Billy the Kid (1930 film)
| Billy the Kid | |
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| Directed by | King Vidor |
| Produced by | King Vidor Irving Thalberg |
| Written by |
Walter Noble Burns (book, The Saga of Billy the Kid) Wanda Tuchock (continuity) Laurence Stallings (dialogue) Charles MacArthur (additional dialogue) |
| Starring |
John Mack Brown Wallace Beery Kay Johnson |
| Music by |
Euphemia Allen Frederick Stahlberg |
| Cinematography | Gordon Avil |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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98 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Billy the Kid is a 1930 American Pre-Code film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid (Johnny Mack Brown, billed as "John Mack Brown") and Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery), the man who later killed him.
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.
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 as the widescreen version. The widescreen format did not get a commercial foothold with movie-going audiences until The Robe two decades later.
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.
Parts of the film 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.
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