Oh My Darling, Clementine (Song)

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"Oh, My Darling Clementine" (or simply "Clementine") is a traditional American Western folk ballad in trochaic meter usually credited to Percy Montross (or Montrose) (1884), although it is sometimes credited to Barker Bradford.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Synopsis

Multiple variations of the song exist, but all center on Clementine, the daughter of a "miner forty-niner" and the singer's lover. One day while performing routine chores, Clementine trips and falls into a raging current and drowns, as her lover is unable to swim and declines to attempt to rescue her. In Montross's version, the song ends somewhat farcical by noting he will not go so far as necrophilia: "Though in life I used to hug her, now she's dead – I'll draw the line."

History and origins

The lyrics were written by Percy Montross in 1884, based on an earlier song called "Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden", printed in 1863. The origin of the melody is unknown. In his book South from Granada, Gerald Brenan claims that the melody was from an old Spanish ballad, made popular by Mexican miners during the California Gold Rush. It was best known from Romance del Conde Olinos o Niño, a sad love story very popular in Spanish-speaking cultures. It was also given various English translations. No particular source is cited to verify that the song he used to hear in the 1920s in a remote Spanish village was not an old text with new music, but Brenan states in his preface that all the information in his book has been checked reasonably well.

It is unclear when, where, and by whom the song was first recorded in English, but the first version to reach the Billboard charts was that by Bing Crosby recorded on June 14, 1941, which briefly reached the No. 20 spot.

It was given an updated and up-tempo treatment in an arrangement by Hal Hopper and John Scott Trotter. The re-written lyrics include a reference to Gene Autry ("could he sue me, Clementine?") amongst the five swinging verses.

Notable versions

There have been numerous versions of the song recorded over the years.

Bobby Darin version

Bobby Darin recorded a version of the song in 1960, with lyrics credited to Woody Harris, in which Clementine is reimagined as a 299-pound woman. After she falls into the water, Darin suggests that Clementine could be mistaken for a whale and calls out to those on the high seas to watch for her, in a rhythm and style reminiscent of Darin's rendition of "Mack the Knife": "Hey you sailor, way out in your whaler, with your harpoon and your trusty line, if she shows now, yell... there she blows now. It just may be chunky Clementine."

Jan and Dean version

Jan and Dean had a hit with "Clementine", charting as high as 65 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It was released on the Dore label (SP DORE 539 (US)) in November, 1959; "You're on My Mind" was the B Side.

Tom Lehrer version

Tom Lehrer recorded a set of variations on the song in 1959 on his live album An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, demonstrating his theory that "folk songs are so atrocious because they were written by the people." He performs the first verse in the style of Cole Porter, the second in the style of "Mozart or one of that crowd", the third in a disjointed bebop sound parodying the style of Beat Generation musicians like Slim Gaillard or Babs Gonzales, and the final verse in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Other versions

• In 1998, English musician Dario G sampled the melody in his track "Carnival de Paris". The song was recorded for the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France.

• Television host Jack Narz recorded the song for his 1959 album Sing the Folk Hits With Jack Narz.
• The American pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist Connie Francis added her interpretation of the ballad into the 1961 album Connie Francis Sings Folk Song Favorites.

• In 2004, the song was recorded by Westlife on their Allow Us to Be Frank.

• The song is referenced in the lyrics of two separate songs by Elliott Smith. The first, "Clementine", from his 1995 self-titled album.

• The second, "Sweet Adeline", appears three years later on XO.

• Megan Washington recorded "Clementine" in 2010. The song references some of the lyrics from the original.

• In 2012, Neil Young and Crazy Horse recorded a minor-key hard-rock version of "Clementine" on their album Americana.

In popular culture

Film

• The song plays during the opening credits for John Ford's 1946 movie My Darling Clementine, with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp and Cathy Downs as a title character. It also runs as a background score all through the movie.
• In the 1952 MGM cartoon studio short film Magical Maestro the cartoon character Butch, as a canine opera singer named the Great Poochini, is transformed by a magician into a country singer who sings the main verse of the song.

• In the 1963 film Hud starring Paul Newman, the song is played prior to the start of a movie being watched by two characters, who join in on the singing.
• The 1990 film Back to the Future Part III features this song, arranged by Alan Silvestri and ZZ Top.

• Henry Casey (Scott Bairstow) briefly sings this song while he and White Fang sail across the river in the 1994 film White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf.
• In the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there are two references to the song (specifically its use by Huckleberry Hound): one at the beginning and one at the end, both regarding the name of Clementine (Kate Winslet). Joel (Jim Carrey) mentions the song to Clementine when they introduce themselves, and Clementine sings the chorus to Joel on a train to Montauk.

• In the 2022 movie Murder at Yellowstone City, gold prospector Robert Dunnigan (Zach McGowan) anachronistically sings the song as he makes his way home after celebrating striking gold, just before he is shot and murdered. This movie is set in 1881, three years before the song is dated (1884).

Television

• In 1985, Akimi Yoshida published a Japanese manga series called Banana Fish, the song is sung by military soldiers and later on mentioned by a side character called Shorter.
• In 1986, the song was turned into an episode of the TV series Tall Tales & Legends entitled "My Darlin' Clementine" with Shelley Duvall as Clementine and narration by Randy Newman.
• In 1992, Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, sang "Darlin' Clementine" on The Late Late Show on Ireland television. Just hours earlier, eight people (seven of them civilians) had been killed in the Teebane bombing. Brooke was forced to resign shortly after.
• In the 2001 Columbo episode "Murder With Too Many Notes", Lieutenant Columbo, played by Peter Falk, sings the first verse of the song along with Billy Connolly's character Findlay Crawford. Columbo also sings the song in the 1978 episode "Make Me A Perfect Murder.
• Released on 15 May 2020, the fifth season of the series Outlander offers two versions of the song : the first one on episode 7, by character Brianna Randall Fraser (voice), played by British actress Sophie Skelton; the second one on episode 8, by character Roger Wakefield (voice + guitar), played by Scottish actor Richard Rankin. Along with the typical chorus, only 4 verses of the song are played ("In a cavern, in a canyon [...]"; "Light she was and like a fairy [...]"; "Drove she ducklings to the water [...]"; "Ruby lips above the water [...]"). These versions were composed by American Composer Bear McCreary.

• A mangled rendition of "Darling Clementine" is animated coonhound Huckleberry Hound's signature tune, sung in most episodes of the cartoon series The Huckleberry Hound Show. But it often ends up as "Oh my darling what's her name".

• Released in 2020, the Netflix original Korean drama, It's Okay to Not Be Okay, also features this song. It is performed multiple times through the episodes, both as a melody and as simple lyrics.
• In the Season 5 M*A*S*H episode "Movie Tonight," aired February 22, 1977, character Colonel Potter, played by Harry Morgan, sings the lyrics, "In a cavern in a canyon excavating for a mine..." during the last scene of the episode while the crew is performing surgery on wounded soldiers. The rest of the crew joins in on a sing-along. The episode ends when they all sing the lyric, "Dreadful sorry, Clementine." This occurs after the 4077th M*A*S*H views the 1946 John Ford classic film "My Darling Clementine".
• In 1999, Jeri Ryan and Robert Picardo sing a bit of the song while the Holo Doctor reprograms one of Seven of Nine's Borg implants.

• In late 2022, the song was used in an anti-smoking commercial by the New York State Department of Health.
• In the Animaniacs cartoon episode "Karaoke-Dokie", the song was performed by Willie Slackmer (Maurice LaMarche).

Use of melody

• The melody is used in "Xīnnián Hǎo" (新年好), a New Year and Chinese New Year song.

• The melody is used in "Dip The Apple In The Honey", a Jewish new years song.

• The melody was applied to "Erika", a German Nazi marching song. (However, the original version used by the military did not use this melody.)

• In the 1956 Hindi film C.I.D., the melody of this song was used in the song "Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan".

• The chorus to Cher Lloyd's 2011 single "Swagger Jagger" was seen as heavily borrowed from the melody of "Oh My Darling Clementine"

• The melody is used in "Picked a Strawberry", a library storytime song made by the librarian duo called Jbrary.

• The melody is used in the song "There Are Seven Days (In A Week)", from Barney & Friends.

• The melody is used by a popular Malaysian nursery rhyme called "Bangun Pagi".

• The melody is used by Flanders and Swann in the penultimate verse of their song "Misalliance".

• The melody is used by Kenneth Williams in his song "The Ballad of the Woggler's Moulie".

Other

• In the 1945 novel Animal Farm by George Orwell, the pig Old Major explains his dream of an animal-controlled society, and ends by singing Beasts of England. The song's tune is described in the novel as sounding like a combination of "La Cucaracha" and "Oh My Darling, Clementine".
• The Clementine plutonium-fueled fast-neutron reactor, the first of its type, was built at Los Alamos in 1946 and named after the song, due to the use of "49" as a code word for plutonium-239.
• The 1994 NASA Clementine mission to test sensors and spacecraft components and make scientific observations of the Moon was named after the song.
• In the first episode of the 2018 video game The Walking Dead: The Final Season, a character named Louis plays this song to the coincidentally-named Clementine on his piano.

• In the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption II, some NPCs can be heard whistling the tune of this song in Saint Denis. One of the main characters, John Marston, also sings a snippet of this if he is either drunk or idle.
• The 1982 video game Miner 2049er uses the tune as title screen music.
• In The Hunger Games prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, the song is performed by the character Maude Ivory.
• There is a parody "The Climbing Clementine", which starts "In a crevice high on Nevis".
• In Kathleen Bryson's novel Girl on a Stick (2006), the narrator is named Clementine Logan and she occasionally quotes from the song.

My Darling Clementine Covers

• Freddy Quinn

• Mitch Miller Orchestra

• The Hillbilly Family

• Magnus Carlson

• Pete Seeger

• The Sweptaways

• Malcolm Forest

• The Hollywood Soundstage Chorus

• Bobby Joe Bratcher

• Mantovani and His Orchestra

• Ricky King

• Orchester Werner Tauber

My Darling Clementine (Film)

My Darling Clementine is a 1946 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp during the period leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The ensemble cast also features Victor Mature (as Doc Holliday), Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs and Ward Bond.

The title of the movie is borrowed from the theme song "Oh My Darling, Clementine", sung in parts over the opening and closing credits. The screenplay is based on the fictionalized biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal by Stuart Lake, as were two earlier movies, both named Frontier Marshal (released in 1934 and 1939, respectively).

My Darling Clementine is regarded by many film critics as one of the best Westerns ever made. In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It was among the third annual group of 25 films named to the registry.

Plot

In 1882 (a year after the actual gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881), Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, and James Earp are driving cattle to California when they encounter Old Man Clanton and his sons. Clanton offers to buy their herd, but they curtly refuse to sell. When the Earps learn about the nearby boom town of Tombstone, the older brothers ride in, leaving the youngest, James, as watchman. The threesome soon learns that Tombstone is a lawless town without a marshal. Wyatt proves the only man in the town willing to face a drunken Indian shooting at the townspeople. When the brothers return to their camp, they find their cattle rustled and James murdered.

Wyatt returns to Tombstone. Seeking to avenge James's murder, he takes the open position of town marshal and encounters the hot-tempered Doc Holliday and scurrilous Clanton gang several times. During this time, Clementine Carter, Doc's former love interest from his hometown of Boston, arrives after a long search for her beau. She is given a room at the same hotel where both Wyatt and Doc Holliday reside.

Chihuahua, a hot-tempered Latina love interest of Doc's, sings in the local saloon. She runs afoul of Wyatt trying to tip a professional gambler off to his poker hand, resulting in Wyatt dunking her in a horse trough. Doc, who is suffering badly from tuberculosis and fled from Clementine previously, is unhappy with her arrival; he tells her to return to Boston or he will leave Tombstone. Clementine stays, so Doc leaves for Tucson. Wyatt, who has been taken by Clementine since her arrival, begins to awkwardly court her. Angry over Doc's hasty flight Chihuahua starts an argument with Clementine. Wyatt walks in on their spat and breaks it up. He notices Chihuahua is wearing a silver cross that had been taken from his brother James the night he'd been killed. She claims Doc gave it to her.

Wyatt chases down Doc, with whom he has had a testy relationship. Doc forces a shoot-out, ending with Wyatt shooting a pistol out of Doc's hand. The two return to Tombstone, where after being questioned, Chihuahua reveals the silver cross was actually given to her by Billy Clanton. During the interrogation Billy shoots Chihuahua through a window and takes off on horseback, but is wounded by Wyatt. Wyatt directs his brother Virgil to pursue him. The chase leads to the Clanton homestead, where Billy dies of his wounds. Old Man Clanton then shoots Virgil in the back in cold blood.

In town, a reluctant Doc is persuaded to operate on Chihuahua. Hope swells for her successful recovery. The Clantons then arrive, toss Virgil's body on the street and announce they will be waiting for the rest of the Earps at the O.K. Corral.

Chihuahua dies and Doc decides to join the Earps, walking alongside Wyatt and Morgan to the corral at sunup. A gunfight ensues in which most of the Clantons are killed, as is Doc.

Wyatt and Morgan resign as law enforcers. Morgan heads West in a horse and buggy. Wyatt bids Clementine farewell at the school house, wistfully promising that if he ever returns he will look her up. Mounting his horse, he muses aloud, "Ma'am, I sure like that name...Clementine," and rides off to join his brother.

Cast

• Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp
• Linda Darnell as Chihuahua
• Victor Mature as Dr. John Henry "Doc" Holliday
• Cathy Downs as Clementine Carter, Doc's former love from Boston
• Walter Brennan as Newman Haynes Clanton, a cattleman
• Tim Holt as Virgil Earp
• Ward Bond as Morgan Earp
• Don Garner as James Earp
• Grant Withers as Ike Clanton
• John Ireland as Billy Clanton
• Alan Mowbray as Granville Thorndyke, a stage actor
• Roy Roberts as Mayor
• Jane Darwell as Kate Nelson
• J. Farrell MacDonald as Mac the barman
• Russell Simpson as John Simpson
• Charles Stevens as Indian Charlie (uncredited)

Production

Development

In 1931, Stuart Lake published the first biography two years after Earp's death. Lake retold the story in the 1946 book My Darling Clementine, for which Ford acquired the film rights. The two books have since been determined to be largely fictionalized stories about the Earp brothers and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and their conflict with the outlaw Cowboys: Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury and his brother Frank McLaury. The gunfight was relatively unknown to the American public until Lake published the two books and after the movie was made.

Director John Ford said that when he was a prop boy in the early days of silent pictures, Earp would visit pals he knew from his Tombstone days on the sets. "I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee, and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral. So in My Darling Clementine, we did it exactly the way it had been." Ford did not want to make the movie, but his contract required him to make one more movie for 20th Century Fox.

In their later years, Wyatt and Josephine Earp worked hard to eliminate any mention of Josephine's previous relationship with Johnny Behan or Wyatt's previous common law marriage to Matty Blaylock. They successfully kept Josephine's name out of Lake's biography of Wyatt and after he died, Josephine threatened to sue the movie producers to keep it that way. Lake corresponded with Josephine, and he claimed she attempted to influence what he wrote and hamper him in every way possible, including consulting lawyers. Josephine insisted she was striving to protect Wyatt Earp's legacy.

After the movie Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (in which John Ireland portrayed another real-life figure of the time, Johnny Ringo) was released in 1957, the shootout came to be known by that name.

Writing

The final script of the movie varies considerably from historical fact to create additional dramatic conflict and character. Clementine Carter is not a historical person, and in this script appears to be an amalgam of Big Nose Kate and Josephine Earp. Unlike the movie characters, the Earps were never cowboys, drovers, or cattle owners. Important plot devices in the film and personal details about the main characters were all liberally adapted for the movie.

Old Man Clanton actually died prior to the gunfight and probably never met any of the Earps. Doc was a dentist, not a surgeon, and survived the shootout. James Earp, who was portrayed as the youngest brother and the first to die in the story, actually was the eldest brother and lived until 1926. The key women in Wyatt's and Doc's lives—Wyatt's common law wife Josephine and Doc's common-law wife Big Nose Kate—were not present in Lake's original story and were kept out of the movie as well. The film gives the date of the gunfight as 1882 although it actually occurred in 1881.

Upon leaving Tombstone, the itinerant actor, Granville Thorndyke (Alan Mowbray), bids farewell to the old soldier, "Dad" (Francis Ford, John Ford's elder brother), with lines from Joseph Addison's poem, "The Campaign": "Great Souls by Instinct to each other turn,/Demand Alliance ("allegiance" in the film), and in Friendship burn..."

Filming

Much of the film was shot in Monument Valley, a scenic desert region straddling the Arizona-Utah border used in other John Ford movies. It is 500 miles (800 km) away from the town of Tombstone in southern Arizona. After seeing a preview screening of the film, 20th Century Fox studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck felt Ford's original cut was too long and had some weak spots, so he had Lloyd Bacon shoot new footage and heavily edit the film. Zanuck had Bacon cut 30 minutes from the film.

While Ford's original cut of the film has not survived, a "pre-release" cut dating from a few months after the preview screening was discovered in the UCLA film archives; this version preserves some additional footage as well as alternative scoring and editing. UCLA film preservationist Robert Gitt edited a version of the film that incorporates some of the earlier version. Perhaps the most significant change is the film's ending; in Ford's original version, Earp awkwardly shakes hands with Clementine Carter. In the version released in 1946, Earp kisses her on the cheek.

Critical reception

The film is generally regarded as one of the best Westerns made by John Ford and one of his best films overall. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average score of 8.80/10, based on 32 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Canny and coolly confident, My Darling Clementine is a definitive dramatization of the Wyatt Earp legend that shoots from the hip and hits its target in breezy style."

At the time of its release, Bosley Crowther lauded the film and wrote, "The eminent director, John Ford, is a man who has a way with a Western like nobody in the picture trade. Seven years ago his classic Stagecoach snuggled very close to fine art in this genre. And now, by George, he's almost matched it with My Darling Clementine ... But even with standard Western fiction—and that's what the script has enjoined—Mr. Ford can evoke fine sensations and curiously-captivating moods. From the moment that Wyatt and his brothers are discovered on the wide and dusty range, trailing a herd of cattle to a far-off promised land, a tone of pictorial authority is struck—and it is held. Every scene, every shot is the product of a keen and sensitive eye—an eye which has deep comprehension of the beauty of rugged people and a rugged world." The Variety reviewer wrote, "Trademark of John Ford's direction is clearly stamped on the film with its shadowy lights, softly contrasted moods and measured pace, but a tendency is discernible towards stylization for the sake of stylization. At several points, the pic comes to a dead stop to let Ford go gunning for some arty effect."

Director Sam Peckinpah considered My Darling Clementine his favorite Western, and paid homage to it in several of his Westerns, including Major Dundee (1965) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Similarly, director Hayao Miyazaki called it one of his ten favorite movies.

Fifty years after its release, Roger Ebert reviewed the film and included it in his list of The Great Movies. He wrote it was "one of the sweetest and most good-hearted of all Westerns", unusual in making the romance between Earp and Clementine the heart of the film rather than the gunfight.

In 2004, Matt Bailey summarized its significance: "If there is one film that deserves every word of praise ever uttered or written about it, it is John Ford's My Darling Clementine. Perhaps the greatest film in a career full of great films, arguably the finest achievement in a rich and magnificent genre, and undoubtedly the best version of one of America's most enduring myths, the film is an undeniable and genuine classic." In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound polls, seven critics and five directors named it one of their 10 favorite films.

In 2012, director Michael Mann named My Darling Clementine one of his ten favorite films, stating it was "possibly the finest drama in the western genre" and "achieves near-perfection" in its cinematography and editing. It was also President Harry Truman's favorite film.

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited My Darling Clementine as one of his 100 favorite films.

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