How factual is the movie Tombstone?
While Tombstone (1993) is a great movie, providing great entertainment, a great deal of creative license was used in regard to history. • The cowboys were not a tightly organized band of criminals and they did not wear red sashes to identify themselves. • Wyatt Earp did not meet Virgil and Morgan in Tombstone, he arrived with Virgil; Morgan came to town about a month later. • Sheriff White was only 31 when he was shot, not an older man as portayed in the movie. • The Bird Cage Theatre opened in December, 1881, nearly two months after the famous gunfight. Many, many other “liberties with facts” were taken. For a compreshensive list of historial inaccuracies in the film, see the web page Historical Inaccuracies in the Movie Tombstone, a historical review by John Richard Stephens on the Fern Canyon web site.
