May 30, 1957 –
Another earlier version of Brokeback Mountain, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, directed by John Sturges and starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, opened on this date
Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster had worked together in I Walk Alone, and often saw each other at various Hollywood functions. But, as Douglas recounted in his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, they didn’t become friends until this movie, which lead to some pretty loose-and-easy moments on the set. For instance, they couldn’t focus during a scene in which an unarmed Lancaster is surrounded by several men in a saloon, only to be rescued by Douglas, who steals another man’s gun and tosses it to Lancaster. “We go out on the porch“, Douglas wrote, “and Burt says to me, ‘Thanks, Doc’. I was supposed to say, ‘Forget it.’ When I came to ‘Forget it’, the ridiculousness of the scene, our great bravery, our machismo, made us howl. We did the scene over and over. It just made us laugh harder.” They were finally laughing so much, an angry John Sturges had to send them home for the day.
The Haus of Dcaligari 