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Billy the Kid Media
Much has been written about Billy the Kid starting with dime novels. He has also been the subject of many songs, books, films and videos.
Songs
Billy the Kid song by Tex Ritter
Videos
Billy the Kid Young Guns tribute (filmed in Cerrillos, New Mexico)
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Books
Ballow, Willard, Billy The Kid, A Graphic History (Fort Worth: Owlhoot Trail Publishing Co., 1998).
Ballow (1930-99), a retired Lockheed Aircraft illustrator, imbued this decade-long labor of love -- a hardcover, coffee table book he admitted was an oversimplified biographical history of Billy the Kid -- with 32 of his illustrations, most of them maps. But his bird's-eye closeups of 1878 Lincoln and 1881 Old Fort Sumner, especially the Weatherford, Texas, native's cutaways of the McSween home, the Lincoln County Courthouse, and the Maxwell House, provide great visual references and an instant familiarity with those places that most history books can't.
Bell, Bob Boze, The Illustrated Life & Times of Billy The Kid (Cave Creek AZ: Boze Books, 1992 and Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1996).
When Bell (1946- ), an enormously talented artist and illustrator who became publisher of True West Magazine in 1999, first produced this attractively illustrated biographical history of Billy the Kid in 1992, it radiated boldness, flair, and swagger. The limited edition quickly sold out. This second edition (70 pages longer and with 400 more images) struts, too. Thanks to a trove of archival photos, pithy quotes, and several priceless sidebars, this Kingman, Arizona, native and lifelong Billy buff took a one-theme magazine format, infused it with well-researched text and visual detail, gave it a graphic novel look, and elevated it into something special. If you've hankered for a dazzling, adult-aimed, illustration-saturated book about the Kid that informs as effortlessly as it entertains, this is it. Visually it rocks.
Gardner, Mark L., To Hell On A Fast Horse: Billy The Kid, Pat Garrett & The Epic Chase To Justice In The Old West (New York: William Morrow, 2010).
When Cascade, Colo., author Gardner (1960- ) first wanted to write his version of yet another biography of Billy the Kid, his agent wisely suggested this dual biography of the young outlaw and his nemesis, Pat Garrett, the relentless Lincoln County Sheriff who tracked him down twice, capturing him and hauling him off to jail the first time, and then surprising and killing him the second time. Gardner's lean, narrative style and eye for detail display a fine horsemanship. But his exhaustive research delivers saddlebags full of fascinating new, minor details about the final seven months of the Kid's life and the last 27 years of Garrett's. He plunges into their lives beginning in late December 1880, as Garrett and his men place the shackled Kid aboard a Santa Fe-bound train. He wisely downplays their earlier years and skirts the bottomless quicksand of the Lincoln County War. Their conversations (which came verbatim from Territorial and national newspapers and eyewitness accounts) bring the vivid moments of the hunted and hunter to life. Gardner adds flesh and muscle to Garrett's biography, which hasn't been touched since 1973. He also fingers the man he feels was Garrett's killer. Gardner's time-saving, new-technology approach to research (he bought keystroke Web access to tens of thousands of issues of hundreds of archived national newspapers) and his forsaking the cradle-to-grave approach of typical biographies, let him showcase his dual biography like storyboards for a Hollywood film proposal.
Furthermore, Gardner's 36 pages of footnotes glisten like bars of gold. They reveal (thanks to his Web site resource), new sources of information about the men's lives that nobody before him had found. They also recognize New Mexico's newspaper articles from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s as an often overlooked, rich resource. His is not only the newest book about the Kid and Garrett. It may be the best of the bunch.
Garrett, Pat F., The Authentic Life Of Billy, The Kid, The Noted Desperado Of The Southwest, Whose Deeds Of Daring & Blood Made His Name A Terror In New Mexico, Arizona & Northern Mexico (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).
Too many authors way back when regarded this failed book by one-term Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett (1850-1908) and his lap dog, ex-newspaperman (the New York Herald, among others) Marshall Ashmun Upson (1828-94), as an unassailable resource about Billy the Kid. The alcoholic Upson's heady brew of hearsay, gossip, and biased newspaper accounts, pickled in florid prose, permeates the first 15 chapters. Garrett's no-nonsense, first-person narrative rides hard over the final eight. The book's surprisingly sympathetic toward the Kid. It's also remained in print since 1927 (when renowned Lincoln County War authority Maurice G. Fulton edited it).
Despite Upson's carelessness, the book has merit (thanks to Garrett's belated involvement), and patient Kid scholars can harvest credible information from it. The original book's a collector's item. When the Santa Fe New Mexican first published it in April, 1882, the sale price was $1.50. By 1907-08, a peach basket full of the books stood on the sidewalk outside the New Mexican office; the sale price had dropped to 25 cents. By 1957, one of those first editions was worth $250 (according to William Keleher). By the summer of 1996, American Cowboy Magazine reported that one of those exceedingly rare copies had been sold at private auction earlier that Spring for a staggering $14,950.
Jacobsen, Joel, Such Men As Billy the Kid: The Lincoln County War Reconsidered (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
Jacobsen (1959- ), a longtime state attorney in Santa Fe, is diamond-bright in his defense of Frank Warner Angel (1845-1906), the U. S. Justice Dept.'s special investigator who probed the conduct of several Federal officials involved in the Lincoln County War. In New Mexico from mid-April to early Oct., 1878, Angel persisted down lines of questioning that unearthed seemingly trivial details that (insists Jacobsen), after comparing them to other statements, became pretty good indicators as to who was truthful. One of Angel's 43 depositions was with Billy the Kid. Jacobsen also praises the Territorial newspapers as resources. He doesn't mince words as he puts everything under his unforgiving microscope: the allegations, charges, indictments, warrants, jurisdictions, and trials involving the Kid and other Lincoln County notables. He's blunt in assessing the characters, too. Jacobsen also found reading the transcript of the Dudley Court of Inquiry "…grimly amusing," and the notion of something as noble as a fair trial back then as akin to fantasy. There are other surprises, too. Fortunately he confines his opinions to the bailiwick of territorial law rather than lets them wander outside it, which would have trivialized his book as revisionist history.
Keleher, William A., Violence In Lincoln County, 1869-81, A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957).
Keleher (1886-1972), while a successful, practicing Albuquerque lawyer, pioneered this first important history book of the Lincoln County War in 1957. His fourth New Mexico history book, it's the one for which he's best remembered. He held the conflict at arm's length and didn't take sides. Keleher poured over Billy the Kid researcher Robert Mullin's incomparable archives (which would've been infused by contributions from the late Maurice G. Fulton). He also sifted through New Mexico Territorial Governors' Samuel Axtell's and Lew Wallace's papers, Federal and state court records, and various Territorial newspapers' articles. His diligence paid off. While these tracts were inserted at length at the expense of narrative flow, Keleher compensated for them by also providing his readers end-of-chapter Notes & Profiles sections that brim with detailed biographies of 50 major and minor figures involved in the violence, spiced with the occasional telling vignette.
Metz, Leon C., Pat Garrett, The Story Of A Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973).
Parkersburg, West Virginia, native Metz (1931- ), a longtime, respected El Paso author and historian, produced this full-length biography of Patrick Floyd Garrett, the fearless, unrelenting Lincoln County Sheriff who is best remembered for having kept his Nov., 1880, campaign promise to track down and capture Billy the Kid, and haul him off to jail. Later, after having moved to Uvalde, Texas., Garrett was wooed back to track down the killers of Judge Albert J. Fountain and his son. Then he was discarded again. Metz's careful, sympathetic, scholarly exploration of the manhunter, husband, father, and (among other things), rancher and developer, reveals a dedicated, feared and respected law enforcement officer who was tireless in the field when it came to going after somebody. It wasn't Garrett's fault the Fountains' 1896 disappearance went unsolved. Eventually beaten down by repeated business failures and abandoned by the political machinery and many of his friends, he became an undisciplined, hard-drinking, high-strung, temperamental man who desperately wanted to move himself and his wife and eight children out of poverty during what turned out to be the final, dark years of his life. Garrett deserved a better life, especially from a New Mexico that benefited from his name, reputation, and dogged bravery.
Miller, Jay, Billy The Kid Rides Again, Digging For The Truth (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2005).
Miller (1938- ), a Lordsburg, N. M. native who grew up in nearby Deming and Silver City, was spoon-fed on Billy the Kid (his nearby Las Cruces maternal grandparents and Pat Garrett's widow were once around-the-corner neighbors). Since 1987, the Santa Fe-based, syndicated newspaper columnist estimates he's written 5,000 weekly columns. Some of them covered New Mexico history. So when three New Mexico law enforcement officers decided to reopen the 122-year-old case of the Kid using modern criminal investigation methods and forensic science, Miller began to track the effort (and the possible public expense to do so). These columns, which appeared in 15-20 newspapers from mid-June, 2003, to early October, 2004, cover the three-ring circus of events that unfolded, ranging from the officers' petitions to dig up the Kid's and his mother's remains for DNA testing (and the as-expected Fort Sumner and Silver City backlashes); to the early support of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; to the ramifications of a proposed pardon for the Kid (any one of the three proposed pardons over the decades could've undercut his draw as a tourism attraction). As expected, the protracted modern-day case has withered. But it generated lots of publicity (and a film documentary that premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival), proving that the Kid, even what remains of his dessicated bones, can still rile folks up.
Mullin, Robert N., ed., Maurice G. Fulton’s History Of The Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968).
Mullin (1893-1982), a long renowned Billy the Kid expert, never authored his own book about the Lincoln County War. But he did befriend Maurice G. Fulton (1877-1955), the little, stoop-shouldered, bespectacled New Mexico Military Institute professor who spent many a Saturday afternoon during his 33 years in Roswell being chauffered about in an old Ford (he didn't drive) as he slowly but steadily tracked down Lincoln County War minutiae and gathered facts about the war and the Kid. Fulton, who chaired the English Department from 1922 until his 1948 retirement, and whom Fulton student (and NMMI graduate) Paul Horgan (a later two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author) once described as "…endlessly thorough, fair, objective, and…tireless", amassed an archives that were at once voluminous and unassailable. When Col. Fulton (the title was honorary) died unexpectedly of a heart attack, he was widely recognized at the time as the foremost authority on the Lincoln County War (and by extension, the Kid). Like Mullin, he'd been too busy to author a book. Fulton had been too helpful over the years, sharing his research graciously and willingly with noted Kid experts J. Evetts Haley, Philip J. Rasch, William Keleher, Ramon Adams, and Mullin (all of whom benefited). Mullin (one of Fulton's pallbearers) worked his way through Fulton's considerable archives to write the book his close friend never did. It's a collaborative effort of sorts, but more than that. Unlike Keleher, whose book about the Lincoln County War book had been published 11 years earlier, Mullin's (and in a sense Fulton's) book benefits from the countless times in the 1920s and 1930s Fulton had spent systematically hunting down and interviewing those scores of elderly eyewitnesses. The book is a gold mine of information. One often-overlooked factotum in it, for example, concerns how the Kid obtained a pistol and escaped the Lincoln jail, killing his guards. Fulton (via Mullin) insists the Kid didn't wrestle guard James Bell's gun away from him; a Judge Lucius Dils investigated the matter and found that Bell's pistol was still in its holster, fully loaded, when Bell's body was removed from the courthouse yard. Upon publication, Fulton's and Mullin's pioneering work became the second most important book about the war and the Kid. Reading it, though, leaves a lingering sense that Fulton (had he lived to write it) might've made it into something even better.
Nolan, Frederick, The Lincoln County War, A Documentary History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
The foremost authority today on the Kid and the Lincoln County War isn't an American at all, but a Brit who cut his teeth on another Brit, Lincoln merchant John Henry Tunstall, in the 1950s. Nolan (1931- ) has spent the last 50 years of his life pursuing, verifying, and gathering information about the Lincoln County War. His articles helped introduce him to the Tunstall family's treasury of letters (between the only son, the modestly wealthy parents whose approval he sought, and his two cherished sisters), which in turn led to Nolan's revealing 1965 biography, The Life & Death of John Henry Tunstall. After that, he slowly began amassing voluminous material for his magnum opus, this massive (607-page) work on everything and everyone involved in the Lincoln County War. It's a bullet-tough Bible worthy of its subtitle. Its 38 well-researched and carefully crafted chapters merge into an ever-deepening and widening stream that builds toward an inevitable, roiling, climax. The majority of Nolan's 84 archival photographs haven't been published before (another plus). His 98 cradle-to-the-grave biographical sketches alone were worthy of a small book. Expanding upon Robert Mullin's nearly 40-year-old chronology of events, Nolan's 26-page chronology begins in the early 1800s and ends in July, 1881. He also provides a revealing look into Tunstall's account book (beginning in March, 1877). Nolan's documentary history is a bravura achievement. Not only is it a worthy addition to everyone's personal library of Billy the Kid books. It stands and delivers as a superb resource tool. Whereas many lifelong historians might've stopped and rested on this landmark book's well-deserved laurels, the indefatigable Nolan is like the Energizer bunny. He just keeps going and going.
Nolan, Frederick, The West Of Billy The Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
British author Nolan took an archival-postcards-from-the-West approach to presenting the places that were familiar to Billy the Kid and many other Lincoln County War notables in this impressive 350-page book. One thing is certain. Judging from the outward appearances of the many buildings, homes and ranches in the archival photographs, frontier conditions (and creature comforts) were primitive at best. So much for the glamorous Old West. If you want to imagine Lincoln the way the Kid saw it, let your mind's eye remove all the trees, shrubs, make the street wide, dirt, and concave (imagine a good rainfall), and make it as austere in appearance as possible. The Kid sure did range far and wide. Nolan's text and photographs blanket Billy the Kid Territory (a region bounded by Santa Fe and Las Vegas on the north; Tascosa, Texas, and Los Portales, New Mexico, on the east; Carlsbad (Seven Rivers) and La Mesilla on the south; and Camp Grant, Arizona, and Silver City on the west). In addition, Nolan presents individuals, couples, families, and other folks in updated biographical sketches and more than 250 never-before-seen photographs. Many of those photos have an intimate, family photo album feel to them. Nolan's contemporary photographs help give the book a then-and-now feel. He's also not afraid to admit he's unsure as to exactly where Buckshot Roberts's epic April, 1878, gun battle at Blazer's Mill occurred (Roberts may have taken cover in the Blazer family's now boarded-up adobe home). Nolan prizes accuracy. All he's sought, all along, is the documented truth.
Nolan, Frederick, The Billy The Kid Reader (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).
British author Nolan's latest contribution to the small library of Billyana is this attractive anthology of 26 essays that helped create the legend of Billy the Kid, then give shape to the Kid's life. His authoritative prefaces to each one provide contexts for the essays and also bridge the gaps between them. Nolan arranges them in order of original publication, starting with the first dime-novel (on newsstands less than six weeks after the Kid's death). Part One (the legend) includes selections from early books by cowboy-turned-Pinkerton-detective Charlie Siringo (who always regretted missing out at joining Garrett's posse in Decembe, 1880), White Oaks novelist Emerson Hough (a Garrett friend), and author Walter Noble Burns's 1923 interview of Billy's sweetheart, the coy, divorced Paulita Maxwell Jaramillo. Part Two (the life) begins with a seminal 1952 article by relentless Billy researchers Robert N. Mullin and Philip J. Rasch (the duo who found William Antrim's and Mrs. Catherine McCarty's Santa Fe marriage license). Nolan's firm guidance lets readers feel the seismic shift in the way the Kid was once perceived and presented, from a mythic figure of early fawning romanticism to a young man whose live remains fiercely resistant to documented realism.
Rasch, Philip J., Gunsmoke In Lincoln County (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw & Lawman History, Inc./University of Wyoming Press, 1997). Rasch, Philip J. & Radbourne, Allan J. Trailing Billy The Kid (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw & Lawman History, Inc./University of Wyoming Press, 1995). Rasch, Philip J., Warriors Of Lincoln County (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw & Lawman History, Inc./University of Wyoming Press, 1998).
Maverick, irascible researcher Rasch (1909-95) was disciplined, meticulous, and tireless when he went after Billy the Kid. Beginning in the late 1940s, he doggedly pursued the factota and minutiae that added to our understanding of not only the Kid, but his friends and foes. He also kept poking away at the soft underbelly of the Lincoln County War. Rasch distinguished himself and his work by assiduously citing his sources (among them, himself). Although (like Mullin) he never wrote a book, Rasch did publish several impressive eye-opening articles over the next three decades. Thanks to the National Association for Outlaw & Lawman History and the University of Wyoming, 66 of them (published from 1949 to 1987) were organized and republished. Each of these three out-of-print books brims with fascinating anecdotes about the Kid and his cronies, and the folks in and near Lincoln who tried to help or hinder them, or who did the best they could to stay out of their way.
Simmons, Marc, Stalking Billy The Kid (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006).
Simmons (1937- ), a nationally renowned, Cerrillos, New Mexico-based author of nearly 50 history books, sifted through 1,500 of his syndicated weekly history columns (he's been writing them since 1978), for these 17 short, simple, anecdotal pieces about Billy the Kid. The best of these recounts those times when folks you've never heard of -- mostly newcomers and travelers -- had met the Kid out there somewhere and lived to write home about it. Their first impressions and conversational snippets lend subtlety to Billy's persona. Simmons's last chapter is his best. It isn't short and simple or one of his past columns. It's an original. Entitled "A Grave Question: Where is Billy Buried?", Simmons does yeoman's work in recounting the long history of not only what happened to the old military post (1862-68), but also to the Kid's grave in the nearby old post cemetery. He goes beyond the point where other Kid authors and historians have ended, the Kid's July 15, 1881, burial. Simmons pieces together the history of the Kid's grave, beginning just days after the Kid's burial. He blankets its becoming a tourist attraction in 1926, past the eventual thefts of the Kid's granite footstone in 1950 and 1981, and the attempts to disinter and rebury the Kid's remains in 1941 and 1962, to the recent failed attempt to unearth his bones for DNA testing. Simmons agrees with the majority of historians, that the Kid's bones still lie under or near where his steel-caged headstone and footstone are today. Through all the gravesite's many trails, the plot remains the most famous and most visited in New Mexico.
Tatum, Stephen, Inventing Billy The Kid: Visions Of The Outlaw In America, 1881-1991 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).
Tatum (1949- ), an English professor at the University of Arkansas at the time (he teaches at the University of Utah now), explores the Kid as a symbol of an emerging and morphing America during the hundred years since his death. He argues that there have been several Kids that have ridden surreptitiously across society's collective imagination, from the first of the nickel and dime novels published a month after his July, 1881, death, to the Western films of the 1970s. The Kid was a romantic hero, then a shape-shifter, then a legend and a folkloric figure. Each Kid was true in his time, whether presented or perceived as an archetype or as satisfying a societal need. Tatum's scholarly, sophisticated approach is divided into three parts: Discovering the Outlaw; Inventing the Outlaw; and Understanding the Outlaw & His Interpreters. Part Two consumes four of the book's eight chapters. Tatum's first chapter, "The Kid Still Rides: An Introduction to Billy the Kid's Legend & Bibliography", still does a better job for critical thinkers today than any Kid book before or since.
Tuska, Jon, Billy The Kid, A Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).
This second edition of Tuska's popular bio-bibliography isn't a glove compartment-sized handbook, but its one-size-fits-all approach makes it a handy single reference. This updated, revised and expanded edition includes those books and films that came out since the first edition of his book was published in 1986. Tuska, a Portland, Oregon, Western author and film critic, presents as concisely as possible (in 108 pages) the life and death of Billy the Kid. Then, in a series of scholarly essays, he carefully and critically reviews the Kid as interpreted and presented by several distinguished authors and historians; as presented in various works of fiction; and as presented in 44 Western films. Tuska's not afraid to point out the numerous occasions when various emperors aren't wearing any clothes. He also delivers a critical essay about the making of the legend of the Kid. If you wondered if anyone's riding herd over the many authors of Kid and Lincoln County War books that have been published since the 1950s, look no further. Tuska's the guy.
Utley, Robert M., Billy The Kid, A Short & Violent Life (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
Longtime author Utley (1929- ), a national renowned Late 19th Century U. S. military authority and an unabashed Custerphile, struck gold when he crafted this acclaimed Kid biography in 1989 as the Kid's star was cresting, thanks to the clamor of the folks in Fort Sumner, New Mexico Some of them had formed the Billy the Kid Outlaw Gang and begun to trump the claims of tiny Hico, Texas, which was trying to entice visitors to its shoestring-budget museum about its most famous resident, Kid wannabe Ollie M. Roberts, who died in 1950. Utley had already telegraphed his Kid biographical intentions years before. He'd already authored two books in 1986 and 1987, Four Fighters Of Lincoln County (which had Kid, Alexander McSween, Lew Wallace, and Nathan Dudley biographies) and High Noon In Lincoln (which, among other things, expanded upon their roles in the Lincoln County War). Utley's credentials (he once was Chief Historian and Asst. Director of the National Park Service), his best-selling 1989 book, his numerous television interviews, and his conclusion that the Kid was laid to rest in Old Fort Sumner's onetime post cemetery on July 15, 1881, lent credence to Fort Sumner's and New Mexico's position in the matter. His expertise in frontier military matters was a boon in his Kid biography, especially in exposing pompous Fort Stanton commander Dudley's meddling, pivotal role in the Lincoln County War. Utley carefully sifted through various sources, evaluated them for credibility, and wove a compelling biography about the Kid. He also laid bare the many vendettas (and the motives behind them) that took place in Lincoln County, and the times when whiskey and firearms were a far too frequent and often deadly combination. In his final chapter, Utley touches upon America's stubborn ambivalence toward violence. Although out of print today, his book remains a must-read.
Wallis, Michael, Billy The Kid: The Endless Ride (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007).
Wallis (1945- ), a talented Tulsa, Oklahoma, author and renowned Route 66 historian, takes his turn at crafting the latest Billy the Kid biography. Readers of the earlier books by Keleher, Mullin/Fulton, Metz, Utley, and Nolan won't find anything new and earth-shattering in Wallis's book. Instead they might appreciate Wallis's steady hand, strong narrative flow, turn of a phrase and colorful, sagebrush vernacular make this latest Kid biography a smooth read. Everything's been polished to a high sheen. Wallis also salts his work with the findings and suggestions of several Kid experts who'd gathered for a three-day Billy The Kid Symposium in 1989. Some of them have since passed away, which parenthetically poses a question. From where will the next generation of Kid and Lincoln County War researchers come? He gives the Kid's "endless ride" (it's in the title) short shrift. A mere two-page epilogue, it's a short, disappointing ride in the saddle. Nevertheless, it could still be a book launch point. Maybe someone someday will tackle the tough task of researching and writing a fresh Kid biography from the overlooked Hispanic side. But this is quibbling. For those folks who've never (or don't want to) read any of the earlier Kid books, Wallis's biography, still available in bookstores today, will do nicely.
Weddle, Jerry, Antrim Is My Father’s Name, The Boyhood Of Billy The Kid (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1993).
Until Weddle, a Prescott Valley, Arizona, historian, methodically researched the 22 months of Billy the Kid's southeast Arizona years (1875-77), little was known of them beyond the Kid Antrim who shot and killed a bullying blacksmith. He fleshes out the Kid, a ranch hand who graduated to the serious crime of horse theft. That's when he got arrested again, was jailed again, and escaped (again). Weddle, in this important monograph, also delves into the Kid's boyhood years (1873-75), when he was still a teenaged Henry McCarty, who became motherless and was left to a surrogate family by his often indifferent stepfather in rough-and-tumble Silver City. After plugging the blacksmith, he fled back to southwest New Mexico. Weddle covers the Kid's furtive, month-long presence (until late September, 1877) in Grant County, when the Kid realized he was an easily recognizable fugitive on the lam. After saying goodbye to his brother, stepfather, his British school teacher (on whom he had a crush), his mother's friends, and some of his former schoolmates, he fled east into Lincoln County and his destiny. Like his peers, historian Weddle includes in his book a wealth of vignettes in an extensive Notes section.
Wilson, John P., Merchants, Guns & Money, The Story Of Lincoln County & Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987).
Wilson, a longtime Las Cruces historian and author, deserves a tip of the Stetson after having chosen a path that many of his peers had refused to take. He gamely traced the many discontinuous, oft-obscured, smoke-and-mirrors money trails of the Lincoln County War. Its rival merchants, you see, didn't want anybody reading their books. Outwardly they kept up appearances, held profit and loss statements close to the vest, and worked the treacherous give-and-take game of credit in the form of promissory notes. Some tradeouts were verbal on purpose; whatever marginally moral (or legal) job didn't need to be put in writing, wasn't. Despite Jimmy Dolan's widow having angrily disposed of her merchant husband's papers decades before (she was enraged by Walter Noble Burns's 1926 book), Wilson considered these obstacles, but rose to the challenge. He revealed that Lincoln County's business affairs in the 1870s were one big snakepit. He digs up the numbers and uses them to shed light on the county's businesses, professions, ethnicities, incomes, markets, and an evolving economic profile. Wilson uses them in his concise narrative to ferret out the underlying understanding of the Lincoln County War: the troubles can be traced to poor or nonexistent cash flow. Although his history of Lincoln County ranges from the 1850s to the 1930s, Wilson uses his last chapters (covering the history of the village and county of Lincoln from 1882 to 1939) to give the 1878 Lincoln County War an afterglow. They're a bonus. The relaxed layout of his book (and greater art to copy ratio) breathes with several archival photographs of postwar Lincoln (some of them published nowhere else). This is must reading for any true student of Lincoln County and the Lincoln County War who appreciates Porterhouse steak-style research. It's also the kind of book the Internal Revenue Service might've written, had anyone in that Federal agency Wilson's talent, drive, scholarship and discipline to do so. It was underappreciated in its time. Long out of print, Wilson's book is still a must read.
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Film & Documentaries
Billy the Kid in Film
There have been at least 70 films about Billy the Kid since 1911. Most of them are Hollywood Westerns. Some are recent documentaries. A few are foreign films. There's also the 1960-62 NBC television series, The Tall Man, in which Barry Sullivan played the 6' 5" Pat Garrett, and Clu Gulager was the Kid.
Here's a small saddlebag of some of the 70 films about Billy The Kid since 1911. Rent or buy them, or try to catch some of them on television. Nuke some popcorn, grab something to drink, kick back, and relax. Most of these can be enjoyed at home, where it can be Saturday morning matinee at the Bijou all over again.
Billy the Kid (MGM, 1930), starring Johnny Mack Brown (as Billy the Kid) and Wallace Beery (as Pat Garrett). Directed by Louis B. Mayer's most eccentric director, King Vidor (90 minutes). Partly filmed near Gallup, N. M. (the Kid's capture was filmed at Kit Carson's Cave, 11 miles northeast of Gallup). Based on Walter Noble Burns's 1926 best-selling novel, this dated, black-and-white sound film makes you smile and wince. European audiences got the Kid's death; American theatergoers saw the Kid escape to Mexico. Vidor, whose directorial career spanned a Hollywood-record 77 years, is famous for something else. In February, 1939, after Victor Fleming had left MGM's The Wizard of Oz to direct Gone With The Wind, team-player Vidor was brought in to mop up. He directed all the Kansas sequences, including Judy Garland's famous "Over the Rainbow" number, but got no credit for his 10-day stint. Although Billy The Kid didn't live up to MGM's expectations, Vidor's film backdrops (in New Mexico's Red Rock Country) established the nearby city of Gallup as a B-Western film capital from 1930 to 1964.
Billy the Kid Returns (Republic Pictures, 1938), starring Roy Rogers (as Billy the Kid), and Smiley Burnette (as Frog Millhouse). Young Cincinnati native Leonard Slye, in only his second Republic Picture under the stage name of Roy Rogers (he didn't legally change his name until 1942), appears as the Kid in prologue. Then, after singing a song as he rides into town, Rogers is mistaken for the Kid. So he sings another song that gets him off the hook. The elements of the tried-and-true Roy Rogers formula Western are introduced, from the comic sidekick (Burnett) and Rogers's seven songs (he'd already formed the legendary Western singing group "The Sons of the Pioneers"); to the pretty, young heroine who always got sung to or saved, and Rogers's famous golden palomino, Trigger, "the Smartest Horse in the Movies". Early on, before Rogers's film career soared, the "King of the Cowboys" acquired the merchandising rights to his name and image. The shrewd move boosted his popularity and ensured his financial success. Billy The Kid Returns (58 minutes), a hit, opened the door to a passel of B-Westerns about Billy.
Billy the Kid (MGM, 1941), a lavish Technicolor remake of Vidor's black-and-white 1930 film of the same name, starred Robert Taylor (as Billy the Kid) and Brian Donlevy (as Jim Sherwood). Despite the sometimes stunning backdrop of Monument Valley, this 95-minute film seemed like déjà vu. Taylor played an adult Kid who (unlike the real Kid) understood himself in a greater context, and realized he was a speedbump on the road to progress. The movie, a big hit, vindicated MGM.
The Outlaw (United Artists, 1943), starring Jack Beutel (as Billy the Kid), Thomas Mitchell (as Pat Garrett), Jane Russell (as Rio), Thomas Mitchell (as Pat Garrett), and Walter Huston (as Doc Holliday). Directed by Howard Hughes (126 minutes). Partly filmed near Flagstaff, Ariz., and completed in Feb., 1941, it's notorious for the wrong reasons. First, Hughes invented the world's first underwire bra for the voluptuous Russell to wear (finding it uncomfortable, she used her own). Second, the film skirted a morals charge. Finally, Hughes wouldn't let Beutel out of his contract so that Howard Hawks could direct him as John Wayne's adopted adult son in a 1948 Western film. So Hawks turned to his second choice, a young unknown, Montgomery Clift. Hawks's film, Red River, became a Western classic. Hughes's film, meanwhile, was a success in limited release in 1943. Withdrawn until all the GIs had returned home at war's end, then widely released in 1946, it was boffo at the box office.
Four Faces West (MGM, 1948), starring Charles Bickford (as Pat Garrett), Joel McCrea (as the Billy the Kid character, Ross McEwen), and Frances Dee (as Fay Hollister). Directed by Alfred E. Green (90 minutes). Based on White Oaks, N. M., author Eugene Manlove Rhodes's 1926 magazine article "Paso Por Aqui" in the Saturday Evening Post, the film (whose characters are sympathetic to the Kid and Garrett) is a heartwarming tale about the Kid, fleeing from Garrett, stoping to tend to a sick man. It was filmed near Gallup, N. M., and El Morro National Monument (56 miles southeast of Gallup). Since Rhodes and Garrett had been friends, readers and viewers were left to wonder how much of the real Kid and Garrett lurked in Rhodes's characters and in this charmer of a film. While the New Mexico locales were shot, McCrea and Dee stayed at Gallup's historic El Rancho Hotel. Their marriage lasted until McCrea died on their 57th wedding anniversary. Their autographed black and white glossies adorn the promenade above the lobby in the restored hotel, a Route 66 landmark since 1939.
Son of Billy the Kid (Screen Guild, 1949), starring William Parrott (as Billy the Kid) and Lash LaRue (as Marshal Jack Garrett). Directed by Ray Taylor (65 minutes). The Kid, as a banker, joins Pat Garrett's son (LaRue) to fight the bad guys. LaRue really was an expert at wielding that 18-foot-long bullwhip. The Louisiana native tutored actor Harrison Ford on how to use one as Ford prepped for his Indiana Jones character in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
The Kid From Texas (Universal-International, 1950), starring two-time Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy (as Billy the Kid), Gale Storm (Irene Kane), Frank Wilcox (Pat Garrett), and Will Geer (O'Fallon). Directed by Kurt Neumann (78 minutes). Murphy, in his first starring role, nails the Kid's boyish eagerness to please, his impatience with talk, and his itch for action. The film was a hit because a grateful America wanted to see an honest-to-goodness Medal of Honor winner, a real-life kid from Texas, up close and personal.
The Left-Handed Gun (Warner Brothers, 1958), starring Paul Newman (as Billy the Kid), John Dehner (as Pat Garrett), James Best (as Tom O'Folliard), James Congdon (as Charlie Bowdre), John Dierkes (as Alex McSween), Colin Keith-Johnston (as John Tunstall), and Denver Pyle (as Bob Olinger). Directed by Arthur Penn (102 minutes). Based on Gore Vidal's 1955 screenplay, The Death of Billy the Kid. Partly filmed near Santa Fe, N. M. It's a dark, complex Western. But that's the way Penn, in his directorial debut, intended. After teen idol James Dean, who was supposed to star in it, died in a car crash, the studio tapped Newman. Channeling Dean's film persona of the self-absorbed, confused, rebellious teen, Newman turned his Kid into a sullen, avenging angel. Method-actor Newman at his brooding best, Penn's sure guidance, and the inspired camerawork of Cecil B. DeMille's chief cinematographer, J. Peverell Marley (combined with the astute decision to film in mood-enhancing black and white) elevates this to a Kid film that still has legs.
Chisum (Warner Brothers, 1970), starring John Wayne (as John Chisum), Geoffrey Deuel (as Billy the Kid), Glen Corbett (as Pat Garrett), Forrest Tucker (as Lawrence Murphy), Andrew Prine (as Alex McSween), Bruce Cabot (as Sheriff William Brady), and Richard Jaeckel (as Jesse Evans). Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Partly filmed south of Santa Fe, N. M. (111 minutes). Wayne, of course, dominates (he starred in 142 films in his career, a Hollywood record). His character's unabashedly old-school: paternalistic and gruff, but accommodating (especially when it comes to placating his niece, who's taken a liking to the Kid). Chisum is a no-surprises, formulaic John Wayne film.
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (MGM, 1973), starring Kris Kristofferson (as Billy the Kid), James Coburn (as Pat Garrett), Jason Robards, Jr. (as Lew Wallace), Slim Pickens (as Colin Baker), Katy Jurado (as Mrs. Baker), Richard Jaeckel (as Kip McKinney), and Charles Martin Smith (as Charlie Bowdre). Directed by Sam Peckenpah (106 minutes). The musical score by Bob Dylan cradles the film's most poignant scene, Dylan singing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" as Pickens's character, as a gut-shot, dying deputy, leans against an unfinished boat he'd been building, his death imminent in the setting sun. Coburn carries the weight of the world (and the film) on his character's shoulders. He's the conservative establishment. Kristofferson is the liberal, anti-establishment. After filming wrapped in Durango, Mexico, MGM President James Aubrey bushwhacked Peckenpah's worn, weary and elegiac Western film finale, eviscerating 18 minutes from it. Fortunately, Peckinpah already had one Western film classic under his belt, 1962's Ride The High Country. Nevertheless, his Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, especially the 1988 version (with the restored 18 minutes), has a legion of admirers, one of whom is Martin Scorsese.
Young Guns (Morgan Creek/20th Century Fox, 1988), starring Emilio Estevez (as Billy the Kid), Kiefer Sutherland (as Doc Scurlock), Jack Palance (as Lawrence Murphy), Charlie Sheen (as Dick Brewer), Lou Diamond Phillips (as Jose Chavez y Chavez), Patrick Wayne (as Pat Garrett), Jack Palance (as Lawrence Murphy), Terence Stamp (as John Tunstall), Casey Siemaszko (as Charlie Bowdre), and Brian Keith (as Buckshot Roberts). Directed by Christopher Cain (102 minutes). Filmed mostly in New Mexico, south of Santa Fe (frontier Lincoln was set in Cerrillos), in La Cienega (El Rancho de las Golondrinas), and near Galisteo Dam, Ojo Caliente, and Tesuque Pueblo. The Brat Pack introduced the Western film (and the Kid) to Generation X. The presence of Palance arcs back to a bygone Hollywood era (Palance, as hired gun Jack Wilson in 1953's Western film classic, Shane, was evil incarnate). Coming during a resurgent national interest in the Kid, Young Guns was a big hit.
Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid (TNT, 1989), a remake of the 1958 Arthur Penn film, starring Val Kilmer (as Billy the Kid) and Duncan Regher (as Pat Garrett), and Wilford Brimley (as Lew Wallace). Directed by William A. Graham (96 minutes). When MGM remade its 1930 film in 1941, many folks wondered why. The same could be asked of Vidal and the accommodating Turner Network Television. Then again, maybe this role became a launch point for Kilmer, whose riveting portrayal of consumptive gambler Doc ("I'm your huckleberry.") Holliday in Buena Vista Pictures' 1993 hit Western film, Tombstone, stole nearly every scene.
Young Guns II (Morgan Creek/20th Century Fox, 1990), starring Emilio Estevez (as Billy the Kid), Kiefer Sutherland (as Doc Scurlock), Christian Slater (as Dave Rudabaugh), William Petersen (as Pat Garrett), James Coburn (as John Chisum), and Lou Diamond Phillips (as Jose Chavez y Chavez). Directed by Geoff Murphy (104 minutes). Filmed in New Mexico, south of Santa Fe, in/near Galisteo, and at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks and White Sands National Monuments. The reprise of the Brat Pack's 1988 hit Western film is told in flashback, as Ollie "Brushy Bill" Roberts (a Billy wannabe who died in Hico, Tex., in 1950), escapes to Mexico. YG2 didn't do nearly as well as its predecessor, but both films helped the careers of some of its cast members in television (Sutherland and Petersen), and film (Slater).
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