The only thing sleek and elegant in this picture is the Kid’s Winchester carbine.īut Billy, unlike the parade of Hollywood actors who mimicked his life, was the real thing, at least in Western terms. Too bad the real Billy, the only genuine photograph in existence of him anyway, shows a gawky, buck-toothed lad of twenty in a crumpled black hat, tousled shirt, ragged vest, and ill-fitting jacket. Has there ever been in American history an outlaw more famous than Billy the Kid? Hand in glove with that question is another: has there ever been a greater gap between the historical figure himself and the tidal wave of hysterical prose and cinematic excess that followed him to the grave and beyond? Robert Taylor, Roy Rogers, Audie Murphy, and Paul Newman, among others, all portrayed his character with varying degrees of exaggeration and untruthfulness, and even the famous American composer Aaron Copland threw himself at the legend, writing music for a ballet on “The Kid,” one version of which starred the lean, bare-chested, virile, and handsome dancer Daniel Levans high-stepping in chaps and assorted homoerotic attire.
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