Billy the Kid (1930 film)
Encyclopedia
Billy the Kid is a 1930 American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 film directed in widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 by King Vidor
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...

 about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney William H. Bonney William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty, Jr. est. November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881, better known as Billy the Kid but also known as Henry Antrim, was a 19th-century American gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier...

 (Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown was an All-American college football player and film actor originally billed as John Mack Brown at the height of his screen career.-Early life:...

, billed as "John Mack Brown") and Pat Garrett
Pat Garrett
Patrick Floyd "Pat" Garrett was an American Old West lawman, bartender, and customs agent who was best known for killing Billy the Kid...

 (Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

), the man who later killed him.

Cast

  • John Mack Brown
    Johnny Mack Brown
    Johnny Mack Brown was an All-American college football player and film actor originally billed as John Mack Brown at the height of his screen career.-Early life:...

     as William Bonney ("Billy the Kid")
  • Wallace Beery
    Wallace Beery
    Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

     as Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett
    Pat Garrett
    Patrick Floyd "Pat" Garrett was an American Old West lawman, bartender, and customs agent who was best known for killing Billy the Kid...

  • Kay Johnson
    Kay Johnson
    Kay Johnson was an American actress who performed on the stage and in Hollywood films.-Family:Catherine Townsend Johnson was born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1904. Her father was architect Thomas R. Johnson who designed several noteworthy buildings in the New York City...

     as Claire Randall
  • Karl Dane
    Karl Dane
    Karl Dane was a Danish comedian and actor known for his work in American films, mainly of the silent film era. He worked alongside Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, and King Vidor. In 1926, he teamed up with George K. Arthur to form the successful comedy duo Dane & Arthur...

     as Swenson
  • Wyndham Standing
    Wyndham Standing
    Wyndham Standing was an English film actor. He appeared in 131 films between 1915 and 1948. A popular and much beloved leading man in the silent film era, he starred and costarred along many famous names of the day, both men and women. He and Ronald Colman were the stars of the now lost classic...

     as Jack Tunston
  • Russell Simpson
    Russell Simpson (actor)
    Russell McCaskill Simpson was an American character actor.Born in San Francisco, California, Simpson is best known for his work in the films of John Ford and, in particular, for his portrayal of Pa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath in 1940.Simpson reportedly prospected for gold in Alaska in his youth,...

     as Angus McSween
  • Blanche Federici as Mrs McSween
  • Roscoe Ates
    Roscoe Ates
    Roscoe Ates was an actor and musician in primarily western films and television.-Early years:Ates was born in the rural hamlet of Grange, Mississippi, northwest of Hattiesburg. Grange is no longer included on road maps...

     as Old Stuff
  • Warner Richmond
    Warner Richmond
    Warner Richmond was an American actor. He appeared in 141 films between 1912 and 1946.He was born in Racine, Wisconsin and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:* Brown of Harvard...

     as Bob Ballinger
  • James A. Marcus
    James A. Marcus
    James A. Marcus was an American actor. He appeared in 109 films between 1915 and 1937.He was born in New York, New York and died in Hollywood, California from a heart attack...

     as Colonel William P. Donovan
  • Nelson McDowell
    Nelson McDowell
    Nelson McDowell was an American actor. He appeared in 176 films between 1917 and 1945.He was born in Greenville, Missouri and died in Hollywood, California after he shot himself.- Selected filmography :...

     as Track Hatfield
  • Jack Carlyle as Dick Brewer
  • John Beck as Butterworth
  • Chris-Pin Martin as Don Esteban Santiago
  • Marguerita Padula as Nicky "Pinky" Whoosiz
  • Aggie Herring
    Aggie Herring
    Aggie Herring was an American actress. She appeared in 119 films between 1915 and 1939.She was born in San Francisco, California and died in Santa Monica, California.-Selected filmography:* Daredevil Jack...

     as Emily Hatfield

Production

Directed by King Vidor
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...

, the movie was filmed in an early widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 process called Realife, a 70mm format similar to Fox Film Corporation's Grandeur
70 mm Grandeur film
70 mm Grandeur film, also called Fox Grandeur, was a 70mm widescreen film format developed by the Fox Film Corporation and used commercially on a small scale in 1929-1931. It is technically very similar to the Todd-AO 70mm system, marketed from 1955 and still in limited use today...

 used for the lavish The Big Trail
The Big Trail
The Big Trail is a lavish early widescreen movie shot on location across the American West starring John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh....

the same year.

While The Big Trail, starring John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

, 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 only be viewed in a standard-width version that was filmed simultaneously. Widescreen did not get a commercial foothold until The Robe
The Robe (film)
The Robe is a 1953 American Biblical epic film that tells the story of a Roman military tribune who commands the unit that crucifies Jesus. The film was made by 20th Century Fox and is notable for being the first film released in the widescreen process CinemaScope.It was directed by Henry Koster...

two decades later.

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 MGM's highest paid actor while John Mack Brown was rechristened "Johnny Mack Brown" and demoted into B-Westerns.

Remakes

The film was remade in color in 1941 as Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid (1941 film)
Billy the Kid is a 1941 American color remake of the 1930 film of the same name. The film features Robert Taylor as Billy and Brian Donlevy as a fictionalized version of Pat Garrett renamed "Jim Sherwood" in the film. Directed by David Miller and based on the book by Walter Noble Burns, the cast...

with Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor (actor)
Robert Taylor was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Nebraska, he was the son of Ruth Adaline and Spangler Andrew Brugh, who was a farmer turned doctor...

 as Billy and Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy was an Irish-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste and The Great McGinty...

 as a fictionalized version of Pat Garrett. The Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

 version two years later, called The Outlaw
The Outlaw
The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. The supporting cast includes Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director...

and mainly serving as an introductory vehicle for Jane Russell
Jane Russell
Jane Russell was an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s....

, owes at least as much to the 1930 film, particularly in the casting of Thomas Mitchell
Thomas Mitchell (actor)
Thomas Mitchell was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life...

, a superb actor who physically resembles Wallace Beery, as Garrett.

Films and television revisited the Pat Garrett-Billy the Kid relationship almost continuously in subsequent decades. Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...

 played Billy in the '50s in The Left Handed Gun
The Left Handed Gun
The Left Handed Gun is a 1958 American western film and the film directorial debut of Arthur Penn, starring Paul Newman as Billy the Kid and John Dehner as Pat Garrett...

; a television series was filmed in 1960 with the same theme called The Tall Man
The Tall Man (TV series)
The Tall Man is an American Western television series that aired on NBC from 1960 to 1962. The series was produced by Revue Productions.-Synopsis:...

, with Barry Sullivan
Barry Sullivan (actor)
Barry Sullivan was an American movie actor who appeared in over 100 movies from the 1930s to the 1980s.Born in New York City, Sullivan fell into acting when in college playing semi-pro football...

 as Garrett and Clu Gulager
Clu Gulager
Clu Gulager is an American television and film actor. He is particularly noted for his co-starring role as William H. Bonney in the 1960–62 NBC TV series The Tall Man and for his role in the later NBC series The Virginian...

 as Billy; Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...

 directed a movie version in the '70s with James Coburn
James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.A capable,...

 as Garrett; and Val Kilmer
Val Kilmer
Val Edward Kilmer is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer became popular in the mid-1980s after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! , then the cult classic Real Genius , as well as blockbuster action films, including a supporting role in Top Gun and a...

 played Billy in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid (1989 film)
Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, also known as Billy the Kid, is a 1989 American western film about famed gunman Billy the Kid.One of many depicting the events surrounding the outlaw during his participation in the Lincoln County War, this film, though little known, has routinely been described as the...

, a lavish television version written by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...

and televised in 1989.
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