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76 chapter 4 Two Fordian Film Scores My Darling Clementine and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and My Darling Clementine may seem an odd pairing.1 The two films were made eighteen years apart, their visual designs are strikingly different, their narratives have little in common, with the exception of the classic generic confrontation between the lawful and the lawless, and they employ none of the same actors in either starring or supporting roles. But in terms of their music, they have more than a little in common. Cyril Mockridge is credited as the composer of both scores, but these films share more than just Mockridge’s credit. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance returns to Ford’s roots in the early sound era and connects more profoundly to the musical design of My Darling Clementine than any other Ford western. Ford envisioned the score for My Darling Clementine as virtually all diegetic, comprised of folk songs, period music, and a Protestant hymn, carefully chosen and sparsely orchestrated. It is the most Fordian of his western scores in my opinion. The film chronicles the establishment of law and order in the frontier town of Tombstone by a new marshal, Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda), who is driven by revenge for the murder of his brother James (Don Garner) at the hands of the lawless Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) and his sons. The Clantons aren’t the only force standing in Earp’s way. Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a gambler and gunslinger, is the town’s corrupt power broker, and his girlfriend Chihuahua (Linda Darnell) is trouble. Wyatt and Doc become friends, although their relationship is strained, especially when Holliday’s fiancée, Two Fordian Film Scores 77 Clementine (Cathy Downs), arrives on the scene. The Clantons are vanquished , and Doc Holliday is killed, in the celebrated shoot-out at the OK Corral, and Clementine settles in to become the new schoolmarm, but Wyatt leaves Tombstone. Like Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine is about civilization and its stabilizing effects on the American frontier. It is about the power of the dominant community to define a collective identity, exclude outsiders, and protect and sustain its citizens, through violence if necessary. Community becomes the mechanism by which the West is tamed, and that frontier community resonates as a prototype of the American nation itself . But, as in so many other Ford westerns, there is a deep ambivalence about the need for and consequences of civilizing the frontier. Music in My Darling Clementine provides a wash of authenticity for the film’s evocation of the historic past. The main title is an excellent example of the use of period music to do so. The sequence features three American songs, “My Darling Clementine,” a period piece; “The Devil’s Dream,” an Anglo American folk song; and “Ten Thousand Cattle,” which sounds like a folk song (but isn’t). They are arranged for accordion , guitar, and violin; one, “The Devil’s Dream,” is instrumental, played on a country fiddle, and the other two are sung by a male chorus. The guitar is more usually a signifier of Mexico in Ford and it serves that purpose in My Darling Clementine. But here in the main title sequence (and in the end title), it connotes westernness. These uncomplicated arrangements of American music, with their focus on simple and characteristic western instrumentation, are a departure from the typical scoring practices of the era, but they are reassuring signs of the authenticity of the images.2 All three pieces of music have the patina of genuine folk song, despite the fact that two of them, “Ten Thousand Cattle” and “My Darling Clementine,” date from after the time in which the film is set. The gun- fight at the OK Corral occurred in 1881. “My Darling Clementine” is generally attributed to Percy Montrose, under whose name it was first published as “My Darling Clementine” in 1884, but Montrose borrowed the lyrics and changed the melody from an earlier song, “Down by the River Liv’d a Maiden,” published in 1863 by H. S. Thompson, and probably intended for the minstrel stage. The song’s lyrics are voiced in the main title, the famous chorus first—“You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine”—followed by the verse—“In a cavern , in a canyon. . . .” Audiences today, however, may be unfamiliar with this touchstone of American music. “My Darling Clementine” tells [3.135.246...

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