Which actor played Wyatt Earp in John Ford's My Darling Clementine?

The actor who played Wyatt Earp in John Ford's My Darling Clementine was Henry Fonda. The 1946 Western dramatizes the events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with Fonda portraying Earp as a restrained, principled lawman.

The film also features Victor Mature as Doc Holliday, Linda Darnell as Chihuahua, Walter Brennan as the Clanton family patriarch, and Tim Holt as Virgil Earp. Ford's version is less a strict historical record than a carefully shaped Western legend, emphasizing atmosphere, moral choices, and the uneasy transition from frontier violence to civic order.

Several details differ from the historical record. The movie gives the gunfight a 1882 date, although it occurred in 1881, and rearranges the Earp family's ages and fates. It also omits or changes important figures from Wyatt Earp's real life. Much of the film was shot in Monument Valley, a landscape strongly associated with Ford's Westerns.

The title comes from the traditional song “Oh My Darling, Clementine,” which appears around the opening and closing credits. John Wayne is a frequent source of confusion because he starred in many other Ford Westerns, but not as Wyatt Earp here.