Burt Lancaster agreed to do this film if he could star in The Rainmaker, also produced by Hal B. Wallis.
Dennis Hopper and Earl Holliman appeared a year before this film in Giant . The scores of Giant andGunfight at the O.K. Corral were both composed byDimitri Tiomkin .
Dennis Hopper, who plays Billy Clanton, was born and raised in Dodge City, Kansas, where Wyatt Earp was once sheriff.
According to a news piece, in January 1955 Hal B. Wallis was "hoping to" cast Burt Lancaster and Humphrey Bogart in the leads and in February 1955 Barbara Stanwyck was mentioned as one possible female star of the film.
Additional scenes were filmed on July 24, 1956.
In his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, 'Kirk Douglas' wrote that while playing Doc Holiday, he planned exactly how many and what kinds of coughs he would have in each scene so that continuity wouldn't be a problem once the film was edited together.
In July 1957, this film was released to many drive-in theaters on a double bill with Destination 60,000.
Much of this film was shot at the famous "Old Tucson" facility, not far from the real Tombstone. However, its "town street" set was used surprisingly as Fort Griffin, Texas, in the opening reels, while later Tombstone street scenes were shot in southern California, on the same Paramount Ranch set that was later used as Virginia City, Nevada, on TV's Bonanza.
The actual gunfight took place on 26 October 1881 and lasted a mere 30 seconds, resulting in three dead men after an exchange of 34 bullets. Compared to this adaptation, the movie gunfight took 4 days to film and produced an on-screen bloodbath that lasted 5 minutes.