Released in 1993, Kurt Russell’s Tombstone has long-since passed into legend as one of the defining Westerns released after the supposed decline of the genre. Financially successful, but not to the degree that it broke into the year’s box office top 10, and critically appreciated, but not exactly adored at the time, the entertaining look at some of the key events in Wyatt Earp’s life stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most famous examples of Westerns.
In the three decades since its release, appreciation for Tombstone’s cast has grown the most, not least because of stand-out performances by Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp), Val Kilmer (in his career-high role of Doc Hollywood), and Michael Biehn (Johnny Ringo), but also because of the numerous early performances by incredibly talented actors who would go on to far bigger things. As Roger Ebert said, Russell and Kilmer were so good that their performances became almost ubiquitous, forcing comparisons with – or at least memory of – Tombstone in almost every performance that followed. That really can’t be understated.
When analyzing quite why Tombstone grew to be so important, especially considering some of the more entertainingly annoyed contemporary reviews (Ebert’s collaborator Gene Siskel famously didn’t recommend it), the tendency is to look at the bigger details – like those performances – but in actual fact it’s the smaller ones that really matter. And like so many things, it all comes back to mustaches. On the top lip of two of the film’s stars lies the truth of why Tombstone has endured for 31 years: and one of those mustaches wasn’t even real.
The One Fake Mustache In Tombstone Explained
Tombstone’s Cast Were Told To Grow Their Own Mustaches – And It Genuinely Matters
One of the most popular and frequently regurgitated factoids about Tombstone is the charming revelation that only one of the cast wore a fake mustache. It’s a seemingly inconsequential detail, unless you’re a big fan of facial hair, and considering the high-quality mustaches on show, the fact that almost all of them were genuine is admittedly quite impressive.
To run it back, the headliners – Kurt Russell, Michael Biehn, Val Kilmer et al, had real mustaches, but Sheriff Johnny Behan was forced to wear a fake. He’d just completed filming on another movie that required him to be clean-shaven and was unable to grow one of his own quick enough. As his co-star Biehn remembered it (in a 2010 interview with MovieWeb):
“There was one guy, Jon Tenney. He didn’t get to grow his own mustache because he had a job right before that,”
But it’s not just about enjoying luxurious mustaches, or marveling at the cast’s ability to both cultivate and wear them so well, it’s what Tombstone’s mustache mandate meant in the bigger picture that reveals the production’s true genius.
Kurt Russell’s Tombstone Mustache Actually Shows Why The Western Is So Good
It’s The Smaller Details That Really Count
Even now, Tombstone feels timeless, thanks to its incredible world-building, and that comes down to exactly the reason all the cast were told to grow real mustaches: the production’s attention to detail. That’s all the more remarkable for the fraught nature of the production that almost led to one of the movie’s best actors quitting. Michael Biehn was reportedly close to original director Kevin Jarre and felt his replacement wasn’t suited to the material.
Biehn revealed that it was actually Jarre who insisted on real mustaches. He was eventually fired, and replaced by George P Cosmatos, but his mustache edict remained in place:
He was very specific about how he wanted the mustaches. He wanted them to curl up on the end. Which means, if you grow a mustache, and it grows long enough, you have to use wax on the end of it. Everyone was pretty proud that they grew their own mustache.
While Kurt Russell later revealed that he was key to Tombstone’s directing after Jarre was fired, and Cosmatos was merely a frontman, the replacement director was noted as highly focused on the film being faithful in its historical detail. In that vision, he clearly shared something important with Jarre that helped make Tombstone so enduring.
But the more important detail on Tombstone’s mustaches – because you can’t have too many – reveals that the commitment to accuracy actually led to Kurt Russell having to change his during production. Russell revealed in an interview with Esquire that he intended to grow his ‘stache longer based on photographs of the real-life Wyatt Earp. But Russell’s error was revealed by Cosmatos, who recognized Russell’s photograph was from an earlier period of his life and demanded he updated it:
“It’s funny, I let my mustache grow to try to find what I wanted to do with Wyatt Earp. There was a picture that I had of him where I had the exact same mustache, but [Cosmatos], he was being incredibly accurate to certain things. He said, ‘Well, that’s not the way he wore his mustache at that time.’ And I’m actually glad that I went with the mustache that he wanted me to go with, but the other mustache … God, I looked just like him. I don’t know whether it was the right or wrong thing to do in that regard.”
Obviously, in the years since its release, it’s the characters and performances that have made Tombstone one of the most popular Westerns of all time, but its the attention to detail that really sings. Made for the fairly large budget of $25m (considering 1993’s highest-grossing film, Jurassic Park, was made for $63m), Tombstone used its budget incredibly well. You can see it all on screen in the lovingly faithful reconstruction of the 1881 Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Despite the inevitable accusations of over-sensationalism, Tombstone has been praised for its historical accuracy, but the more important fact to consider is that when collective consciousness turns back to the OK Corral – a relatively insignificant event in real history, according to experts – it’s this version that is more often than not conjured. The laser-precise accuracy of costumes, character looks, language usage, and guns – and the commitment to shoot on location in Tombstone – are so evocative that they transcend any urge to fictionalize the events for Hollywood. And it’s the little things like Russell’s mustache integrity that really make the difference.