Viva Villa!
Encyclopedia
Viva Villa! is a 1934 American film starring Wallace Beery
as Pancho Villa
and was written by Ben Hecht
, adapted from a biography
by Edgecumb Pinchon and Odo B. Stade. The picture was directed by Jack Conway
. There was special, uncredited help with the script by Howard Hawks
, James Kevin McGuinness
, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman
also contributed uncredited directing help.
The movie is a fictionalized biography of Pancho Villa
starring Beery, Leo Carrillo
, and Fay Wray
. Lee Tracy
was originally cast in a supporting role but was fired after allegedly urinating drunkenly off a balcony onto a Mexican military parade below. Tracy's career never fully recovered from this incident, although he did make other films, most notably Gore Vidal
's The Best Man
thirty years later.
It was the highest-grossing film of 1934.
's 1952 film Viva Zapata!
, written by John Steinbeck
and starring Marlon Brando
.
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 Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
and was written by Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
, adapted from a biography
Viva Villa! (book)
Viva Villa! A recovery of the real Pancho Villa, peon, bandit, soldier, patriot is a 1933 biography of Pancho Villa, written by Edgecumb Pinchon and researched by O. B. Stade. It was the basis for the film Viva Villa! the following year, in which Wallace Beery played Villa for the second...
by Edgecumb Pinchon and Odo B. Stade. The picture was directed by Jack Conway
Jack Conway (film-maker)
Jack Ryan Conway was a film director and film producer, as well as an actor of many films in the first half of the 20th century....
. There was special, uncredited help with the script by Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, James Kevin McGuinness
James Kevin McGuinness
James Kevin McGuinness was an American screenwriter and film producer. He wrote for 36 films between 1927 and 1950. He wrote for The New Yorker magazine.He was born in Ireland and immigrated to New York in 1904...
, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman
William A. Wellman
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...
also contributed uncredited directing help.
The movie is a fictionalized biography of Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
starring Beery, Leo Carrillo
Leo Carrillo
Leopoldo Antonio Carrillo , was an American actor, vaudevillian, political cartoonist, and conservationist.-Family roots:...
, and Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
. Lee Tracy
Lee Tracy
William Lee Tracy was an American actor.- Early life :Tracy was born in Atlanta, Georgia.After graduating from Western Military Academy in 1918 he studied electrical engineering at Union College, and then served as a 2nd lieutenant in World War I. In the early 1920s he decided to work as an actor...
was originally cast in a supporting role but was fired after allegedly urinating drunkenly off a balcony onto a Mexican military parade below. Tracy's career never fully recovered from this incident, although he did make other films, most notably 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...
's The Best Man
The Best Man (1964 film)
The Best Man is a 1964 film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner with a screenplay by Gore Vidal based on his play of the same title. Starring Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, and Lee Tracy, the film details the seamy political maneuverings behind the nomination of a presidential candidate...
thirty years later.
It was the highest-grossing film of 1934.
Cast
- Wallace BeeryWallace BeeryWallace 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 Pancho VillaPancho VillaJosé Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals.... - Leo CarrilloLeo CarrilloLeopoldo Antonio Carrillo , was an American actor, vaudevillian, political cartoonist, and conservationist.-Family roots:...
as Sierra - Fay WrayFay WrayFay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
as Teresa - Donald CookDonald Cook (actor)Donald Cook was an American stage and film actor.Born in Portland, Oregon, he originally studied farming but later started business with a lumber company. He joined the Kansas Community Players and through this received an offer of stage work...
as Don Felipe de Castillo - Stuart ErwinStuart ErwinStuart Erwin was an American actor. Erwin began acting in college in the 1920s, first appearing on the stage, then breaking into films in 1928 in Mother Knows Best...
as Jonny Sykes - Henry B. WalthallHenry B. WalthallHenry Brazeale Walthall was an American film actor.-Career:Walthall began his career as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway in a supporting role in William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in 1906–1908. His career in movies began in 1908, in the film Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, which also...
as Francisco Madero - Joseph SchildkrautJoseph SchildkrautJoseph Schildkraut was an Austrian stage and film actor.-Early life:Born in Vienna, Austria, Schildkraut was the son of stage actor Rudolph Schildkraut. The younger Schildkraut moved to the United States in the early 1900s. He appeared in many Broadway productions...
as Gen. Pascal - Katherine DeMilleKatherine DeMilleKatherine DeMille was a Canadian-born American film actress.She was born Katherine Lester in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was orphaned as a child by the death of her father, an officer in the Canadian Army who died in World War I combat and loss of her mother to tuberculosis in 1920...
as Rosita Morales (as Katherine de Mille) - George E. StoneGeorge E. StoneGeorge E. Stone was a Polish-born American character actor in movies, radio, and television.-Career:Stone's slight build and very expressive face first attracted attention in 1927, in the popular silent-film romance Seventh Heaven...
as Emilio Chavito - Phillip Cooper as Pancho Villa as a boy
- David DurandDavid DurandDavid Durand was an Huguenot French and English minister and historian. He was born in Languedoc and fled France to the Netherlands before heading to Spain with a group of refugees, being captured at the Battle of Almanza in 1707 and being sent to France and then escaping to the Netherlands again...
as Bugle boy - Frank PugliaFrank PugliaFrank Puglia was an Italian film actor. Puglia had small but memorable roles in films including Casablanca and 1942's The Jungle Book. Born in Sicily, the actor started his career as a teen on stage in Italian operas. He emigrated to the U.S...
as Pancho Villa's father - Ralph BushmanRalph BushmanRalph Everly Bushman , was an American actor. He appeared in fifty-five films between 1920 and 1943.The son of notable silent film star Francis X. Bushman and Josephine Fladine Duval, he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA and died in Los Angeles, California. In his early film career, he was often...
as Wallace Calloway (reporter) (as Francis X. Bushman Jr.) - Adrian Rosley as Alphonso Mendoza
- Henry ArmettaHenry ArmettaHenry Armetta was an Italian movie character actor who appeared in at least 150 films, starting in silents as early as 1915 to a movie released in 1946, after his death.-Biography:...
as Alfredo Mendosa - Arturo Arzate as telegraph operator
Awards
The film was nominated for the following Academy Awards:- Academy Award for Best PictureAcademy Award for Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
- Assistant Director (John Waters)
- Sound Recording (Douglas ShearerDouglas ShearerDouglas G. Shearer was a Canadian-born pioneer sound designer and recording director who played a key role in the advancement of sound technology for motion pictures.-Early life and career:...
) - Writing (Adaptation) (Ben Hecht)
In popular culture
Viva Villa! partially inspired the creation of Elia KazanElia Kazan
Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...
's 1952 film Viva Zapata!
Viva Zapata!
Viva Zapata! is a 1952 fictional-biographical film directed by Elia Kazan. The screenplay was written by John Steinbeck, using as a guide Edgcomb Pinchon's book, 'Zapata the Unconquerable', a fact that is not credited in the titles of the film...
, written by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
and starring Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
.
See also
- Pancho VillaPancho VillaJosé Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
- Emiliano ZapataEmiliano ZapataEmiliano Zapata Salazar was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the president Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force, the Liberation Army of the South, during the Mexican Revolution...
- Wallace BeeryWallace BeeryWallace 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...
- Let's Go With Pancho Villa - A 1936 Mexican film about Villa