It was his first post-war film after They Were Expendable.
Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Ward Bond (the other brother), Alan Mowbray (the actor), John Ireland, Roy Roberts, Jane Darwell.
Music Cyril Mockridge, cinematography Joe MacDonald, editor Dorothy Spencer.
I love that although just the structure of the church tower has been built, they hang a bell in it immediately (and hold a dance). And that people keep thinking they can smell desert flowers ("No, it's me"). And after Mature's fired off his last shot and collapses, Dorothy holds on to a shot of his white handkerchief on the fence. That feeling that civilization is coming to the place - "I'm sure there's nice folks living round here - we just haven't met any of them yet". As you can bet it's a big tourist attraction now, population 1500.
With Ford, you get the feeling of a real West, populated by real people, doing real things.
"I knew Wyatt Earp. In the very early silent days, a couple of times a year, he would come up to visit pals, cowboys he knew in Tombstone; a lot of them were in my company. I think I was an assistant prop boy then and I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee, and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral. So in My Darling Clementine, we did it exactly the way it had been. They didn't just walk up the street and start banging away at each other; it was a clever military manoeuvre."
'John Ford'. Peter Bogdanovich 1967.
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