Legend of Billy the Kid

File:The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid Title Page.jpg

Within six weeks of Bonney's death there appeared the first complete narrative of his life, The True Life of Billy the Kid. Written by dime novelist John Woodruff Lewis under the pen name "Don Jenardo", this pulp novel depicted Billy the Kid as a sadistic psychopath.{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The Billy the Kid Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MwjjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3|date=20 October 2014|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-8254-4|page=3}}

Pat Garrett, smarting from local outrage over his shooting of the Kid,{{cite book|author=Johnny D. Boggs|title=Billy the Kid on Film, 1911-2012|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4SiXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA12|date=20 September 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-0335-3|page=12}} wanted to present his side of the story and hoped to turn a profit as well on the American public's fascination with the notorious outlaw. Consequently, he published his account of Bonney's life, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, in 1882.{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The Billy the Kid Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MwjjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA358|date=20 October 2014|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-8254-4|page=358}} It was credited to Garrett, but the first fifteen chapters were a concoction of factual material mixed with fabrications, written by Roswell's postmaster, Ash Upson,{{cite book |last = LeMay |first = John and Stahl, Robert J. |date = 2020 |title = The Man Who Invented Billy the Kid: The Authentic Life of Ash Upson |location = Roswell, NM |publisher = Bicep Books |pages = 127–133 |isbn = 978-1-953221-91-9}} an itinerant journalist.{{cite book|author=William A. Keleher|title=The Fabulous Frontier, 1846-1912|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d-c1kDce60UC&pg=PA144%E2%80%93145|date=March 2008|publisher=Sunstone Press|isbn=978-0-86534-620-8|page=144}}{{cite book|author=Robert Marshall Utley|title=Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h6BuOmP_VuoC&pg=PA210|year=2000|publisher=Tauris Parke Paperbacks|isbn=978-1-86064-601-0|page=210}} The remaining chapters, written in a more restrained style, are generally accurate, and were likely composed by Garrett himself.{{cite book|author=Frank Richard Prassel|title=The Great American Outlaw: A Legacy of Fact and Fiction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X9jLOv_r_asC&pg=PA153|date=1 September 1996|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-2842-9|page=153}} The book failed to find a wide audience and sold just a few copies; nevertheless, although filled with many errors of fact, The Authentic Life served afterwards as the main source for most books written about the Kid until the 1960s.{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu/page/123 123]–124}}{{cite book|author=Jon Tuska|title=Billy the Kid, his life and legend|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ijLXAAAAMAAJ|date=30 May 1994|publisher=Greenwood Press|page=237|isbn=9780313285899 }} Thus was established the mythic stature of Pat Garrett as the heroic lawman in pursuit of the villainous but romantic desperado, Billy the Kid.{{cite book|author=Jon Tuska|title=Billy the Kid, his life and legend|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ijLXAAAAMAAJ|date=30 May 1994|publisher=Greenwood Press|page=114}}

The lawman and former ranch hand Charlie Siringo first told his version of the Kid's story in a chapter of his book, "A Texas Cowboy" (1885).{{cite book|author=Jon Tuska|title=Billy the Kid, his Life and Legend|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ijLXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Charlie%20Siringo%22|date=30 May 1994|publisher=Greenwood Press|page=113}} During his youth, Siringo had ridden the range in eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, the familiar haunts of William Bonney and Pat Garrett, and knew both of them. In 1920, he published a sympathetic biography, History of Billy the Kid, in which he described the daily life of a cowboy realistically, but romanticized his account of Bonney with fantasies and exaggerations—its title page claimed "His six years of daring outlawry has never been equalled in the annals of criminal history."{{cite book|author=Charles A. Siringo|title=History of "Billy the Kid,"|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VakaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1|year=1920|publisher=C.A. Siringo|page=1}}{{cite book|author=Robert M. Utley|title=Wanted: The Outlaw Lives of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FCLYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT108|date=17 November 2015|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-21668-4|pages=108–109}}{{cite book|author=Howard Roberts Lamar|title=Charlie Siringo's West: An Interpretive Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qsr7-ThlRe0C&pg=PA88|year=2005|publisher=UNM Press|isbn=978-0-8263-3669-9|page=88}}

Three governors of New Mexico wrote accounts of their dealings with Billy the Kid.{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The West of Billy the Kid|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mYhw78YF12IC&pg=PA299|date=1 September 1999|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-3104-7|page=299}} Miguel Antonio Otero, the first governor of the territory, knew William Bonney,{{cite book|author=John-Michael Rivera|title=The Emergence of Mexican America: Recovering Stories of Mexican Peoplehood in U.S. Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/emergenceofmexic00john|url-access=registration|date=1 May 2006|publisher=NYU Press|isbn=978-0-8147-7558-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/emergenceofmexic00john/page/112 112]}} and was the first Mexican-American author to write about him. Otero's book, The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War, was published in 1936. In it, he wrote admiringly of Bonney and described events of the time and place from the perspective of native New Mexicans.{{cite book|author=Michael Wallis|title=Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride|url=https://archive.org/details/billykidendlessr00wall|url-access=registration|year=2007|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-06068-3|page=xvi}}{{cite book|author=Miguel Antonio Otero|title=The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War; Facsimile of Original 1936|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JloxyqgoJnkC&q=%22By+all+accounts%22|date=15 December 2006|publisher=Sunstone Press|isbn=978-1-61139-100-8|page=iii}} The Kid spoke Spanish fluently and was well-liked by the Hispanos of the Pecos River Valley, who told many stories about el Chivato, their colloquial Spanish for a young goat or kid.{{cite book|author=Jon Tuska|title=Billy the Kid, his Life and Legend|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ijLXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22El%20Chivato%22|date=30 May 1994|publisher=Greenwood Press|page=239|isbn=978-0-313-28589-9 }}{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Fackler|title=Billy the Kid: The Legend of El Chivato|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_Jv1QuY_ZbIC&pg=PA512|year=2003|publisher=Sunstone Press|isbn=978-0-86534-401-3|page=512}}{{cite journal|author=Alfred Adler|title=Billy the Kid: A Case Study in Epic Origins|journal=Western Folklore|date=April 1951|volume=10|issue=2|doi=10.2307/1497967|jstor=1497967|publisher=Western States Folklore Society|page=144}}

The modern legend of Billy the Kid as an immortal figure of the Old West first developed within a larger cultural context of social upheaval in the late 19th and early 20th century United States.{{cite book|author=Margaret K. Reid|title=Cultural Secrets as Narrative Form: Storytelling in Nineteenth-century America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4FCmNOeyyJoC&pg=PA151|year=2004|publisher=Ohio State University Press|isbn=978-0-8142-0947-9|page=151}} Between 1897 and 1909, during the Progressive Era of political activism and reform, the popular American novelist Emerson Hough wrote magazine articles, novels and informal histories that reintroduced Billy the Kid to a national audience, albeit in works that often relied more on fantasy than on actual events.{{cite book|author=Robert M. Utley|title=Wanted: The Outlaw Lives of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FCLYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT109|date=17 November 2015|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-21668-4|page=109}}{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu/page/49 49]}} Hough embellished the Kid's reputation with lurid descriptions of his exceptional villainy in an article called "Billy the Kid: The True Story of a Western 'Bad Man' ", written in 1901 for the literary publication, Everybody's Magazine, using language such as "the soul of some fierce and far-off carnivore got into the body of this little man, this boy, this fiend in tight boots and a broad hat."{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P4jWAAAAMAAJ&q=%22carnivore%22|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|page=56}}{{cite magazine |last =Hough |first =Emerson|date=September 1901|title = Billy the Kid: The True Story of a Western 'Bad Man' |url = https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015023579140;view=1up;seq=316 | magazine = Everybody's Magazine |publisher = The Ridgeway Company | location = New York | accessdate = August 30, 2016}} Hough further developed this image of the Kid in his book about western desperados, The Story of the Outlaw (1907), though not in such excessive language.{{cite book|author=Mark J. Dworkin|title=American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Joaquín Murrieta|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YFbZBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA38|date=27 February 2015|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-4902-8|page=38}}{{cite book|author=Emerson Hough|title=The Story of the Outlaw: A Study of the Western Desperado|url=https://archive.org/details/storyofoutlawstu00houguoft|year=1907|publisher=Grosset & Dunlap|pages=[https://archive.org/details/storyofoutlawstu00houguoft/page/273 273]–274}}

By the mid-1920s, however, Bonney's place in the general awareness of the American public had diminished to the point that in 1925 Harvey Fergusson asked in the American Mercury magazine, "Who remembers Billy the Kid?".{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The West of Billy the Kid|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LdazBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA295|date=16 February 2015|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-4887-8|page=295}} His reputation was revitalized the next year when Walter Noble Burns's book, The Saga of Billy the Kid, appeared as the Book-of-the-Month Club selection for December 1926, and became a bestseller.{{cite book|author=Marshall William Fishwick|title=American Heroes: Myth and Reality|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lrsqAAAAYAAJ&q=%E2%80%9CBonney%22|year=1975|publisher=Greenwood Press|isbn=978-0-8371-6610-0|page=94}} This success, and the fact that people who had actually known William Bonney were beginning to talk to reporters and write their memoirs, allowed stories of his exploits to regain a nationwide audience.{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu/page/101 101]–102}} Publication of "The Saga", in spite of its dubious facts and fabricated events, subsequently led to a proliferation of other books, magazines and newspaper articles, and then to movies, about the life of Billy the Kid.{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The Billy the Kid Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MwjjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA104|date=20 October 2014|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-8254-4|page=104}}

Depictions of Billy the Kid in popular culture fluctuated between the poles of cold-blooded murderer without a heart and sentimental hero fighting for justice. Kent Ladd Steckmesser wrote: "There are two Billy the Kids in legend. The first is a tough little thug, a coward, a thief, and a cold-blooded murderer. The second is a romantic and sentimental hero, the brave and likeable leader of an outnumbered band fighting for justice."{{cite book|author=Gregory Woods|title=Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2JPRuVNMwloC&pg=PA240|date=7 February 1990|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-04752-3|page=240}} Both facets of his legend were perpetuated in often poorly researched biographies, as well as in fictionalized B movies, many of which were nonetheless commercially successful.{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu/page/193 193]–194}}

The dramatic aspects of William Bonney's short life and violent death still appealed to popular taste, as they had in the heyday of the dime novels, but eventually an idealized image of Billy the Kid, as one who defends the underdog and fights against social injustice, came to the fore.{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu|url-access=registration|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/inventingbillyki00tatu/page/190 190]}} The Texas historian, J. Frank Dobie, wrote in A Vaquero of the Brush Country (1929): "...because his daring apotheosized youth—youth in the saddle—youth with a flaming gun—and because his daring kept him running and balancing on the edge of a frightful precipice...Billy the Kid will always be interesting, will always appeal to the popular imagination."{{cite book|author1=J. Frank Dobie|author2=John D. Young|title=A Vaquero of the Brush Country: The Life and Times of John D. Young|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NA3RtIWYWhEC&pg=PA169|date=1 August 1998|publisher=University of Texas Press|isbn=978-0-292-78704-9|page=169}}

With the publication in 1926 of Walter Noble Burns's book,"The Saga of Billy the Kid", the Kid's legend revived and was consolidated as a standard tale of the American Old West.{{cite book|author1=David Leeming|author2=Jake Page|title=Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology|url=https://archive.org/details/mythslegendsfolk00davi|url-access=registration|date=28 January 1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-972895-4|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mythslegendsfolk00davi/page/147 147]–148}} The American movie director King Vidor, who had wanted to film a Western-themed movie for some time, was inspired when he read Burns's book, and felt that the Kid's story had considerable dramatic appeal.{{cite book|author=Johnny D. Boggs|title=Billy the Kid on Film, 1911-2012|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4SiXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA27|date=20 September 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-0335-3|pages=27–30}} Following the commercial success of the first movie he directed for the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio, The Big Parade (1925),{{cite book|author1=Raymond Durgnat|author2=Scott Simmon|title=King Vidor, American|url=https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg|url-access=registration|date=January 1988|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-05798-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg/page/59 59]}} he was able to obtain backing for a Billy the Kid production when Irving Thalberg, an executive at MGM, took an interest in his proposal. Billy the Kid, the first talking picture version of the legend, was released in 1930.{{cite book|author1=Raymond Durgnat|author2=Scott Simmon|title=King Vidor, American|url=https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg|url-access=registration|date=January 1988|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-05798-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg/page/96 96]}} The film featured former college football star Johnny Mack Brown in the title role and Hollywood character actor Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett, but it was a box office failure. Nevertheless, Vidor's Billy the Kid set the pattern for Billy the Kid movies for the next fifty years, as other filmmakers followed its formula and made the Kid an instrument of justified vengeance and his enemies the villains of the story.{{cite book|author=Robert M. Utley|title=Wanted: The Outlaw Lives of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FCLYCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT107|date=17 November 2015|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-21668-4|page=107}}{{cite book|author=Bob Herzberg|title=Hang 'Em High: Law and Disorder in Western Films and Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KSJ5AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA13|date=28 August 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-6838-6|page=13}}

As Billy the Kid was reborn a romantic or tragic figure in literature and films of the 1920s–1940s;{{cite book|author=Michael L. Johnson|title=Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZkQUAAAAYAAJ&q=%22tragic%20figure%22|year=2007|publisher=University Press of Kansas|isbn=978-0-7006-1501-8|page=172}} high culture began to turn its attention to his legend in the late 1930s. Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder with George Balanchine of the School of American Ballet, drew material from Burns' book to write the libretto for a ballet to be called Billy the Kid, performed by his new group, the Ballet Caravan.{{cite book|author=Marcia B. Siegel|title=The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EGePMESpK10C&pg=PA118|year=1979|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-04212-4|page=118}} Composer Aaron Copland was commissioned to score the music, and Eugene Loring to do the choreography.{{cite book|author=Beth E. Levy|title=Frontier Figures: American Music and the Mythology of the American West|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LwHN2K8bpAEC&pg=PA323|date=18 April 2012|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-95202-7|page=323}} The ballet premiered at the Chicago Civic Opera House on October 16, 1938, and has since become a repertory standard.{{cite book|author=Helen Smith|title=There's a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sgIiD92NnwQC&pg=PA8|year=2011|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|isbn=978-1-4094-1169-7|page=8}}{{cite book|author=Rosalyn Krokover|title=The new Borzoi book of ballets|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1A5AAAAIAAJ&q=%22October%2016,%201938%22|year=1956|publisher=Knopf|page=44}}

Copland arranged the score for a concert suite that was performed and recorded in 1959 by Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; the recording was released by Columbia Records in 1960.{{cite book|author=James H. North|title=New York Philharmonic: The Authorized Recordings, 1917-2005|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t0ayG9YhQAQC&pg=PA117|date=15 June 2006|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-6239-5|page=117}}

The Outlaw, starring Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid, Walter Huston as Doc Holliday, and Jane Russell in her first movie role, was produced by Howard Hughes and finished in 1941, though not released until 1943. The film, directed for the most part by Howard Hawks (Hughes got the screen credit), was promoted in a publicity campaign with posters featuring Russell posing in dishabille and her cleavage prominently displayed.{{cite book|author=William McDonald|title=The Obits: The New York Times Annual 2012|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MZtSJX1sTq0C&pg=PA323|date=11 November 2011|publisher=Workman Publishing Company|isbn=978-0-7611-6942-0|page=323}}{{cite book|author1=Sheldon Hall|author2=Stephen Neale|title=Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jhvrSwOOsRgC&pg=PA131|year=2010|publisher=Wayne State University Press|isbn=978-0-8143-3008-1|page=131}} Its emphasis on Jane Russell's physical attributes led to the film being dubbed the first "sex western".{{cite book|author=Robert Lang|title=Masculine Interests: Homoerotics in Hollywood Films|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-U7kxhDklYC&pg=PA80+P.+80%E2%80%9381|year=2002|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-11300-7|pages=80–81}}{{cite book|author=Wes D. Gehring|title=Parody as Film Genre: "never Give a Saga an Even Break"|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MGI2vdGPN6UC&pg=PA112|year=1999|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-26186-2|page=112}} Although the movie was generally panned by movie critics, it was rereleased twice over the course of the next decade, grossing more than $20 million{{cite book|author=Alan Gevinson|title=Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bsoUXGZSxZcC&pg=PA751+|year=1997|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-20964-0|page=751}} and solidifying the legend of Billy the Kid (although a distorted and unhistorical one) in the consciousness of the American filmgoing public.{{cite book|author1=Raymond Durgnat|author2=Scott Simmon|title=King Vidor, American|url=https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg|url-access=registration|date=January 1988|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-05798-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg/page/83 83]}}

The film director Sam Peckinpah attempted an ambitious retelling of the legend in his last western film,{{cite book|author=Paul Seydor|title=The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western Film|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HjTVBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT11|date=15 February 2015|publisher=Northwestern University Press|isbn=978-0-8101-6820-6|page=11}} Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), covering the final months of Bonney's life,{{cite book|author=Garner Simmons|title=Peckinpah|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sPFstxHbWDQC&pg=PA170|date=1 July 2004|publisher=Hal Leonard|isbn=978-1-61774-449-5|page=170}} in which the violence and physical brutality of the world the protagonists inhabited is portrayed realistically.{{cite book|author=Bernard Frank Dukore|title=Sam Peckinpah's Feature Films|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NjLdMBBPQUcC&pg=PA177|year=1999|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06802-7|page=177}} The film suffered from production difficulties as well as from Peckinpah's battles with MGM over his artistic vision and budget overruns. The studio's drastically cut release version, disowned by Peckinpah, was initially a failure with major critics and the viewing public. Although its depiction of the Kid as a roguish anarchist opposed to illegitimate law (as enforced by Garrett on behalf of a corrupt power structure) was suited to the temper of the times,{{cite book|author=Frederick Nolan|title=The Billy the Kid Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MwjjBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA363|date=20 October 2014|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|isbn=978-0-8061-8254-4|page=363}} it quickly left first-run theaters. Soon, however, reviews began to appear in smaller film magazines and journals in the United States and abroad that praised its artistry and breadth of vision. The film's reputation was on the ascendancy long before Peckinpah's preferred cut of the preview version was finally shown at the University of Southern California in 1986,{{cite book|author=Johnny D. Boggs|title=Billy the Kid on Film, 1911-2012|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4SiXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA209|date=20 September 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-0335-3|page=209}} and its critical stature has continued to increase since—Martin Scorsese, e.g., called it a "masterpiece". Despite the liberties it took with history, scholar and film editor Paul Seydor{{cite book|author=Paul Seydor|title=Peckinpah: The Western Films, a Reconsideration|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jamhwSywQCEC&pg=PA411|year=1999|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=978-0-252-06835-5|page=411}} described Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as among the finest treatments of the legend in any medium.{{cite book|author=Paul Seydor|title=The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: The Untold Story of Peckinpah's Last Western Film|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HjTVBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT16|date=15 February 2015|publisher=Northwestern University Press|isbn=978-0-8101-6820-6|page=16}}

The psychoanalyst Alfred Adler wrote an analysis in 1951 of the mythic aspects of the legend of Billy the Kid in which he compared the Kid to Oedipus, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and other legendary heroes of the past. Adler was the first writer to discuss the symbolic significance of Billy the Kid's nickname as a cultural totem.

Arthur Penn's film, The Left Handed Gun (1958), portrays Billy the Kid as a misunderstood youth, played by Paul Newman in the manner of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, according to the film critic Robert Kolker. It similarly addresses the psychological motivations of those of its characters who resort to violence,{{cite book|author=Robert Phillip Kolker|title=A Cinema of Loneliness|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LJlJjCEk_UYC&pg=PA45|date=7 July 2011|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA|isbn=978-0-19-973888-5|page=45}} in a pseudo-Freudian treatment of the subject characteristic of certain 1950s movies.{{cite book|author=Bob Herzberg|title=Hang 'Em High: Law and Disorder in Western Films and Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KSJ5AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA134|date=28 August 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-6838-6|page=134}}

In 1941 Life magazine ran a piece on Billy the Kid called America's Best-Loved Badman.{{cite book|author=David Hamilton Murdoch|title=The American West: The Invention of a Myth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3dFIhTAVvNQC&pg=PA98|year=2001|publisher=University of Nevada Press|isbn=978-0-87417-369-7|page=98}} The historian Stephen Tatum, writing forty years later, referred to the contradictory aspects of the mythical Billy the Kid, calling him a "flexible container" into which audiences poured their "hopes and fears, ideals and prejudices."{{cite book|author=Stephen Tatum|title=Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881-1981|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P4jWAAAAMAAJ&q=%22flexible%20container%22|date=1 January 1982|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|isbn=978-0-8263-0610-4|page=11|quote=If the legend reveals contradictory features, the reason is because the Kid has been since his death in 1881 many things to many people—a flexible container, in other words, into which particular audiences' hopes and fears, ideals and prejudices, have been poured.}} Writers and filmmakers have often depicted William Bonney as the personification of the "free-running reprobate" of the Old West, of the sort whom the reformed outlaw Emmett Dalton wondered if "he symbolizes the undying anarchy in the heart of every man."{{cite book|author=Emmett Dalton|title=When the Daltons Rode|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yt2ZBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT178|date=31 October 2011|publisher=Pelican Publishing Company|isbn=978-1-4556-1536-0|page=178}} In any case, the mythical Billy the Kid remains an icon of popular American culture, and the skinny, bucktoothed kid from New York City occupies the top place in Western American folklore.{{cite book|author=Jan Harold Brunvand|title=American Folklore: An Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OY-OAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA164|date=24 May 2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-57878-7|pages=164–165}}{{cite book|author=Arno Heller|editor=Walter Hölbling, Arno Heller|title=What is American?: New Identities in U.S. Culture|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YQyHAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA259|year=2004|publisher=LIT Verlag Münster|isbn=978-3-8258-7734-7|chapter=Reinventing Billy the Kid: The Juvenile Delinquent as Icon|pages=259–260}} The mythologizing continues with new works in various media.{{cite book|editor=Christopher R. Fee, Jeffrey B. Webb|title=American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore (3 Volumes)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kXnEDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA145|date=31 August 2016|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-61069-568-8|pages=145–146}}{{cite book|author=Richard W. Slatta|title=The Mythical West: An Encyclopedia of Legend, Lore, and Popular Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/mythicalwestency0000slat|url-access=registration|year=2001|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-57607-151-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/mythicalwestency0000slat/page/47 47]}}

• List of works about Billy the Kid

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{Billy the Kid}}

{{Navboxes

| title = Articles related to Billy the Kid

| list =

{{Wild West}}

{{Lincoln County, New Mexico}}

{{New Mexico}}

}}

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Billy the Kid}}

Category:American folklore

Category:Gunslingers of the American Old West

Category:Cultural depictions of Pat Garrett