James Garner as Wyatt Earp in Hour of the Gun (1967)
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James Garner as Wyatt Earp, taciturn Deputy U.S. Marshal
Arizona Territory to Mexico, Spring 1882
Film: Hour of the Gun
Release Date: November 1, 1967
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Gordon T. Dawson
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
A decade after he released Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, director John Sturges returned to the legendary gunfight at Tombstone, Arizona for his continuation of the story, Hour of the Gun. While Gunfight at the O.K. Corral fictionalized the events leading up to the titular confrontation, Hour of the Gun begins with the showdown followed by a slightly more fact-based retelling of the “vendetta ride” led by Wyatt Earp, who died 96 years ago today on January 13, 1929.
In October 1881, Virgil Earp was serving double duties as a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Tombstone city marshal as tensions against a group of cattle rustlers known as the “Cowboys” grew increasingly violent. Virgil deputized his younger brothers Wyatt and Morgan—both of whom had law enforcement experience—as temporary assistant city marshals, also recruiting the help of the tubercular gunman and erstwhile dentist John “Doc” Holliday in an attempt to disarm the Cowboys in the early afternoon of Wednesday, October 26th.
The thirty-second gunfight to follow has become the stuff of Western legend—and served as the opening sequence of Hour of the Gun. Only Wyatt was left unscathed in the battle, as Morgan, Virgil, and Holliday were all wounded, though the Cowboys fared far worse as Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury lay dead in the dirt, with only Billy Claiborne and Ike Clanton still standing. Following a trial, the Earps and Holliday were determined to have acted within the law, but the Cowboys sought revenge—first with a shotgun attack on Virgil Earp in December 1881 that cost the veteran lawman the use of his left arm, and four months later, a deadly ambush on Morgan Earp while he played billiards.
In response, the newly re-badged Deputy U.S. Marshal Wyatt Earp made sure the wounded Virgil and his family were safely on their way out of town before recruiting Holliday and a handful of other gunmen for a deadly ride across Cochise County in search of the remaining Cowboys, killing four in less than a month before the ride disbanded and the federal posse rode east into New Mexico Territory.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral starred Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Wyatt and Doc, respectively, but Sturges recast these roles in Hour of the Gun with the younger actors James Garner and Jason Robards. Filmed almost entirely in Mexico, Hour of the Gun‘s talented cast also extended onto the “Cowboys” side, including Robert Ryan as Ike Clanton and a pre-Midnight Cowboy Jon Voight as “Curly Bill” Brocius.
After his positive experiences being directed by Sturges in The Great Escape, Garner recalls in his memoir that he agreed to do Hour of the Gun without seeing the script as “I trusted John that much,” adding that “it’s a different kind of Western than I’d done; my character, Wyatt Earp, is the most steely-eyed of all my roles, and the movie is about Earp’s obsession with revenge.”
What’d He Wear?
After spending most of his time in Tombstone primarily dressed in a somber dark-blue suit and string tie, James Garner’s Wyatt Earp dresses down in hardier workwear for long days on horseback in search of the remaining Cowboys. The outfit is rooted more in the typical 20th century “Hollywood western” style than what the real Wyatt would have likely worn, resplendent in anachronistic (but still interesting) sartorial details. Though he’s ostensibly our hero, his predominantly black and dark-gray clothing suggests a more villainous take as Earp struggles to balance righteousness with revenge.
Garner’s Wyatt wears a black felt cowboy hat with a pinched front, curled brim, and a narrow triple-banded black ribbon around the base of the crown. This is the same hat that he wore with his dark suit and string ties in the city.
Unlike the solid white and gray shirts he wears with his suit, Wyatt dresses for the trail in a gray shirt with black track stripes that alternate between a bar stripe and sets of two narrower hairline stripes. The shirt has a point collar that he often wears turned up, perhaps in lieu of a neckerchief that would protect his neck from the sun and absorb sweat. The full button-up front placket fastens with the recessed black sew-through buttons as found on the end of each squared shirt cuff. The shirt also has two flapped chest pockets where he keeps the warrants for each Cowboy he tracks down.
Wyatt’s charcoal waistcoat (vest) is made from a soft felted wool and features a shawl collar with black-trimmed edges. The single-breasted front has six buttons, which he typically wears with either zero or two buttons done. There are two jetted pockets positioned low on each side, just above the axis of the second button from the straight-cut bottom.
Wyatt’s black flat-front trousers have modern belt loops, which were hardly widespread in the old west and wouldn’t be prominent on mass-produced menswear until at least the 1920s, though they did exist to some degree on workwear and military uniforms for at least a half-century leading up to this point. He holds up the trousers with a simple black leather belt that closes through a silver-toned D-shaped single-prong buckle. The trousers have Western-style slanted full-top front pockets and a scalloped flap that closes through a single button over the sole back-left pocket. The trouser legs taper to the plain-hemmed bottoms, which he wears over the calf-high shafts of his black leather riding boots.
Wyatt’s smooth black leather gun belt closes through a silver-toned ranger-style buckle in the front, swelling out on the right side with a wide slot where he loops on his six-shooter’s holster, which has a silver-toned retention buckle around the lower portion and is secured around his right thigh with a length of rawhide cord. The cartridge loops around the back of the gun belt are filled with .45 Long Colt rounds for his Single Action Army. He keeps his black leather riding gloves tucked into the front of his gun belt when not wearing them.
Wyatt’s golden-tan double-breasted jacket with its fleece collar resembles the classic shearling sheepskin outerwear, though the finely sueded shell looks too thin to be true sheepskin. The ventless, hip-length coat is lined fully though the right side and around the shawl collar in a beige piled fleece, which ends above the buttonholes on the left side to keep the material thin enough to effectively close over onto the right side. The flat dark-brown horn buttons are arranged in two parallel columns of four, and the outer side of all four buttonholes are reinforced with two-inch strips of matching dark-brown leather. The set-in sleeves are also finished with two smaller buttons decorating each cuff.
The jacket features a set-in pocket along each side, aligned just above the lowest row of buttons. The jetted pocket openings are fully framed in matching dark-brown leather; though the pockets have squared flaps made from the same sueded tan material as the coat, Wyatt typically keeps the flaps tucked into the pockets themselves.
Wyatt’s double-breasted coat with its fleece-lined shawl collar, neat columns of buttons, and straight side pockets shares some similarities with the belted M-1938 Mackinaw that the U.S. Army issued to enlisted servicemen during World War II, though the differences in the cloth are substantial enough that I wouldn’t suggest these to be the same jackets by any means.
Evidently, the film’s wardrobe master Gordon T. Dawson was fond of these coats, as he also briefly costumed Robert Ryan’s Ike Clanton in a nearly identical jacket, differing only with toggle buttons instead of the flat buttons on Wyatt’s coat.
Ike Clanton’s shawl-collar coat suggests a new meaning to the term “Ike jacket”.
The Gun
Although Wyatt Earp was almost certainly armed with his .44-caliber Smith & Wesson top-break revolver during the actual gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Hour of the Gun follows the example of most contemporary Westerns by arming most of its characters—including Wyatt—with the venerable Single Action Army, immortalized as the “Peacemaker” after Colt introduced this revolver in 1873.
Stuart N. Lake’s mostly fictionalized hagiography of the lawman, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, popularized the image of Wyatt carrying a .45-caliber Single Action Army with an ungainly 12-inch barrel known as the “Buntline Special” as it was to have been one of five commissioned by dime-store novelist Ned Buntline. Little documentation has proven the existence of such a weapon, but the legend has lived on, thanks in part to films like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Tombstone that depict Wyatt with one.
In Hour of the Gun, Garner’s Wyatt Earp carries a Single Action Army with a 7.5″-long “Cavalry” barrel, the standard configuration from the time the weapon was introduced in 1873. It could be a genuine Colt, or it may be one of the identical replicas made by companies like Cimarron Arms, Great Western, and Uberti over the course of the 20th century.
Wyatt Earp aims his Single Action Army at an impertinent and baroque Ike Clanton.
How to Get the Look
James Garner as Wyatt Earp in Hour of the Gun (1967)
- Tan sueded hip-length coat with beige fleece shawl collar and lining, 8×4-button double-breasted front with dark-brown leather-reinforced buttonholes, dark-brown leather-framed straight flapped hip pockets, set-in sleeves with 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Gray (with alternating black track stripes) long-sleeved shirt with point collar, front placket, two flapped chest pockets, and 1-button squared cuffs
- Charcoal felted wool single-breasted waistcoat with shawl collar, six-button front, jetted lower pockets, and straight-cut bottom
- Black flat-front trousers with belt loops, slanted full-top front pockets, back-left pocket (with single-button scalloped flap), and tapered plain-hemmed bottoms
- Black leather belt with silver-toned D-shaped single-prong buckle
- Black leather gun belt with right-hand-draw Single Action Army revolver holster (with silver-buckled retention strap and rawhide cord), cartridge loops, and silver-toned ranger-style buckle
- Black leather calf-high riding boots
- Black felt pinch-front cowboy hat with narrow triple-banded black ribbon and curled brim
- Black leather gloves
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
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