Hollywood has always had a fascination with crime and criminals. Outlaws make particularly appealing protagonists, since they are imagined living a glamorous life of adventure, crime, and romance. Desperados of the Old West are exciting antiheroes in a lawless period of American history.
The Latest
The first season of “Billy the Kid” included eight episodes. The first three episodes premiered on Epix on April 24, 2022. After that, one episode was released each week, with the last one airing on June 5. Michael Hirst created this series, acting as its writer and executive producer. In January 2023, the series was renewed for a second season, which is scheduled to premiere on Oct. 15. Although the series is being produced by two streaming services, Epix and MGM+, the much larger Amazon Prime Video also offers the first season of “Billy the Kid.”
The first episode starts when the future outlaw, 12-year-old Billy McCarthy (Jonah Collier), is traveling west with his Irish immigrant family. In the first few episodes, Billy’s father, Patrick (Joey Batey), dies, and his mother, Kathleen (Eileen O’Higgins), marries another man (Jamie Beamish). After her new husband proves to be a man of low moral character, Kathleen takes her two sons to Silver City, N.M., but she ends up dying at the end of the third episode, leaving the boys orphaned and devastated. In the next episode, Billy (now Tom Blyth), kills a man in self-defense and begins his life as an outlaw. He continues his criminal activities in the second half of the season, and the final episode ends on the eve of the Lincoln County War, when Billy and other outlaws are involved in a fierce feud between local cattle ranchers and farmers in New Mexico.
The Greatest
“Billy the Kid” (1941) was made by MGM. It wasn’t the first movie about Billy the Kid; it wasn’t even the first talking picture, since it was a remake of another MGM film from 1930. It was, however, the first Technicolor film about the bandit. It starred Robert Taylor as the title character with Brian Donlevy, Ian Hunter, Gene Lockhart, and Lon Chaney Jr. as the supporting cast. This version is a much less accurate telling of the story. It was based on the 1926 book “The Saga of Billy the Kid” by Walter Noble Burns, which immortalized him as a folk hero and remained the definitive biography for years.
This version of the story starts when Billy the Kid, also known as William Bonney (Taylor), is a grown man in the midst of his infamous career. In Lincoln, N.M., he helps a friend, Pedro Gonzalez (Frank Puglia), escape from jail after being wrongfully imprisoned. Soon after, Billy is hired by local cattle baron Dan Hickey (Lockhart) to scare the town farmers into joining his business by starting a fatal stampede. Billy happens to meet his childhood friend Jim Sherwood (Donlevy) during the stampede. Jim works for an honest rancher named Eric Keating (Hunter), so he arranges for Billy and Pedro to work for him, too. Billy enjoys living peacefully on the ranch for a while, growing very fond of Keating’s beautiful sister, Edith (Mary Howard). However, after Pedro is shot by one of Hickey’s men and Keating doesn’t return from his visit to the governor, Billy decides to take matters into his own hands, outside the law.
The first difference between the first season of the television series and the 1941 film is that the movie basically picks up the story where the series leaves off, with the Lincoln County War. In both versions, Billy has a Mexican friend and comrade, Segura (Guillermo Alonso) in the series and Pedro in the movie. Naturally, both Billys have a girl, but she’s a wholesome rancher’s sister in the old movie and the wanton moll of another bandit (Christie Burke) in the series. The series includes more historic figures and events, while the movie includes a lot of fictional characters and fictionalized events; however, both are romanticized Hollywood stories rather than historical biographies. Both involve the character of Pat Garrett, the lawman who killed Billy, earlier in his story, which is completely inaccurate, since they met in Lincoln County. The series features Pat (Alex Roe) as Billy’s fellow outlaw in the Jesse Evans gang, and the movie renamed him Jim Sherwood and made him a law-abiding cowboy and Billy’s childhood friend.
The Wild West of Hollywood
When a character gets shot, you don’t need to see a lot of blood to know he was killed. If a man and woman are attracted to each other, you don’t need graphic scenes of passion to indicate that they are interested in one another. Furthermore, a villain, or antihero, if you prefer, doesn’t need to commit dozens of atrocities onscreen for the audience to understand that he is a wrongdoer.In movies made under the Production Code, minimal crime and sin was shown onscreen, but every movie featured a very strong moral message, ending with the audience’s understanding that “evil is wrong and good is right.”
Code films about outlaws, like “Billy the Kid,” are very important to study for a deeper understanding of how to effectively yet safely depict outlaws. Do we sympathize with Billy for straying down the wrong path? Yes. Do we think he was justified or right in his actions? No. Unlike modern entertainment, such as this new streaming series, Code films never leave you wondering whether murder is justifiable.
