Main Cast: Johnny Mack Brown, Wallace Beery, Kay Johnson, Karl Dane, Wyndham Standing
Release Year: 1930
Country: US
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
The tall and virile Johnny Mack Brown portrays the short and dyspeptic outlaw William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. Wallace Beery is more effectively cast as Pat Garrett, the sheriff who's sworn to bring in Billy dead or alive despite his grudging friendship for the young killer. Hardly the "homicidal moron" described by western historians, the movie's Billy has a certain amount of charm, though he's shown to be a cold-blooded killer when the opportunity arises. The film's ending was shot twice: One ending retained fidelity to the facts by having Garrett kill Billy, while the other denouement allowed Billy to ride into the sunset, as Garrett beatifically looked on. Over the protests of western purists, the second ending was used in the American release version, though the more tragic climax was seen by European audiences. Billy the Kid was originally released in a 70mm widescreen process called Realife; to avoid confusion with MGM's 1941 Billy the Kid, the earlier film has been retitled The Highwayman Rides for television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John Mack Brown ... William H. 'Billy the Kid' Bonney Wallace Beery ... Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett Kay Johnson ... Claire Randall Karl Dane ... Swenson Wyndham Standing ... John W. 'Jack' Tunston Russell Simpson ... Angus McSween
Blanche Friderici ... Mrs. McSween (billed as Blanche Frederici) Roscoe Ates ... Old Stuff (as Rosco Ates) Warner Richmond ... Bob Ballinger (billed as Warner P. Richmond)
James A. Marcus ... Colonel William P. Donovan (billed as James Marcus) Nelson McDowell ... Frank Hatfield
Jack Carlyle ... Mr. Dick Brewer
John Beck ... Butterworth Chris-Pin Martin ... Santiago (billed as Chris Martin)
Marguerita Padula ... Nicky 'Pinky' Whoosiz
Production
Directed by King Vidor, the movie was filmed in an early widescreen process called Realife, a 70mm format similar to Fox's Grandeur used for the lavish The Big Trail the same year.
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 only be viewed in a standard-width version that was filmed simultaneously. Widescreen did not get a foothold until The Robe two decades later.
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, 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 played Billy in the '50s in The Left Handed Gun; a television series was filmed in 1960 with the same theme called The Tall Men, with Barry Sullivan as Garrett and Clu Gulager as Billy; Sam Peckinpah directed a movie version in the '70s with James Coburn as Garrett; and Val Kilmer played Billy in Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, a lavish television version written by Gore Vidal and televised in 1989.
