The Bad Man (1923 film)

The Bad Man is an American silent film western drama with prominently featured satirical and comedic elements, directed by Edwin Carewe, who produced it for his own motion picture company and adapted the scenario from the play by Porter Emerson Browne which opened at Broadway's Comedy Theatre in August 1920 and ran for a very successful 342 performances, closing in June 1921. The film version, from Edwin Carewe Productions, was released by Associated First National Pictures on October 8, 1923, with the title role played by the star of the play's Broadway and touring productions, Holbrook Blinn, and the other leading parts filled by Jack Mulhall, Walter McGrail and Enid Bennett.

The titular character, a Mexican outlaw named Pancho Lopez, bore an undisguised resemblance, both in name and personality, to Pancho Villa, a pre-eminent Mexican Revolutionary general, who was much in the news before and during the play's run and whose assassination on July 20, two-and-a-half months before the film's release, appeared in all the headlines. Nine years earlier, a supporting actress in The Bad Man, Teddy Sampson, played one of Pancho Villa's two sisters in the 1914 Mutual Film feature, The Life of General Villa, with that film's co-director, Raoul Walsh, portraying the young Villa, and Pancho Villa starring as himself. A 2003 television film, And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, recreates the making of the long-lost 1914 feature, with Antonio Banderas as Villa and Alexa Davalos as Teddy Sampson.