Left Handed Gun, The (1958) – Nostalgia Central

Years before he played Butch Cassidy, Paul Newman was Billy the Kid in this 1958 film.

When Billy is an 11-year-old kid, his mother is insulted by a name-caller. With a boy’s impetuosity, he slays the man. Thus, the early pattern of impulsive action and of seeking personal justice began.

Later, he sets out to avenge the murder of an old Scotsman who had given him a job. Billy, fleet on the draw, instantly kills two of the old man’s four murderers.

When a temporary amnesty is declared, his partner shoots it through with a ten-cent bullet, and the third murderer drops. But the fourth is dangled on a cruel string – only when he has been killed does Billy feel the circle of vengeance has been completed.

Before the end, Billy’s two compatriots pay for their wilfulness, and Billy is caught and sentenced to hang.

He escapes for a brief moment and breathes his own epitaph: “I lost Tom; I lost Charlie, can’t read and got myself all kilt.”

The film is a traditional villain biography. Paul Newman is believable as Billy, but his performance is like an old Western costume from the Actors Studio wardrobe, artfully torn, carefully worn.

He punctuates his inward malaise with savage cuteness, and his naturalness is always the conscious poise of a working actor.

Hurd Hatfield portrays a peripatetic chorus who sells relics and legends of the West. The role is pretentious, but Hatfield brings it to an effectively eerie half-light. Lita Milan is a long-haired Mexican girl who speaks short words.

John Dehner is Pat Garrett – the pursuer who gives the Kid his comeuppance.

The movie was based on the TV play, The Death of Billy the Kid, by Gore Vidal, which also starred Newman. Warner Bros. took the movie away from director Arthur Penn and drastically cut it from his original version. Penn subsequently publicly disowned the film.

The film was not well received when it first came out, but has been reevaluated in more recent years as an exciting psychological Western.

The title is derived from a belief that William Bonney was left-handed due to a tintype of him, which is now believed to have been accidentally reversed. A Dell comic book adaptation carried over a number of the major plot points in this take on William Bonney, casting him as a psychotic avenger.

Billy The Kid (William Bonney)
Paul Newman
Celsa
Lita Milan
Pat Garrett
John Dehner
Moultrie
Hurd Hatfield
Charlie Boudre
James Congdon
Tom Folliard
James Best
Tunstall
Colin Keith-Johnston
McSween
John Dierkes
Hill
Robert Anderson
Mrs Hill
Anne Barton
Deputy Moon
Wally Brown
Joe Grant
Ainslie Pryor
Saval
Martin Garralaga
Ollinger
Denver Pyle
Smith
Paul Smith
Pete Maxwell
Nestor Paiva
Bride
Josephine Parra (as Jo Summers)
Sheriff Brady
Robert Foulk

Director
Arthur Penn