Leading Men 2: Further Thoughts on Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, and Gregory Peck

Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957.

Kirk and Burt in Tough Guys, their final film together, 1986.

Kirk Douglas consoles Robert Mitchum about the missing end of his tie in 1947's Out Of the Past.

Three big stars, one lousy movie. Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark in The Way West, 1967.

Robert Mitchum sings to Loretta Young as William Holden sulks in the background. Rachel and the Stranger, 1948. Having Robert Mitchum play a charming stranger must have seemed like typecasting even then.

Robert Mitchum shows off his physique as Gregory Peck looks unimpressed in 1962's Cape Fear.

Earlier this year, I wrote an essay about five of my favorite actors from the 1940’s and 1950’s, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, and Gregory Peck. As I said in my previous essay, I’ve always grouped these five actors together, as they were all of the same generation and were some of the most successful actors of that generation. In this sequel to that essay, I’ll discuss the movies those five actors made with each other. 

Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster are the two actors of the five who are most closely linked, as they starred in five movies together, I Walk Alone, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Devil’s Disciple, Seven Days in May, and Tough Guys. They also both appeared in Victory at Entebbe, a made for TV movie in which they don’t have any scenes together, and they also both had cameo parts in The List of Adrian Messenger, but didn’t appear together. Douglas and Lancaster had lots of chemistry together on screen, and they obviously enjoyed working together. I’ve previously reviewed The Devil’s Disciple, Seven Days in May, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on this blog. I would recommend Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Seven Days in May as their best films together. If you want to see Burt and Kirk as buddies, watch Gunfight. If you want to see them as rivals, watch Seven Days in May. I Walk Alone isn’t a very successful movie. It’s a film noir that captures both actors very early on in their careers. Lancaster plays an ex-con, who is suspicious of everyone, including his former partner in crime Douglas. Lancaster overreacts to everything that happens. If Douglas offers him a cup of coffee, Lancaster’s character is liable to jump up and say, “What’s the big idea? You think I like coffee? I don’t!” It gets annoying to watch. Douglas is excellent as a slimy gangster/nightclub owner. Tough Guys was written especially for Kirk and Burt, and the script is a knowing parody of their screen personas. It’s a little bit silly, as it was made in 1986, and it tries a little too hard to show that these old guys are still tough. But it’s nice that they got to make one final picture with each other as a capstone to their careers together. 

While Douglas and Lancaster may not have been best friends in real life, they had a respect for each other that lasted even longer than the nearly 40 years in between their first movie and their last. Douglas said of his relationship with Lancaster, “Some people think we’re the closest buddies. We’re not, though I think we have a wonderful friendship. Sometimes I don’t see Burt for a year or two, but he’s there if I need him and I’m here if he needs me. We have a respect for each other that we don’t voice.” (Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster, by Gary Fishgall, p.368) At a tribute to Douglas in 1987, Lancaster teased his friend, saying, “Kirk would be the first person to tell you he’s a difficult man. And I would be the second.” (The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas, p.247) 

Both Douglas and Lancaster came from backgrounds of extreme poverty, Lancaster growing up in East Harlem, and Douglas in upstate New York. They both made their film debuts in 1946, and became some of the first actors to start their own independent film production companies. Both men had a reputation for voicing their strong opinions on film sets, and I have no doubt that there were some heated discussions on the five film sets they shared.

Tony Curtis acted in highly successful films opposite both men, as he made The Vikings and Spartacus with Kirk Douglas, and Trapeze and Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster. Curtis had this to say about the difference in their personalities: “On the floor, in the work, Kirk was a killer, much more than Burt. He would take no prisoners. If it {the camera shot} was over Kirk’s shoulder on me, by the time the shot was over, it was over my shoulder on Kirk.” (Burt Lancaster: An American Life, by Kate Buford, p.165) 

Kirk Douglas made two movies twenty years apart with Robert Mitchum. Their first movie together was the excellent film noir Out of the Past, from 1947. In his autobiography, Douglas wrote about Mitchum, “I don’t remember much about him, except that his stories about being a hobo kept changing every time he told them.” (Douglas, p.123) Both young actors were eager to upstage the other. During one scene, Douglas flipped a coin as he talked. Mitchum’s eyes focused on the coin, just as the audience would. Douglas then had to find some other way to steal attention from Mitchum. Both Mitchum and Douglas gave great performances in Out Of the Past. Their second movie together, The Way West, from 1967, was a turgid story about the Oregon Trail. It was adapted from a novel by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950. On the screen, it’s a dull attempt at an epic, despite also starring another big male star from the post-war era, Richard Widmark. The movie also features Sally Field in one of her first roles. The Way West draws on the differences in screen personas between the sleepy and relaxed Mitchum and the tense and electric Douglas. Mitchum appears to literally sleepwalk through his part, while Douglas chews all the scenery he can. 

Robert Mitchum starred in movies with Douglas, Peck, and Holden. Mitchum’s one movie with William Holden, Rachel and the Stranger, was a Western made in 1948, as Mitchum was enjoying his first flush of fame and Holden was trying to recapture the forward momentum of his career. 1948 was also the year that Mitchum was busted for marijuana possession, and eventually he served a little more than a month in jail. The unperturbed Mitchum quipped that jail was “Like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff.” Mitchum had the better part in Rachel and the Stranger, as he plays a friend of Holden’s who stays with him and his wife, played by Loretta Young. Mitchum gets to be mysterious and flirty, two things he did very well, while Holden gets to be boring and upstanding. Loretta Young thought that Holden was nervous at competing with Mitchum, and he probably was. At the time, Mitchum’s career was doing very well, while Holden’s was in the same holding pattern he had been stuck in for years. It no doubt irked Holden to be working with a more successful young male actor. But the funniest story from the making of Rachel and the Stranger is about Loretta Young’s on-set habits. Young was a notorious prude, very religious and very upstanding, even though she had secretly had an out of wedlock daughter with Clark Gable in the 1930’s. (Young’s cover story was that she had “adopted” the girl.) Young had a “swear jar” on the set of all of her movies. Every time someone on the crew swore, they would put in a nickel for “hell,” a dime for “damn,” and so on. This drove Robert Mitchum nuts, and one day, feeling extremely frustrated, he put a large bill in the jar and let forth with a torrent of profanity. I can only imagine the look on Loretta Young’s face. 

Mitchum’s film with Gregory Peck, Cape Fear, from 1962, offered Mitchum a fantastic part as the criminal who blames lawyer Peck for his going to jail. When Mitchum gets out of jail, he systematically taunts and harasses Peck’s family. It’s one of Mitchum’s best roles, and he oozes menace. Mitchum’s sexy but intimidating physical presence was used very well. Peck is also superb in his role, as he finds himself having to stoop to Mitchum’s level to stop the threat to his family. Peck and Mitchum got along well during filming, even though during the climactic fight scene Peck accidentally hit Mitchum in the jaw. Mitchum said he was sore for three days afterwards. Peck and Mitchum also appeared in cameo roles in Martin Scorsese’s vastly inferior 1991 remake of Cape Fear, which replaces the unseen malevolence of the original with over the top ultraviolence. 

Unfortunately, Burt Lancaster and William Holden never worked together in a movie. I think it would have been great fun to see these two superbly athletic actors in the same film. But they did think highly of each other. They were both nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in 1953, Lancaster for From Here to Eternity, and Holden for Stalag 17. Holden won the Oscar. Holden said to journalist Bob Thomas, “I really thought Burt would win…I honestly believed that Burt did the best acting of the year, and I told him so when I saw him.” (Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden, by Bob Thomas, p.94) Lancaster sent Holden a telegram after Holden won that read: “Never had a doubt about the outcome for a moment.” (Fishgall, p.125)

Deborah Kerr starred in films with all five actors. I don’t know if she’s the only actor or actress to appear with all five, but she’s certainly the most famous. She must have gotten along well with some of them, as she worked with Lancaster three times, and starred opposite Mitchum four times.

Here’s my “best of” list for these five actors:

Aged the best: Gregory Peck. His hair turned gray, but that's about the only way he aged.

Aged the worst: Robert Mitchum. Mitchum actually aged really well until about 60 or 65, but then all of a sudden he just looked super old.

Best album: Robert Mitchum, “Calypso Is Like So,” 1957. It’s just as amazing as you would think a Robert Mitchum calypso album would be.  

Runner-up: “William Holden Presents a Musical Touch of Far Away Places,” 1959. Holden doesn’t sing or play any instruments; he just “presented” the music and wrote the liner notes.

Best single: Robert Mitchum, “The Ballad of Thunder Road,” 1958. Mitchum starred in, produced, and co-wrote the screenplay for the classic 1958 movie Thunder Road. He also co-wrote the theme song for it, which he sings in his wonderful deep voice.

Most intense: Kirk Douglas

Most laid-back: Robert Mitchum

Best hair: Burt Lancaster, in The Crimson Pirate.

Best chin: Kirk Douglas. I’ve read somewhere that early in his career a studio wanted Douglas to have his signature dimpled chin filled in. It’s probably the same studio who complained about Gregory Peck’s ears being different sizes. 

Most literate: Kirk Douglas, who has written several autobiographies and novels. He’s the only one of the 5 actors to write a book.

Most underappreciated: Robert Mitchum, with a total of 0 Best Actor Oscar nominations. (He was nominated once for Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe in 1945.)

Most traveled: William Holden, who supposedly accepted some movies just to travel to new countries. That’s really the only reasonable explanation for him making The World of Suzie Wong. Entranced by Africa, Holden started a wildlife preserve in Kenya.

Least Picky: Robert Mitchum, whose IMDB filmography lists 135 credits. Even not counting his bit appearances early in his career, he made the most movies by far.

Most Picky: Gregory Peck, who has “only” 58 credits on IMDB. In looking at Peck’s filmography I was really surprised at how few movies he made after 1970. For the record, Holden has 77 credits, Lancaster 89, and Douglas has 92.

Favorite Kirk Douglas performance: As Vincent Van Gogh in Lust For Life.

Favorite William Holden performance: Tie between Sunset Boulevard and Picnic.

Favorite Burt Lancaster performance: Elmer Gantry.

Favorite Robert Mitchum performance: As the charming/creepy preacher in The Night of the Hunter.

Favorite Gregory Peck performance: It’s obvious, but he was perfect in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Book Review: The Ragman's Son by Kirk Douglas (1988)

Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life, 1956.

Kirk with his son Michael on the set of Cast a Giant Shadow, 1965.

Kirk Douglas promoting The Ragman's Son, 1988.

Kirk Douglas has had a remarkable life. Now 97 years old, he has been one of Hollywood’s most durable stars throughout more than 60 years of making movies. Douglas was born into abject poverty in New York to illiterate Russian Jewish immigrant parents. He has survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and a severe stroke in 1996. Douglas has written ten books, the first of which was an autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, which was published in 1988. 

The Ragman’s Son is an excellent book, and it’s remarkable for a Hollywood memoir because of Douglas’s candor. Douglas is not afraid of telling stories that paint him in a less than flattering light. It’s a very honest book, which makes it a good autobiography. Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, New York, was the only boy among six sisters. Douglas’s father was an alcoholic junk collector, or ragman, who largely ignored his familial obligations. Douglas always sought his father’s approval, and he never got it. It’s clear that Douglas’s difficult relationship with his father had a great effect on other relationships in Douglas’s life, as Douglas continually sought approval from other male authority figures. 

Knowing he wanted to be an actor from a very early age, Douglas did everything he could to get away from home and escape a life of mediocrity in Amsterdam. Through hard work and lucky breaks, Douglas attended college, where he was elected president of the student body, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After appearing in several productions on Broadway, Douglas was offered a movie role and took it. Within just a few years, he was one of the most promising young actors in Hollywood. 

The style of The Ragman’s Son is almost stream of consciousness, as Douglas sometimes jumps from subject to subject. Douglas’s writing voice is as distinctive as his famous speaking voice. Douglas sometimes writes little scenes where Issur, the poor, insecure Jewish kid from Amsterdam talks to movie star Kirk Douglas, who is seemingly brimming with confidence. While that may sound somewhat cheesy, those scenes let us know that Issur is still inside of Kirk Douglas, acting as his conscience and keeping him grounded. 

Despite all of Douglas’s success, it’s clear that happiness was elusive for him. He’s a restless man, always eager for a new challenge. Douglas’s love life gets a lot of ink in the book, and it’s obvious that he was very successful with the ladies. One of the more interesting anecdotes in the book takes place when Douglas is just out of high school. He has trouble finding work at resorts in upstate New York because he’s Jewish. So at one resort he introduces himself as “Don Dempsey,” passing himself off as a WASP, and gets the job. The woman who ran the resort was extremely anti-Semitic, and in a scene worthy of a Philip Roth novel, she comes on to him at the end of the summer, and as Douglas has sex with her he says in her ear, “I am a Jew. You are being fucked by a Jew!” (p.37) 

Douglas pulls no punches about his infidelities during his first marriage to Diana Dill, the mother of Kirk’s sons Michael and Joel. Douglas writes with great feeling about his second marriage, to Anne Buydens, a Belgian woman who worked as his assistant while he was in France making Act of Love. They fell in love, and in May 2014 celebrated their 60^th wedding anniversary. Douglas had found a strong woman who was willing to be his partner in life.

For all of Douglas’s obvious ego, there is a humility and a deep humanity that comes through in The Ragman’s Son. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book is Douglas’s interaction with John Wayne after a screening of Lust for Life, in which Douglas played Vincent Van Gogh. Wayne said to Douglas, “Christ, Kirk! How can you play a part like that? There’s so goddamn few of us left. We got to play strong, tough characters. Not those weak queers.” Kirk responded by saying, “Hey, John, I’m an actor. I like to play interesting roles. It’s all make-believe, John. It isn’t real. You’re not really John Wayne, you know.” (p.243) I admire that Douglas was willing to defend the role he had played, and that he was smart enough to know that he’s different from his on-screen image. 

Kirk Douglas is a complex man, and The Ragman’s Son is a fascinating look at the life and mind of one of the greatest film actors of the last 60 years.

Movie Review: Two Weeks in Another Town starring Kirk Douglas (1962)

Movie poster for Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962. If only the movie was as cool as this poster.

Kirk Douglas and Cyd Charisse in Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962.

Irwin Shaw, author of the novel Two Weeks in Another Town.

Two Weeks in Another Town was the third movie to pair actor Kirk Douglas with director Vincente Minnelli and producer John Houseman. Unfortunately, it is also the worst of the three movies. Admittedly, the completion is steep, since the first two were The Bad and the Beautiful, and Lust for Life, both of which feature Oscar-nominated performances from Douglas. Two Weeks in Another Town, released in 1962, was based on Irwin Shaw’s 1960 novel of the same name. The novel is about a former actor who rejoins the movie world at the behest of a director for whom he did his best acting work. Shaw, a successful playwright, short-story writer, novelist, and screenwriter, knew a lot about Hollywood and those who inhabited it, so he was well-qualified to write such a book. I’m a big fan of Shaw’s writing, but Two Weeks in Another Town pales in comparison to his great works, like the novel The Young Lions, or his short stories. Too many years have passed since I read Two Weeks in Another Town for me to give it a full review, but some of the shortcomings of the novel also become shortcomings of the film. It’s a flawed book and also a flawed movie. 

Kirk Douglas plays the lead role of former actor Jack Andrus. In the book, Andrus has moved to France and stopped acting because of an accident that damaged his face. In the movie, Douglas has an inconsistent scar on the side of his face, but the reason he hasn’t acted in years is because of a nervous breakdown. He’s been playing shuffleboard at a mental hospital. Andrus gets a telegram from Maurice Kruger, played by Edward G. Robinson, asking him to come to Rome and take a small part in a film. Kruger is an alcoholic, skirt-chasing director for whom Andrus made several of his most famous movies. In a clever in-joke, when Kruger shows an old movie that he and Andrus made together, we see clips from The Bad and the Beautiful. So Andrus, against his better judgment, goes to Rome. When he gets to Rome, everyone is an asshole to him. And overacts terribly. From Kruger and his harpy of a wife to the moody leading man, played by a young George Hamilton, (before he got his tan) to Andrus’s ex-wife, crazily played by Cyd Charisse, everyone is out to get Jack Andrus. Andrus might not be the most likable guy, but you end up rooting for him just because everyone else is so nasty to him. Kirk Douglas does the best he can with the part, and he looks super handsome in his early 1960’s suits and tuxedo, but he can’t carry the picture all by himself. And while Douglas was no stranger to chewing the scenery, everyone else’s acting is so histrionic and over the top that they seem to be making a totally different movie than the one Douglas is acting in. 

Part of the problem with both the novel and the movie is that there’s no dramatic tension. Will Andrus be able to successfully oversee the dubbing of the dialogue to Kruger’s movie? We don’t really care, because the stakes feel so low. Andrus doesn’t care about getting back into the movie business, so we’re not really invested in whether Kruger’s movie comes in under budget or not. 

Thankfully, Irwin Shaw didn’t have anything to do with the writing of the screenplay, because there are some super klunky lines. My favorite might have been Edward G. Robinson saying to Kirk Douglas, “You and I made some good ones, yes, and a couple of great ones. Looked like there was a federal law prohibiting us from doing anything wrong.” Oof. Another winner is Robinson saying “All women are just pure monster.” Lots of subtlety there.

In his autobiography The Ragman’s Son, Kirk Douglas tells us part of the reason why Two Weeks didn’t work. As Two Weeks entered post-production, a new studio head took over MGM, Joseph Vogel. Vogel decided that MGM would only make family pictures. “He decided that the film would be edited differently-he was determined to make a family picture out of what we had shot….When I saw them emasculate the film, I wrote to Vogel, even though I was just an actor in it. I implored him, argued with him, told him that if he had wanted to make a family picture, he never should have made Two Weeks in Another Town.” (The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas, p.315) I don’t know if keeping the more explicit footage would have helped the movie, but it sure couldn’t have hurt. 

For me the best part of the movie was when it finally spilled over into full-blown camp at the climax of the movie, as Douglas and Cyd Charisse wail at the top of their lungs as Douglas drunkenly drives his convertible at high speeds.  Of course, it’s all done with rear projection shots, which just makes the whole scene even more ridiculous. 

If you’re a fan of ridiculous old movies about the making of old movies, then Two Weeks in Another Town might be just the movie for you. I’d advise everyone else to stay away.

Movie Review: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas (1957)

Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957.

A more animated publicity still from Gunfight. The expression on Kirk's face is great.

1957’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, was the second movie that Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas made together. The first was 1948’s I Walk Alone, a tough, gritty, film noir. I Walk Alone was an early film for both actors, as it was Douglas’s fourth movie, and Lancaster’s fifth. Neither was a major star. But by the time Gunfight was released in May, 1957, they were both at the peak of their stardom. 

Gunfight told the story of lawman Wyatt Earp and dentist/gunfighter Doc Holliday, two unlikely friends who joined forces at the O.K. Corral to face members of the Clanton gang in a deadly shootout. Of course, the film takes liberties with historical fact, but that’s to be expected. The point of the movie is not historical accuracy, but the relationship that develops between Earp and Holliday. Casting Lancaster and Douglas in the two lead roles ensured that the film would be a hit. Separately, Douglas and Lancaster had become two of the most successful actors to emerge after World War II, and together their scenes had a lot of chemistry. While their on-screen personas generally had some similarities, as they both tended towards extroverted, athletic, and showy roles, in Gunfight they play opposites. Lancaster as Earp is the by-the-book do-gooder, all stern business and seriousness. Lancaster was good at playing these kinds of parts, and he has an inner confidence as Earp that makes you understand why Holliday trusts him. Lancaster uses only about a tenth of his charisma to play Earp, and we don’t see much of his famous smile-which Lancaster called “the Grin.” Lancaster originally didn’t want to play the part of Wyatt Earp. But he still owed producer Hal Wallis two movies, and he did Gunfight on the condition that he could play the lead in Wallis’s production of The Rainmaker. Wallis had signed both Douglas and Lancaster when they were young actors. Douglas as Holliday gets the chance to sink his teeth into a great, flamboyant part-a drunken gambler who is dying of consumption and has an annoying prostitute girlfriend. Douglas is all flash and arrogance as Holliday, which suits the part perfectly. 

The script, written by Leon Uris, just before he hit it big as a novelist with Exodus, deliberately highlights the bromance between Earp and Holliday. Their relationship is much more well-defined than Earp’s romance with female gambler Laura Denbow, played by Rhonda Fleming. Despite playing the third wheel to Douglas and Lancaster, Fleming enjoyed working with Lancaster a great deal. She said, “He was like an old-world gentleman. He had a quality of class about him that I noticed immediately, because you don’t work with many men who have that quality.” (Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster, by Gary Fishgall, p.149) Douglas had a somewhat more difficult relationship with his leading lady, Jo Van Fleet, who played Kate, Doc Holliday’s prostitute girlfriend. According to Douglas, Van Fleet liked to be charged up before a scene, so she would ask Douglas to slap her before filming started. Douglas was incredulous, but warily complied. (The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas, p.245) 

It was on the set of Gunfight that Douglas and Lancaster became good friends. Lancaster said, “We were really with each other night and day. We would sit up until one or two o’clock in the morning in this little hotel in Tucson, Arizona, talking about our lives, our hopes, and our dreams. And Hal Wallis would always ask, ‘What do you guys find to talk about?’ The theory that we used to have is that we spent so much time together because neither of us wanted to talk to Hal Wallis.” (Fishgall, p.148) Douglas tells much the same story in his autobiography, writing: “After the day’s shooting in Tucson, and dinner at the hotel, we would just sit around and talk. Almost every night, we talked for hours. Sometimes it would one-thirty or two in the morning before we said, ‘Hey, we’d better get to bed. We’ve got to get up and shoot tomorrow.’” (Douglas, p.245-6) 

Both Douglas and Lancaster knew that the relationship between the two of them was the key to the movie.  Douglas wrote: “The success of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral really depended on the love between the two men, which has been the most important theme in many movies-starring Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Robert Redford and Paul Newman.” (Douglas, p.246) Lancaster told Douglas, “We’re in love with each other and we don’t know how to express ourselves that way-we just kind of look at each other and grunt and don’t say very much, but you know we love each other.” (Fishgall, p.148) 

Lancaster described his working relationship with Douglas, saying, “We have a lot of controversy and conflict when we work, because he’s very much like me. He’s conceited-he’s opinionated. He tries to tell me how to act. I try to tell him how to act. And it goes this way. And strangely enough out of this kind of feuding and fighting and fussing has come a great respect and mutual love that we’ve gained.” (Fishgall, p.148) Director John Sturges had his hands full with his two stars, who were not shy about making their own suggestions on the set. Sturges, most famous for The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, seems to have gotten along well with both actors, as he worked with both of them again, later directing Douglas in 1959’s excellent Last Train From Gun Hill, and Lancaster in 1965’s The Hallelujah Trail.

But it wasn’t all fighting on the set, as Kirk Douglas related this story from the set: “There was a very tense dramatic moment in the film: Burt, alone and without a gun, is facing a saloon full of tough cowboys. I come in, pull my gun, snatch a gun from one of the cowboys, toss it to Burt, and the two of us subdue the entire room. We go out on the porch and Burt says to me, ‘Thanks, Doc.’ I was supposed to say, ‘Forget it.’ When I came to ‘Forget it,’ the ridiculousness of the scene-our great bravery, our machismo-made us howl. We did the scene over and over. It just made us laugh harder. Finally, we were laughing so hard, they had to stop shooting for the day and send us home like bad boys.” (Douglas, p.247) 

Seven Days in May is a better overall movie than Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but if you want to see the on-screen chemistry between these two great actors, Gunfight is the film to watch.