Due to the nature of a film's development, not all
casting announcements go as a planned.
Indie director/producer Frank Perry was preparing 'Doc' his 6th feature film during the spring of 1970. He cast three virtual unknowns, Stacey Keach, Harris Yulins and Sharon Farrell for his take on The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), but one of his leads was soon out.
He had to do some juggling. Perry quickly realized that his leading lady would not be available. It wasn't that Miss Farrell, who had previously done episodes of Wagon Train (1962), Death Valley Days (1963), Gunsmoke (1963-64), Rawhide (1965), Iron Horse and The Virginian (both 1967), The Wild, Wild West (1968), & the feature film The Reivers (1969), wasn't up for the adventure. She was. It was that she was pregnant. Needless to say, Mr. Perry had to quickly recast the role of the rough-edged Katie Elder (remember she had received title mention in the John Wayne vehicle The Sons of Katie Elder, from a few years back), with another actress. Within a week he had chosen WB rising star Faye Dunaway, who had impressed all with her title performance in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), to join the production.
It's just as well that Miss Farrell left the production, as the baby came early. She wasn't due till the fall, and would have had to take time off anyway. Within a month of leaving she, delivered a bouncing son to her actor/husband John Boyer. Their son, Chance Boyer, himself a future actor, was born August 11, 1970, while 'Doc' was still filming in Spain.
Farrell and Perry never did a film together
Mr. Perry and Miss. Dunaway, a decade later, reunited on
over-the-top rattler 'Mommie Dearest' (1981).
Ironically, Miss Farrell, does have a 'Doc' amongst her credits, but a much different 'Doc'. She happened to appear as a guest star in a 1976 episode of 'Doc', the veterinarian tv series that starred Bernard Hughes. That stanza's title, 'All Work and No Pay', pretty much summed up her experiences of working on Frank Perry's revisionist western, 'Doc'.
By Michael Ferguson
Another bit of trivia for the film "Doc" is that Morgan Earp is killed at the Gunfight At O.K. Corral in the film but at the actual fight, the real Morgan Earp and not the "reel" Morgan Earp was actually wounded.
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