O n 26 October 1881, four men – gambler and lawman Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and his tubercular dentist friend Henry “Doc” Holliday – strode through the silver mining town of Tombstone, Arizona, and advanced on an alley next to Fly’s Boarding House and Photography Studio , just west of the OK Corral.

Thirty seconds of gunfire later, two men were dead and another lay dying; over the years, what was, depending on your viewpoint, either a law enforcement operation or a triple homicide became romanticized as a heroic tale of good defeating evil.

That romanticization has colored virtually every cinematic portrayal of the gunfight, and 1993’s Tombstone is no exception.…