''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' is a 1969 American
Western buddy film
The buddy film is a subgenre of adventure and comedy film in which two people are put together and are on an adventure, a quest, or a road trip. The two often contrast in personality, which creates a dynamic onscreen different from a pairing o ...
directed by
George Roy Hill and written by
William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as
Butch Cassidy
Robert LeRoy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the " Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Parker engaged in crimin ...
(
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three ...
), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "
Sundance Kid" (
Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover,
Etta Place (
Katharine Ross), flee to
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
to escape the posse.
In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...
by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the '' de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute ranked ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' as the 73rd-greatest American film on its "
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)" list, and number 50 on the original list.
Butch Cassidy
Robert LeRoy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the " Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Parker engaged in crimin ...
and the
Sundance Kid were ranked 20th-greatest heroes on "
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains". ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' was selected by the
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
Leade ...
as the 7th-greatest Western of all time in the
AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008.
Plot
In 1899
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the so ...
,
Butch Cassidy
Robert LeRoy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the " Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Parker engaged in crimin ...
is the affable, clever, talkative leader of the outlaw
Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. His closest companion is the laconic
dead-shot "
Sundance Kid". The two return to their hideout at
Hole-in-the-Wall (Wyoming) to discover that the rest of the gang, irked at Cassidy's long absences, have selected
Harvey Logan as their new leader.
Logan challenges Cassidy to a
knife fight
A knife fight is a violent physical confrontation between two or more combatants in which one or more participants is armed with a knife.MacYoung, Marc, ''Winning A Street Knife Fight'', (Digital format, 70 min.), Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, (J ...
over the gang's leadership. Cassidy defeats him using trickery, but embraces Logan's idea to rob the
Union Pacific ''
Overland Flyer
The ''Overland Limited'' (also known at various times as the ''Overland Flyer'', ''San Francisco Overland Limited'', ''San Francisco Overland'' and often simply as the ''Overland'') was an American named passenger train which for much of its hist ...
'' train on both its eastward and westward runs, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and likely reap even more money than the first.
The first robbery goes well. To celebrate, Cassidy visits a favorite
brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
in a nearby town and watches, amused, as the town marshal unsuccessfully attempts to organize a
posse to track down the gang, only to have his address to the townsfolk hijacked by a friendly bicycle salesman (he calls it "the future"). Sundance visits his lover, schoolteacher
Etta Place, and they spend the night together. Cassidy joins up with them early the next morning, and takes Place for a ride on his new bike.
On the second train robbery, Cassidy uses too much
dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and patented in 1867. It rapidl ...
to blow open the
safe
A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body and d ...
, which is much larger than the safe on the previous job. The explosion demolishes the baggage car in the process. As the gang scrambles to gather up the money, a second train arrives carrying a six-man team of lawmen. The crack squad doggedly pursues Cassidy and Sundance, who try various ruses to get away, all of which fail. They try to hide out in the brothel, and then to seek
amnesty
Amnesty (from the Ancient Greek ἀμνηστία, ''amnestia'', "forgetfulness, passing over") is defined as "A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power offici ...
from the friendly Sheriff Bledsoe, but he tells them their days are numbered and all they can do is flee.
As the posse remains in pursuit, despite all attempts to elude them, Cassidy and Sundance determine that the group includes renowned Indian
tracker "Lord Baltimore" and relentless lawman
Joe Lefors, recognizable by his white
skimmer. They finally elude their pursuers by jumping from a cliff into a river far below. They learn from Place that the posse has been paid by Union Pacific head
E. H. Harriman to remain on their trail until they are both killed.
Cassidy convinces Sundance and Place that the three should go to
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
, which he envisions as a robber's paradise. On their arrival there, Sundance is dismayed by the living conditions and regards the country with contempt, but Cassidy remains optimistic. They discover that they know too little
Spanish to pull off a bank robbery, so Place attempts to teach them the language. With her as an accomplice, they become successful bank robbers known as . However, their confidence drops when they see a man wearing a white hat (the signature of determined lawman Lefors) and fear that Harriman's posse is still after them.
Cassidy suggests "going straight", and he and Sundance land their first honest job as
payroll
A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...
guards for a mining company. However, they are ambushed by local bandits on their first run and their boss, Percy Garris, is killed. They kill the bandits, the first time Cassidy has ever shot someone. Place recommends farming or ranching as other lines of work, but they conclude the straight life isn't for them. Sensing they will be killed should they return to robbery, Place decides to go back to the United States.
Cassidy and Sundance steal a payroll and a burro used to carry it, and arrive in a small town. A boy recognizes the burro's
livestock branding and alerts the local police, leading to a gunfight with the outlaws. Cassidy has to make a desperate run to the burro to get ammunition, while Sundance provides covering fire. Wounded, the two men take cover inside a nearby building. Cassidy suggests the duo's next destination should be
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country b ...
. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the two of them, the local police have called on the
Bolivian Army
The Bolivian Army ( es, Ejército Boliviano) is the land force branch of the Armed Forces of Bolivia.
Figures on the size and composition of the Bolivian army vary considerably, with little official data available. It is estimated that the ar ...
to deal with the two outlaws. Confident of their ability to escape, the pair charge out of the building, guns blazing, directly into a hail of bullets from the massed troops who have occupied all of the surrounding vantage points. The film ends on a freeze-frame, as sounds of the Bolivian troops firing on the doomed outlaws are heard.
Cast
Production
Screenplay
William Goldman first came across the story of
Butch Cassidy
Robert LeRoy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the " Wild Bunch" in the Old West.
Parker engaged in crimin ...
in the late 1950s and researched intermittently for eight years before starting to write the screenplay. Goldman says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it as authentic as a novel.
Goldman later stated:
The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longabaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary in South America than they had been in the old West ... It's a great story. Those two guys and that pretty girl going down to South America and all that stuff. It just seems to me it's a wonderful piece of material.[Egan, p. 90]
The characters' flight to South America caused one executive to reject the script, as it was then unusual in Western films for the protagonists to flee.
Development
According to Goldman, when he first wrote the script and sent it out for consideration, only one studio wanted to buy it—and that was with the proviso that the two lead characters did not flee to South America. When Goldman protested that that was what had happened, the studio head responded, "I don't give a shit. All I know is
John Wayne
Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films made during Hollywood's Go ...
don't run away."
[Egan, p. 91]
Goldman rewrote the script, "didn't change it more than a few pages, and subsequently found that every studio wanted it."
The role of Sundance was offered to
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor. Considered equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leadin ...
, whose production company, JML, had produced the film ''
Cool Hand Luke
''Cool Hand Luke'' is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Paul Newman and featuring George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning performance. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison c ...
'' (1967) starring Newman. Lemmon, however, turned down the role because he did not like riding horses and felt that he had already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before. Other actors considered for the role of Sundance were
Steve McQueen
Terrence Stephen McQueen (March 24, 1930November 7, 1980) was an American actor. His antihero persona, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw for his films of the late 1950s, 1960s, and ...
and
Warren Beatty
Henry Warren Beatty ( né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Directo ...
, who both turned it down, with Beatty claiming that the film was too similar to ''
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow (March 24, 1909May 23, 1934) were an American criminal couple who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The c ...
''. According to Goldman, McQueen and Newman both read the scripts at the same time and agreed to do the film. McQueen eventually backed out of the film due to disagreements with Newman. The two actors would eventually team up in the 1974 disaster film ''
The Towering Inferno
''The Towering Inferno'' is a 1974 American disaster film directed by John Guillermin and produced by Irwin Allen, featuring an ensemble cast led by Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. It was adapted by Stirling Silliphant from the novels '' The T ...
''.
Jacqueline Bisset was a top contender for the role of Etta Place.
Filming locations include the ghost town of
Grafton,
Zion National Park
Zion National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of ...
,
Snow Canyon State Park, and the city of
St. George
Saint George ( Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldie ...
. These areas remain popular film tourism destinations, includin
the Cassidy Trailin Reds Canyon.
Soundtrack
Personnel
*
Marvin Stamm −
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B ...
*
Pete Jolly −
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
*
Hubert Laws
Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 40 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhyt ...
−
flute
The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...
*
Bob Bain,
Bill Pitman −
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...
*
Tommy Tedesco −
ukelele
*
Carol Kaye −
electric bass
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and sc ...
*
Emil Richards
Emil Richards (born Emilio Joseph Radocchia; September 2, 1932 – December 13, 2019) was an American vibraphonist and percussionist.
Biography Musician
Richards began playing the xylophone aged six. In High School, he performed with the Hartf ...
−
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
Release
Premieres
The world premiere of the film was on September 23, 1969, at the Roger Sherman Theater, in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,0 ...
. The premiere was attended by Paul Newman, his wife
Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford, George Roy Hill, William Goldman, and
John Foreman, among others. It opened the next day in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
[ at the Penthouse and Sutton theatres.]
Home media
The film became available on DVD on May 16, 2000, in a Special Edition that is also available on VHS.
Reception
Box office
The film grossed $82,625 in its opening week from two theatres in New York City.[ The following week it expanded and became the number one film in the United States and Canada for two weeks. It went on to earn $15 million in ]theatrical rental
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is fre ...
s in the United States and Canada by the end of 1969. According to Fox records the film required $13,850,000 in rentals to break even and by December 11, 1970, had made $36,825,000 so made a considerable profit to the studio. It eventually returned $45,953,000 in rentals.
With a final US gross of over $100 million, it was the top-grossing film released in 1969.
It was the eighth-most-popular film of 1970 in France.
Critical response
Early reviews gave the film mediocre grades, and New York and national reviews were "mixed to terrible" though better elsewhere, screenwriter William Goldman recalled in his book '' Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade''.
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine said the film's two male stars are "afflicted with cinematic schizophrenia. One moment they are sinewy, battered remnants of a discarded tradition. The next, they are low comedians whose chaffing relationship—and dialogue—could have been lifted from a Batman and Robin episode." ''Time'' also criticized the film's score as absurd and anachronistic.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
's review of the movie was a mixed 2.5 out of 4 stars. He praised the beginning of the film and its three lead actors, but felt the film progressed too slowly and had an unsatisfactory ending. But after Harriman hires his posse, Ebert thought the movie's quality declined: "Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood he couldn't bear to edit them out of the final version. So the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we've long since forgotten how well the movie started.”
Over time, major American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
gives the film an 88% approval rating based on 52 reviews and an average score of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay and Burt Bacharach score, ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' has gone down as among the defining moments in late-'60s American cinema."
The Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers:
* The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO
* The Writers Gui ...
ranked the screenplay
''ScreenPlay'' is a television drama anthology series broadcast on BBC2 between 9 July 1986 and 27 October 1993.
Background
After single-play anthology series went off the air, the BBC introduced several showcases for made-for-television, fea ...
#11 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.
Accolades
The film is recognized by American Film Institute
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
Leade ...
in these lists:
* 2008 – AFI's 10 Top 10: Western – #7
Legacy
The film inspired the television series '' Alias Smith and Jones'', starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as outlaws trying to earn an amnesty.
A parody titled "Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid" was published in '' Mad''. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker
Morris "Mort" Drucker (March 22, 1929 – April 9, 2020) was an American caricaturist and comics artist best known as a contributor for over five decades in '' Mad'', where he specialized in satires on the leading feature films and televisio ...
and written by Arnie Kogen in issue No. 136, July 1970.
In 1979 '' Butch and Sundance: The Early Days'', a prequel, was released starring Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger (born Thomas Michael Moore; May 31, 1949) is an American actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes in ''Platoon'' (1986). He is also known for playing Jake ...
as Butch Cassidy and William Katt as the Sundance Kid. It was directed by Richard Lester
Richard Lester Liebman (born January 19, 1932) is an American retired film director based in the United Kingdom.
He is best known for directing the Beatles' films '' A Hard Day's Night'' (1964) and ''Help!'' (1965), and the superhero films '' ...
and written by Allan Burns. William Goldman, the writer of the original film, was an executive producer. Jeff Corey was the only actor to appear in the original and the prequel.
Television adaptation
In September 2022, Amazon Studios
Amazon Studios is an American television and film producer and distributor that is a subsidiary of Amazon. It specializes in developing television series and distributing and producing films. It was started in late 2010. Content is distributed th ...
announced a television adaptation of the film, starring Regé-Jean Page and Glen Powell. Joe and Anthony Russo will be executive producers under their AGBO
AGBO (also known as Gozie AGBO) is an independent film and television production company led by Anthony and Joe Russo, best known for their work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most notably '' Avengers: Infinity War'' and '' Avengers: Endgam ...
production banner.
See also
* List of American films of 1969
* Antihero
An antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero) or antiheroine is a main character in a story who may lack conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions ...
(Cassidy and Sundance are considered "antiheroes".)
References
Bibliography
*
External links
*
*
*
*
Ten Things You Didn't Know About ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''
from the American Movie Classics
AMC is an American multinational basic cable television channel that is the flagship property of AMC Networks. The channel's programming primarily consists of theatrically released films, along with a limited amount of original programming. The ...
"Future of Classic" blog
''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid''
at Virtual History
* ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 654–65
{{Authority control
1969 films
1969 Western (genre) films
1960s buddy films
20th Century Fox films
American Western (genre) films
American buddy films
Best Film BAFTA Award winners
Cultural depictions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Duos
1960s English-language films
Estudios Churubusco films
Films about bank robbery
Films about outlaws
Films about train robbery
Films directed by George Roy Hill
Films produced by John Foreman (producer)
Films scored by Burt Bacharach
Films set in Bolivia
Films set in Wyoming
Films set in the 1890s
Films shot in Colorado
Films shot in Mexico
Films shot in New Mexico
Films shot in Utah
Films that won the Best Original Score Academy Award
Films that won the Best Original Song Academy Award
Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Direction BAFTA Award
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Screenplay BAFTA Award
Films with screenplays by William Goldman
Revisionist Western (genre) films
United States National Film Registry films
1960s American films