BILLY THE KID, in the fictionalized 1941 version, is played by the continually ragged-on Robert Taylor—more on that below—and is a Technicolor remake of a 1930 picture with Johnny Mack Brown as the Kid and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett. The oldie, directed by King Vidor, was one of the earliest go’s at 70mm and it did decent business, 54th. The ’41 run (over history) did considerably better, 13th place, grossing $6,300,000 against a cost to MGM of $1,411,000. Brian Donlevy played a version of Garrett, dubbed ‘Jim Sherwood’. Directed by David Miller (Flying Tigers, Sudden Fear, Lonely Are The Brave), the just-make-it-up script by Gene Fowler was, like the earlier fact-fudger, based off the 1925 book “The Saga Of Billy The Kid” by Walter Noble Burns, 340 entertaining pages of considerably wobbly accuracy.

“You know, things are going to happen in this country. Guns and shooting are going out. Law and order is on the march.”  Uh-huh…

New Mexico Territory, the 1880’s. Fast on the draw, chip on the shoulder, William Bonney (Taylor) finds himself at odds with childhood pal Jim Sherwood in a range war tussle that racks up casualties, some from William, who becomes a wanted man dubbed ‘Billy the Kid’. The script is bunkhouse bunkum but the camerawork copped an Oscar nomination, capturing wide-open locations in Utah and Arizona, including Monument Valley.

Donlevy, 40, finally gets to be on the justifiable homicide law side of the equation, after playing frontier no-goods in Barbary Coast, Jesse James, Destry Rides Again, Union Pacific, Allegheny Uprising and When The Dalton’s Rode. He’d don the duds eleven more times before he was thru, most notably in the excellent examples Canyon Passage and Cowboy. Other versions of Pat Garrett (1850-1908) would later be covered by, among others, Thomas Mitchell, Charles Bickford, John Dehner, George Montgomery, Glenn Corbett, James Coburn, Patrick Wayne, William Peterson, Bruce Greenwood and Ethan Hawke. For the drips who live to quibble, Pat Garrett was 6’5″, Donlevy 5’8″.

This was Taylor’s first western; he’d do eleven more over the next 25 years, among them aces Westward The Women, Devil’s Doorway and The Last Hunt. Popular with fans, the self-effacing Taylor rarely received praise from critics, and that pile-on snubbing persists among many modern blog sloggers who tiresomely regurgitate disses almost like it’s contractual. As the sage saying goes “Opinions are like…”(well, something everyone possesses) but it would be refreshing if that once in a Comanche moon laziness wasn’t a factor in fogging facts. If I lost a bullet for every review I’ve read that dings him for being 29 when Billy the Kid bought the farm at 21 my shoulder-crossed bandoleer would be down to the “save that last shot for yourself ” point. Do your research, amigos! Ejemplos—Paul Newman, 33 in The Left Handed Gun; Geoffrey Deuel, 27 in Chisum; Michael J. Pollard, 33 in Dirty Little Billy; Kris Kristofferson, 36 in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. For our shot of red-eye the closest to real was Emilio Estevez, 25 in Young Guns.  Taylor’s okay in the role: it’s that Winchester-holed script that’s the villain of the piece.

Slingin’ bull: Ian Hunter, Mary Howard (blah made-up love interest), Gene Lockhart, Lon Chaney Jr., Henry O’Neill, Guinn Williams, Frank Puglia, Grant Withers, Kermit Maynard, Ethel Griffies, Chill Wills, Connie Gilchrist and Ray Teal. 94 minutes.