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Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Sportsphoto/Allstar
Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: surprise – it's not total horse pucky

This article is more than 10 years old

It’s a rollicking caper, but Butch and Sundance’s lives were cartoonish at times – spiked with undramatic boring bits

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Director: George Roy Hill
Entertainment grade: A–
History grade: B

Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh – better known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – were robbers in the American old west around the turn of the 20th century.

Crime

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Photograph: AP

The film opens with the admission “Most of what follows is true”. Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) ride to Hole-in-the-Wall, Wyoming, a pass where outlaws hang out. Their gang is keen to move on to robbing trains, specifically the Union Pacific Flyer. Butch, Sundance and their henchmen stop the train, but meet resistance from a clerk, Woodcock. “I work for Mr EH Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad, and he entrusted me …” Butch interrupts: “Will you shut up about that EH Harriman stuff and open the door?” Woodcock won’t. “Mr EH Harriman himself, of the Union Pacific Railroad, gave me this job, and I got to do my best, don’t you see?” “Your best don’t include getting yourself killed,” says Butch, but Woodcock won’t budge. The gang blow the door open with dynamite. Woodcock is knocked about a bit, but seems fine. In a film which already upsets viewers who like their westerns gritty and serious, this sounds flagrantly cartoonish – but Charles Woodcock was a real person, and the scene is basically accurate.

More crime

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Photograph: THE RONALD GRANT ARCHIVE

Soon afterwards, Butch and Sundance try another robbery – and, what do you know, it’s poor old Woodcock behind the door again. Amazingly, the unfortunate Charles Woodcock really did twice fall foul of train robberies attributed to Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang. For dramatic impact, the film has shifted the circumstances of the first of these incidents – which was the Wilcox train robbery of 2 June 1899, in which a whole railroad car was dynamited apart – to the second incident, which was the Tipton train robbery of 29 August 1900. It is not clear whether Cassidy or Sundance was personally involved in either. Sensitive readers will be relieved to know that, in real life, Woodcock abandoned his capitalist heroics the second time round and just let the robbers in.

Law enforcement

In the middle of the second robbery, a mysterious posse shows up, and begins to chase Butch and Sundance. “Who are those guys?” they wonder, repeatedly. They single out a marshal called Joe Lefors and a native American tracker called Lord Baltimore. In real life, EH Harriman engaged the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to hunt Cassidy’s gang. The Pinkertons sent a posse after the outlaws in 1899. The posse did include Lefors, but not Baltimore – he didn’t exist. The film’s long, inescapable pursuit across the west is fictional. The real Cassidy easily evaded the posse.

Travel

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/20 CENTURY FOX

Butch and Sundance take a ship to South America with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta Place (Katharine Ross), who, to Butch’s irritation, keeps getting in the way of their bromance. They’re expecting gold and silver, but arrive in a deserted, dusty, two-llama town. The film skips a respectable sojourn the real trio enjoyed running a ranch in Buenos Aires from 1901, because that would be boring. Soon, armed with some beginners’ criminal Spanish lessons courtesy of Place (“Esto es un robo” – this is a robbery), they revert to their old pursuits.

Fate

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

A few heists later, Butch and Sundance attract the attention of the authorities. The film implies that the Pinkertons tracked them down, which isn’t entirely untrue: the agency did continue to receive reports on them. The final shootout in the Bolivian town of San Vicente happened in November 1908, but the fates of Cassidy and Sundance are disputed. Stories of their survival have proved popular over the years, though many historians agree with Cassidy expert Dan Buck, who described one such tale as “total horse pucky”. The movie’s ending is historically unimpeachable.

Verdict

Yes, most of it is true – and the bits that aren’t are still a lot of fun.

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