Billy the Kid (1930 film)

1930 film by King Vidor

Billy the Kid

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

* October 18, 1930 (1930-10-18)

Running time

| 95 minutes
Country| United States
Language| English

Billy the Kid is a 1930 American pre-Code Western film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid (Johnny Mack Brown, billed as "John Mack Brown" during his brief career peak) and lawman Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery). In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.[1]

## Plot

[edit]

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

[edit]

* 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. Marcus as 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

[edit]

Directed by King Vidor, the movie was filmed in an early widescreen process called Realife, a 70mm format similar to Fox Film Corporation's Grandeur used for the lavish The Big Trail the same year.[2]

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 MGM's highest-paid actor while John Mack Brown was rechristened "Johnny Mack Brown" and demoted into B-Westerns after the studio reshot a film called Laughing Sinners with Brown originally cast as the leading man, replacing him with Clark Gable.

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

[edit]

The real Pat Garrett

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. Paul Newman played Billy in the '50s in The Left Handed Gun (for many years after Billy's death it was thought he was left-handed. This assumption was based on a photo that had been inadvertently flipped when printed. Billy was right handed); a television series was filmed in 1960 with the same theme called The Tall Man, with Barry Sullivan as Garrett and Clu Gulager as Billy; Sam Peckinpah directed a movie version, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in 1973 with James Coburn as Garrett and Kris Kristofferson as Billy; and Val Kilmer played Billy in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, a lavish television version written by Gore Vidal and televised in 1989.

## See also

[edit]

* List of American films of 1930

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Berlinale 2020: Retrospective "King Vidor"". Berlinale. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
2. ^ David Coles, "Magnified Grandeur, Widescreen 1926-1931"
3. ^ D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood came to town: a history of moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 9781423605874.

## External links

[edit]

* Billy the Kid at IMDb

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by King Vidor

* Hurricane in Galveston (1913)
* The Grand Military Parade (1913)
* The Lost Lie (1918)
* Bud's Recruit (1918)
* The Chocolate of the Gang (1918)
* Tad's Swimming Hole (1918)
* The Accusing Toe (1918)
* I'm a Man (1918)
* The Turn in the Road (1919)
* Better Times (1919)
* The Other Half (1919)
* Poor Relations (1919)
* The Family Honor (1920)
* The Jack-Knife Man (1920)
* The Sky Pilot (1921)
* Love Never Dies (1921)
* The Real Adventure (1922)
* Dusk to Dawn (1922)
* Conquering the Woman (1922)
* Peg o' My Heart (1922)
* The Woman of Bronze (1923)
* Three Wise Fools (1923)
* Wild Oranges (1924)
* Happiness (1924)
* Wine of Youth (1924)
* His Hour (1924)
* The Wife of the Centaur (1924)
* Proud Flesh (1925)
* The Big Parade (1925)
* La Bohème (1926)
* Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
* The Crowd (1928)
* The Patsy (1928)
* Show People (1928)
* Hallelujah (1929)
* Not So Dumb (1930)
* Billy the Kid (1930)
* Street Scene (1931)
* The Champ (1931)
* Bird of Paradise (1932)
* Cynara (1932)
* The Stranger's Return (1933)
* Our Daily Bread (1934)
* The Wedding Night (1935)
* So Red the Rose (1935)
* The Texas Rangers (1936)
* Stella Dallas (1937)
* The Citadel (1938)
* The Wizard of Oz (1939) (Kansas scenes)
* Northwest Passage (1940)
* Comrade X (1940)
* H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
* An American Romance (1944)
* Duel in the Sun (1946)
* On Our Merry Way (1948)
* The Fountainhead (1949)
* Beyond the Forest (1949)
* Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)
* Japanese War Bride (1952)
* Ruby Gentry (1952)
* Light's Diamond Jubilee (1954) (TV special, with 6 other directors)
* Man Without a Star (1955)
* War and Peace (1956)
* Solomon and Sheba (1959)
* Truth and Illusion (1964)
* The Metaphor (1980)

* v
* t
* e

Charles MacArthur

Plays written|

* Lulu Belle (1926)
* The Front Page (1928)
* Twentieth Century (1932)
* Jumbo (193
* Ladies and Gentlemen (1939)

Family|

* Helen Hayes (second wife)
* James MacArthur (son)
* John D. MacArthur (brother)
* J. Roderick MacArthur (nephew)

* v
* t
* e

Irving Thalberg

Producer|

* The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
* Merry-Go-Round (1923)
* His Hour (1924)
* He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
* The Unholy Three (1925)
* The Merry Widow (1925)
* The Tower of Lies (1925)
* The Big Parade (1925)
* Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)
* Torrent (1926)
* La Bohème (1926)
* Brown of Harvard (1926)
* The Road to Mandalay (1926)
* The Temptress (1926)
* Valencia (1926)
* Flesh and the Devil (1926)
* Twelve Miles Out (1927)
* The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927)
* London After Midnight (1927)
* The Crowd (1928)
* Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
* White Shadows in the South Seas (1928)
* Show People (1928)
* West of Zanzibar (1928)
* The Broadway Melody (1929)
* The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929)
* Voice of the City (1929)
* Where East Is East (1929)
* The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)
* The Hollywood Revue (1929)
* Hallelujah (1929)
* His Glorious Night (1929)
* The Kiss (1929)
* Anna Christie (1930)
* Redemption (1930)
* The Divorcee (1930)
* The Rogue Song (1930)
* The Big House (1930)
* The Unholy Three (1930)
* Let Us Be Gay (1930)
* Billy the Kid (1930)
* Way for a Sailor (1930)
* A Lady's Morals (1930)
* Inspiration (1931)
* Trader Horn (1931)
* The Secret Six (1931)
* A Free Soul (1931)
* Just a Gigolo (1931)
* The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)
* The Guardsman (1931)
* The Champ (1931)
* Possessed (1931)
* Private Lives (1931)
* Mata Hari (1931)
* Freaks (1932)
* Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)
* Grand Hotel (1932)
* Letty Lynton (1932)
* As You Desire Me (1932)
* Red-Headed Woman (1932)
* Smilin' Through (1932)
* Red Dust (1932)
* Rasputin and the Empress (1932)
* Strange Interlude (1932)
* Tugboat Annie (1933)
* Bombshell (1933)
* Eskimo (1933)
* Riptide (1934)
* The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
* The Merry Widow (1934)
* What Every Woman Knows (1934)
* No More Ladies (1935)
* China Seas (1935)
* Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
* A Night at the Opera (1935)
* Riffraff (1936)
* Romeo and Juliet (1936)
* Camille (1936)
* Maytime (1937)
* A Day at the Races (1937)
* Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)
* The Good Earth (1937)
* Marie Antoinette (1938)

Writer|

* The Trap (1922)

People|

* Norma Shearer (wife)
* Irving Thalberg Jr. (son)

Related|

* The Love of the Last Tycoon

* v
* t
* e

Billy the Kid

* Legend of Billy the Kid
* List of works about Billy the Kid

Films|

* Billy the Kid (1911)
* Billy the Kid (1930)
* Billy the Kid Returns (1938)
* Billy the Kid (1941)
* The Outlaw (1943)
* Son of Billy the Kid (1949)
* The Kid from Texas (1950)
* The Left Handed Gun (1958)
* Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966)
* Dirty Little Billy (1972)
* Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
* Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1985)
* Young Guns (1988)
* Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid (1989)
* Young Guns II (1990)
* The Kid (2019)

| Billy the Kid
film series
(1940-46)|

* Billy the Kid Outlawed (1940)
* Billy the Kid in Texas (1940)
* Billy the Kid's Gun Justice (1940)
* Billy the Kid's Range War (1941)
* Billy the Kid's Fighting Pals (1941)
* Billy the Kid in Santa Fe (1941)
* Billy the Kid Wanted (1941)
* Billy the Kid's Round-Up (1941)
* Billy the Kid Trapped (1942)
* Billy the Kid's Smoking Guns (1942)
* Law and Order (1942)
* Sheriff of Sage Valley (1942)
* The Mysterious Rider (1942)
* The Kid Rides Again (1943)
* Fugitive of the Plains (1943)
* Western Cyclone (1943)
* Cattle Stampede (1943)
* The Renegade (1943)
* Blazing Frontier (1943)
* Devil Riders (1943)
* Frontier Outlaws (1944)
* Valley of Vengeance (1944)
* The Drifter (1944)
* Rustlers' Hideout (1944)
* Wild Horse Phantom (1944)
* Oath of Vengeance (1944)
* His Brother's Ghost (1945)
* Thundering Gunslingers (1945)
* Shadows of Death (1945)
* Gangster's Den (1945)
* Fuzzy Settles Down (1945)
* Stagecoach Outlaws (1945)
* Border Badmen (1945)
* Fighting Bill Carson (1945)
* Prairie Rustlers (1945)
* Lightning Raiders (1945)
* Terrors on Horseback (1946)
* Gentlemen with Guns (1946)
* Ghost of Hidden Valley (1946)
* Prairie Badmen (1946)
* Overland Riders (1946)
* Outlaws of the Plains (1946)

|

TV|

* The Tall Man (1960)
* The Legend of Billy the Kid (1994)

Music|

* "The Ballad of Billy the Kid"
* Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (album)
* "Billy the Kid"
* "Las Cruces Jail"

Stage|

* Billy the Kid (ballet)

Comics|

* Billy the Kid (Charlton Comics)
* Billy the Kid (Lucky Luke)
* L'Escorte
* Billy the Kid's Old Timey Oddities

Literature|

* The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid

Art|

* Dick Brewer, Billy the Kid and the Regulators

Related|

* Brushy Bill Roberts
* Lincoln County Regulators

* Category

Authority control databases: National |

* United States

|

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