Viva Villa!

Viva Villa was a hard luck movie. Filmed in part on location in Mexico City, during production, a plane carrying movie footage to Culver City crashed, requiring reshoots of the lost material. Wallace Beery, always an obnoxious star, demanded extra salary before he would appear again in the lost scenes. Lee Tracy, who originally played the part of the newspaper reporter, while on location was accused of getting drunk and urinating from his balcony room onto revelers celebrating the Mexican Independence Day. Tracy's action caused a national scandal. MGM managed to smuggle him out of the country. Then Louis B. Mayer fired Tracy from MGM and also got him blacklisted. Tracy's replacement, Stuart Erwin, was terrible as the reporter. Due to the delays, Viva Villa did not get released until after July 1, 1934, the date the Motion Picture Production Code took effect. MGM had to make changes to meet new code requirements, such as a scene where Fay Wray's character is whipped. Jack Conway took over for Howard Hawks as director to finish the production, which may explain the change in the movie pacing. The movie starts off fast, with a great scene of Villa and his riders taking over a town and Villa issuing swift justice as the new judge in town. Viva Villa never maintains that pace. But,one big plus, Leo Carillo as Villa's homicidal sidekick is great.

Good western movie with good all around production and performances.Very gritty and not too watered down in it's violent sequences.The only flaw here is the fictionalised version of the main characters story which is not what most people want from a profound historical icon as Pacho Villa.Surely he must have had a great true to life story to be told thru Hollywood without resorting to this over mythologised version.Also,the great actress Fay Wray was so underused here as well.Her makeup here was also terribly done,making her look like some kind of evil Vampiress.Only for fans of Mexican Westerns and big fans of the lead actors.....

While the story is a bit on the fanciful side, it still has a good period look, and some of photography and action sequences are excellent. Wallace Beery is not as hammy as usual and does a creditable job. Henry B. Walthall is good (as usual) as Francisco Madero and turns in the best performance of the movie. Interestingly enough, while some characters (Madero, Villa)actually use their real names, others such as John Reed, Victoriano Huerta and Rodolfo Fierro are fictionalized as Johnny Sykes, Pascal and Sierra, respectively. Perhaps the best thing about it is, despite when it was made it treats the subject matter with dignity and has a real respect for Mexico and Mexicans. Some of the shots look as though they were taken in the 1910s thanks to Jack Conway's and Howard Hawk's direction.

About the only thing that IS true is that Pancho Villa fought on the side of Madero in the Mexican revolution. But you've got Wallace Beery doing what Beery did best - playing an amoral character as endearingly as is possible.

The film shows Villa's history back to childhood, when apparently his father was whipped to death for daring to speak up for his rights to the local land baron. In fact, nobody today knows exactly who Villa's father was. He is shown robbing his way through Mexico until he meets Francisco Madera and becomes quite enamored of the little fellow, played by Henry B. Walthall. There was a General Pascual Orozco - probably the treacherous person Joseph Schildkraut was supposed to be playing - but his fate was not what was shown in the film.

So the big picture is that this is a completely fictional biography of Pancho Villa who changes from bandit to revolutionary officer to exile and ultimately to - president of Mexico???

The film tries to deflect blame from all of the things he does by claiming that Villa could not tell right from wrong and was thus confused when people tried to hold him to account. He creates a persistent and ultimately fatal enemy in Don Filipe when he causes the death of his sister, played by Fay Wray. I've seen several versions of what happens to Wray at Villa's hands, and all but one version is vague, probably because this film was released almost simultaneously with the inception of the production code. As for what actually happened to Villa after Madero - the truth would probably been more interesting although not as romantic as the film, and the truth would definitely have been harder to film for it would have involved the invasion of the US, a counter American incursion into Mexico, Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing, airstrikes, German espionage, and a stolen skull.

An interesting aside - Lee Tracy initially was playing the role of the field journalist rather than Stuart Erwin. Tracy had left Warner Brothers the year before for MGM. But his career with MGM was over when, while on location in Mexico, a drunken Tracy relieved himself on his balcony and unknowingly on the heads of several Mexican federales standing below.

After witnessing his father being whipped to death, grown-up Mexican bandit Wallace Beery (as Pancho Villa) becomes his country's revolutionary war hero. Boozy reporter Stuart Irwin (as Johnny Sykes) and peace-loving liberator Henry B. Walthall (as Francisco Madero) are important allies. Nurturing a taste for ladies and liquor, Mr. Beery marries Spanish spitfire Katherine De Mille (the real-life daughter of director Cecil B., as Rosita Morales). Later, Beery is tempted to add beautiful Fay Wray (as Teresa) to his harem.

The Mexican armies sing "La Cucaracha, la Cucaracha!" while future "East Side Kid" David Durand plays the bugle.

Beery's vanquished rival Joseph Schildkraut (as General Pascal) suffers a torturous fate, but dastardly Donald Cook (as Don Felipe) gets a last shot. MGM production values are high for this hammy, heavy-handed star vehicle, wisely introduced as "fictionalized." With "box office" Beery at the helm, "Viva Villa!" was a hit. It won critical acclaim at Venice, where Berry was the festival's "Best Actor". In a brief scene, the real-life son of early movie idol Francis X. Bushman plays a nerdy newspaperman ("Wallace Calloway").

****** Viva Villa! (4/10/34) Jack Conway ~ Wallace Beery, Stuart Irwin, Henry B. Walthall, Donald Cook