O Vingador

In the tradition of Hollywood this version of the saga of Billy The Kid is as false as many others were including some more modern versions purported to be the real story. In fact this has one truly radical change I won't reveal.

Johnny Mack Brown who would shortly find his career niche in B westerns is William Bonney. Pat Garrett is played by Wallace Beery who plays it a bit more straight forward without the usual mugging for the camera.

Some of the other characters from the Lincoln County War are here as well. Kay Johnson supplies the love interest who tries to keep Bill Bonney on the straight and narrow.

This Billy The Kid is a decent western and does credit to both of its leads.

So OK this film has little to do with the real story of Billy the Kid, but director King Vidor gets the Lincoln County war (over land and cattle) pretty right. The location shooting for this talkie looks like New Mexico but not like the town of Lincoln. But Vidor captures the lawlessness and viciousness that drove the real-life events.

Johnny Mack Brown (a big star at MGM) was still finding his way in talkies when he was cast here (against Vidor's wishes) as Billy. Brown was 26 years old, the veteran and more than a dozen silent films (working with MGM's top stars like Greta Garbo, Marion Davies, and Joan Crawford), and coming off one big hit talkie (COQUETTE with Mary Picford) and one flop (MONTANA MOON with Crawford). His Alabama accent would soon consign him pretty much to hundreds of westerns in film and on TV til the mid-60s.

But here, Brown is a lanky, friendly, and brutally honest Billy who only kills when it's the right thing to do. His horror at the brutal murders of the unarmed McSween and Tunston drives his sense of right and honor. He's also sorta sweet on the would-be bride of Tunston (Kay Johnson).

Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery) likes Billy but becomes sheriff. He knows his duty but he also knows the Billy the Kid legend is baloney. There's a terrific, long sequence when Garrett and his bunch burn out Billy and his men and pick them off one by one as they run from the burning house. It's a chilling scene but one can't doubt the honesty of it.

Supporting players are an interesting mix here with Karl Dane as a cowboy who grunts a few unintelligible words, Roscoe Ates without his stutter, Russell Simpson, Frank Reicher, Chris-Pin Martin, and Blanche Frederici as the Widow McSween.

But Brown and Beery take center stage and they are a terrific team. Beery is more subdued here than in many of his later talkies, and his rapport with Brown seems real. Brown is so likable as Billy it almost doesn't matter that as biography this is the bunk. Brown's dancing sequence is a highlight.

There were few westerns ever made in the 1930s that had better casting than this film. Johnny Mack Brown is perfect as Billy the Kid, and Wallace Beery is just as perfect as his personable best friend, Pat Garrett. Of course, this movie has very little to do with reality or the actual fact about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, but audiences in the 1930s Depression era were not really concerned too much about reality; if anything, they wanted to leave reality behind for a few hours. This film fits that bill. The tale of the pursuit and capture of Billy the Kid has been done more than half a dozen times in Hollywood, but not with more empathy and humor than this version. Watch it and see for yourself.

This film was full of surprises for me, given its less-than-stellar reputation. One has to view it in terms of Hollywood myth-making and not as if it's an episode of `Biography.' King Vidor's camerawork is startlingly fluid - he uses camera movement and cutting very effectively. One of the biggest surprises was the brutality (not to be confused with gore) of certain scenes. The film also does an excellent job of creating a mood of futility. As for Johnny Mack Brown, at first I thought he was inappropriately cast. But as the movie continued, his characterization seemed more valid. And of course, the location shots are stunning. This film is underrated and overdue for critical re-evaluation. Perhaps that will happen if an archivist finds a widescreen print!

There are over fifty movies and television shows on the notorious Old West cattle-rustler and killer Billy The Kid. Two minor silent films were produced before director King Vidor tackled the subject of this young outlaw in cinema's first talking picture of William, released on October 1930, aptly called "Billy The Kid."

Based on the 1925 book by Walter Noble Burns, 'The Saga of Billy the Kid,' Vidor's plot loosely follows his involvement in the New Mexico Territory's 1880's Lincoln County War, pitting two rich ranchers feuding over land and cattle. MGM was pushing former college football star-turned-actor Johnny Mack Brown for major roles in an effort to make him one of Hollywood's top tier movie stars. Signing a five-year contract with the studio, Brown appeared as Mary Pickford's love interest in her first talkie, 1929's "Coquette." When producer Irving Thalberg assigned the actor as the lead in "Billy The Kid," Vidor was less than enthusiastic on the studio's choice. Within a year, with the ascendency of newcomer Clark Gable at MGM, Brown's career dropped as quickly as a plunging fiery zeppelin. "Billy the Kid" proved to be the peak of Brown's popularity. The actor turned to playing parts in Grade B westerns from the mid-1930s.

To make up for Vidor's disappointment, MGM slotted its rising star Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett. This was Beery's next movie after his Academy Award nominated Best Actor performance in 1930's "The Big House." The movie's plot pits Billy the Kid, an employee for English rancher Jack Tunston (Wyndham Standing), against Garret, the Deputy Sheriff who sided with town enforcer Colonel William Donovan (James Marcus).

MGM intended to make "Billy the Kid" into a major epic, rolling out its widescreen 70 mm format the studio labeled 'Realife.' The large screen was a variation of Fox Film's 'Grandeur' projection system. Vidor's film crew shot in the 70mm format and coverted most of the movie's prints into the 35mm standard image so the vast majority of theaters could show the motion picture. Those whom had the fortune to view the movie on the widescreen praised the film. The New York Times was bowled over by the large image, saying "The picture is chiefly noteworthy for this enlarged screen idea, for the story is merely a moderately entertaining." Besides some raised eyebrows on Brown's performance, the actor's laconic lasting words on the movie was the film was "a fine motion picture." MGM used the same identical plot in a 1941 color version with Robert Taylor as Billy The Kid.