Billy the Kid Returns
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Joe Kane
Roy Rogers
Mary Hart
Smiley Burnette
Morgan Wallace
Fred Kohler Sr.
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Billy the Kid is revered by homesteaders for his help, even though he has become a thief and a murderer. After he escapes from a shootout with lawmen and is recaptured by his former friend, Sheriff Pat Garrett, Garrett is forced to kill him rather than let him escape again. Meanwhile, Roy Rogers, who bears a strikling resemblance to Billy, helps a wagon train of new "nesters," as the homesteaders are called, from attacks by the ranchers. Although Garrett is suspicious of Rogers, Sheriff Conway convinces him that Roy's resemblance to Billy can work to their advantage. Roy is secretly deputized to pose as Billy, and helps the nesters, while remaining loyal to Garrett. When rancher and town boss Morganson and his henchman Matson plan to steal money from honest merchant Danny O'Moore, Roy overhears and takes the money first, making Garrett, Moore and his daughter Ellen think that he has been deceiving them. With his own cunning and the help of his childhood friend Fran "Frog" Milhouse, though, Roy defeats Morganson and his gang, returns the money, and wins the respect of the entire town. Now convinced of his honesty, Garrett willingly accepts Roy as his deputy, and Moore accepts him as a future son-in-law.
Director
Joe Kane
Cast
Roy Rogers
Mary Hart
Smiley Burnette
Morgan Wallace
Fred Kohler Sr.
Wade Boteler
Edwin Stanley
Horace Murphy
Joseph Crehan
Robert Emmett Keane
Chris Pin Martin
Crew
Smiley Burnette
Eddie Cherkose
Alberto Colombo
Cy Feuer
Charles E. Ford
Ernest Miller
Jack Natteford
Bill O'connor
Lester Orlebeck
Arthur Siteman
Vern "tim" Spencer
Bill Strohbach
Al Wilson
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
Variety credits Vern (Tim) Miller with some of the songs, but Film Daily Year Book and Motion Picture Herald credit Vern Spencer instead of Miller. An August 1938 letter from Republic studios in the AMPAS library file on the film stated that Lynn Roberts would henceforth be known as Mary Hart and that all documentation on the film should reflect her new name. Although the picture itself bills the actress as Hart, most reviews credit her as Roberts. In an introduction to this film for a 1987 television program, Roy Rogers said that a studio executive thought that changing Roberts' name would result in a publicity boost when theater marquees displayed "Rogers and Hart" above the title, capitalizing on the fame of popular composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Because the actress changed her name back to Lynn Roberts some time later, reviews and modern sources frequently confuse the names when crediting her work during the late 1930s. A news item in Hollywood Reporter prior to the film's production noted that this would be Kane's first film as director and associate producer under Ford, however, no other source lists Kane as anything other than director. A pre-release production chart in Hollywood Reporter lists the following additional cast members: Betty Rodman, Art Dillard, Betty Jean Hainey, Patsy Lee Parsons, Rudy Sooter, Jack Kirk, Al Taylor and Ray Nichols. Modern sources include actor George Montgomery in the cast, indicating that he was then acting under his real name, George Letz. Other actors included in modern sources are Dorothy Vaughn, Fank O'Connor, Bob Card, Jim Corey, Lloyd Ingraham, Bob McKenzie, Oscar Gahan, Fred Burns, Ralph Dunn and Rogers' horse Trigger. The historical figures of William H. Bonney, known as "Billy the Kid," and Pat Garrett have been used as characters in many films and television programs, among them M-G-M's Billy the Kid directed by King Vidor in 1930 and starring Johnny Mack Brown and Wallace Beery (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.0419), a 1941 M-G-M film of the same title starring Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy, directed by David Miller, and a 1973 M-G-M production, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. Aaron Copeland's ballet Billy the Kid was written in 1938, but not performed until 1939.
