frank is better known as a musician: he wrote and performed Far from Over for the 1983 film Staying Alive, which his older brother directed.

What did nearly every actor in Tombstone grow for real, the county sheriff's being the only fake?

A mustache was grown by every actor but Jon Tenney, who had to stay clean-shaven for his previous project and so wore the production's one false whisker.

Morgan Earp, whose murder drives Wyatt's revenge in Tombstone, was shot while playing which game?

Billiards was his last game: gunmen fired at night through the glass of a parlor door, and the dying Morgan was laid on the floor nearby.

Years after Tombstone, Wyatt Earp was accused of fixing the result while refereeing what contest?

A boxing match billed as an 1896 heavyweight title fight made him notorious: he ended it on a disputed foul, and police took a large pistol off him in the ring.

In 1880s Tombstone, calling a cattleman a 'cowboy' was an insult because the word meant what?

An outlaw, usually a cattle rustler, is what the word meant there; one resident's diary equated it with desperado, bandit and horse thief.

Which actor, later Avatar's villainous Colonel Quaritch, plays Ike Clanton in Tombstone?

Stephen Lang spent 1993 in the nineteenth century twice over, also playing the Confederate general George Pickett in Gettysburg.

Tombstone's great fire of June 1881 began when a lit cigar ignited a barrel of what?

Whiskey in the Arcade Saloon fed a blaze that destroyed 66 businesses, the eastern half of the business district, and a worse fire followed within a year.

Which actor played Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp, the rival epic released six months after Tombstone?

Dennis Quaid's film cost more than twice as much as Tombstone yet earned less, grossing $56 million against its rival's $73 million.

Wyatt Earp of Tombstone fame lies beside Josephine in what kind of burial ground in California?

A Jewish cemetery holds his ashes because Josephine, who was Jewish, buried them in secret in her family's plot; the grave became the most visited there.

Which future Titanic villain plays Mr. Fabian, the touring stage actor in Tombstone?

Billy Zane went on to play the snobbish millionaire Caledon Hockley in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, sharing a Screen Actors Guild nomination with its cast.

Which future Guardians of the Galaxy star plays the reformed Cowboy Sherman McMasters in Tombstone?

Michael Rooker first drew notice in the title role of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, long before he played Yondu for Marvel and Merle Dixon on The Walking Dead.

In Tombstone, Curly Bill has just left what kind of establishment when he shoots Marshal Fred White?

An opium den is where the film puts him before he starts firing wildly in the street; the lawman who tries to disarm him is killed, and Wyatt makes the arrest.

Which Kansas cattle town's police force did Wyatt Earp quit in 1879 before heading to Tombstone?

Dodge City was settling down by then, and Wyatt Earp later wrote that it had lost the snap that charmed reckless men, so he resigned and chased the newest boom.

Which express company paid Wyatt Earp to guard its strongboxes when he first reached Tombstone?

Wells Fargo took him on in 1880 after his own business ventures earned little, and when he became a deputy sheriff the job passed to his brother Morgan.

Long before Tombstone, which star played Doc Holliday opposite Burt Lancaster in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral?

Kirk Douglas's 1957 hit made the shootout's name famous, though the real fight broke out in a vacant lot down the street from the corral.

Virgil Earp gave Doc Holliday which weapon to hide under his overcoat on the way to the O.K. Corral?

A shotgun stayed out of sight beneath Holliday's long coat on the way there, and Virgil, Wyatt and other witnesses later testified that he was carrying it.

Passed over by the Oscars, Tombstone's Doc Holliday earned two nominations at which other ceremony?

MTV Movie Awards voters put the performance up for Best Male Performance and Most Desirable Male, and it lost to Tom Hanks and William Baldwin.

Which Kansas lawman, later a New York newspaper columnist, joined Wyatt Earp in Tombstone in 1881?

Bat Masterson stayed only two months before an urgent telegram called him back to Kansas, and by his death in 1921 he was known nationwide as a leading sports writer.

In Tombstone, which Cowboy does Wyatt kill at the train station while letting Ike Clanton live?

Frank Stilwell died much the same way in life: the real Wyatt Earp and his men chased him down in a rail yard while seeing the wounded Virgil onto a California-bound train.

In Tombstone, where are Wyatt and his posse ambushed in the fight that ends with Curly Bill's death?

Beside a creek, Wyatt wades into the water through heavy fire without taking a scratch and shoots the Cowboys' leader, a fight the real lawman placed at Iron Springs.

Tombstone's screenwriter had earlier written which film about the 54th Massachusetts Regiment?

Glory earned its writer Golden Globe and Writers Guild nominations, and he slipped into the 1989 film himself in a bit part as a quarrelsome soldier.

Tombstone's credited director had earlier made which 1985 action sequel, a huge box-office hit?

Rambo: First Blood Part II also began as a story treatment by Tombstone's writer, so the Western's fired director and his replacement had both worked on it.

Long before Tombstone, which director cast Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine?

John Ford said that as a prop boy on silent-film sets he had met the aged Wyatt Earp, who told him how the famous gunfight had unfolded.

Chasing a gold rush years after Tombstone, Wyatt Earp ran the Dexter Saloon in which Alaskan town?

Nome was two blocks wide and five miles long when the Earps arrived in 1899, and the bar he opened there with a partner made them a small fortune.

Tombstone's deathbed scene echoes the legend that a dying Doc Holliday was amused to see what?

His bare feet struck him as a joke, the story goes, because a gunfighter of his reputation had always expected a violent end; he was 36.

The ambush on Virgil Earp shown in Tombstone cost the real lawman the use of what?

His left arm lost several inches of shattered bone to the surgeon, yet a railroad later hired the one-armed Virgil to guard its tracks in California.

Which long-barreled revolver of Wyatt Earp legend does the hero carry in the film Tombstone?

The Buntline Special of legend may never have existed: the tale of a dime novelist presenting 12-inch Colts to lawmen first appears in a 1931 biography.

Which veteran of The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon plays Marshal Fred White in Tombstone?

Harry Carey Jr. made more than 90 films, and a year later he returned to the legend in the TV movie Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone.

Which Gunsmoke regular rides with Wyatt's posse in Tombstone as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson?

Buck Taylor spent eight years as the gunsmith-turned-deputy Newly O'Brien, and in 1981 he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame.