Billy the Kid (1930 film)
Billy the Kid | |
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Directed by | King Vidor |
Written by | Walter Noble Burns (book, The Saga of Billy the Kid) Wanda Tuchock (continuity) Laurence Stallings (dialogue) Charles MacArthur (additional dialogue) |
Produced by | King Vidor Irving Thalberg |
Starring | John Mack Brown Wallace Beery Kay Johnson |
Cinematography | Gordon Avil |
Edited by | Hugh Wynn |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 95 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Billy the Kid is a 1930 American
Plot
Billy, after shooting down land baron William Donovan's henchmen for killing Billy's boss, is hunted down and captured by his friend, Sheriff Pat Garrett. He escapes and is on his way to Mexico when Garrett, recapturing him, must decide whether to bring him in or to let him go.
Cast
- John Mack Brown as Billy the Kid
- Wallace Beery as Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett
- Kay Johnson as Claire Randall
- Karl Dane as Swenson
- Wyndham Standing as Jack Tunston
- Russell Simpson as Angus McSween
- Blanche Friderici as Mrs McSween (as Blanche Frederici)
- Roscoe Ates as Old Stuff
- Warner Richmond as Bob Ballinger
- James A. Marcusas Colonel William P. Donovan
- Nelson McDowell as Track Hatfield
- Jack Carlyle as Dick Brewer
- John Beck as Butterworth
- Chris-Pin Martin as Don Esteban Santiago
- Aggie Herring as Emily Hatfield
Production
Directed by
While The Big Trail, starring John Wayne, has been restored so that the 1930 widescreen process can be evaluated by modern viewers, no widescreen prints of Billy the Kid are known to currently exist and the movie can be viewed only in a standard-width version that was filmed simultaneously with the widescreen version. The widescreen format did not get a commercial foothold with movie-going audiences until The Robe two decades later, largely because the Depression was under way by 1930 and few theatres could afford to upgrade their equipment after just converting to sound.
In some newspaper ads, the more familiar Beery, a major star and frequent supporting player since the teens during the silent era, was accorded top billing over young Brown but not in the main posters. Within two years Beery had contractually become
This was Wallace Beery's first picture after The Big House rejuvenated his career. Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had chosen Beery for the role of "Butch" in The Big House after Lon Chaney, who had been previously cast in the part, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The Big House was a smash hit with Beery nominated for an Academy Award (which he would win the following year for The Champ). Beery was then cast by Thalberg in the lavish widescreen version of Billy the Kid, shot on location in the West similarly to Raoul Walsh's spectacular 1930 widescreen Western The Big Trail, John Wayne's amazing debut as the star of a picture.
Parts of Billy the Kid were shot in Zion National Park, as well as in Gallup, New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and in Porter Ranch and the San Fernando Valley. [3]: 286
Remakes
The film was remade in color in 1941 as Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor as Billy and Brian Donlevy as a fictionalized version of Pat Garrett. The Howard Hughes version two years later, called The Outlaw and mainly serving as an introductory vehicle for Jane Russell, owes at least as much to the 1930 film, particularly in the casting of Thomas Mitchell, who physically resembles Wallace Beery, as Garrett.
Films and television revisited the Pat Garrett-Billy the Kid relationship almost continuously in subsequent decades.
See also
References
- ^ "Berlinale 2020: Retrospective "King Vidor"". Berlinale. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
- ^ David Coles, "Magnified Grandeur, Widescreen 1926-1931"
- ISBN 9781423605874.
External links
- Billy the Kid at IMDb