NoWild West legendever had a better , more abiding big - screen canonization than Butch Cassidy .
Paul Newman as Butch ? Robert Redford as his brother ? Plus , as if we could forget , one of the most iconic film endings in cinematic history ? " Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , " unloose in 1969 , still contain up as the buddy picture that all buddy pictures are measured against . It right away made Butch Cassidy immortal .
That ’s a pretty impressive fate for someone who , in real living , was an outright criminal / womanizer / all - around monkey .
" My wife , when she record the book , said , ' These were bad mass . But , you sleep with , you kinda like them , ' " saysThom Hatch , author of the two - for - one dependable - life story life story " The Last Outlaws : The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid , " written in 2013 .
Here are five bits you might not fuck about Robert LeRoy Parker , aka Butch Cassidy .
1. He Was Raised a Mormon
At one meter , young Bob Parker ( conduct 1866 ) was a religious dude . His British parents were among the first wafture ofMormonpioneers to settle in Utah . His mother , Ann , was especially devout .
But sometime betimes in his childhood , Bob ’s father , Max — evidently not all that god-fearing — come up on the short end of a effectual dispute that was settled by the local Mormon bishop . His subsequent falling out with the church , Hatch tell , may have push shortly - to - be Butch away .
Though he terminate up robbing bank and train throughout the West , and into South America — and he liked to drink and gamble and hang up out with tart — some of those Mormon educational activity may have nonplus with unseasoned Bob .
" His mother continued to scan the Bible weekly to [ the Parker kid ] . Some of it might have gotten through to him , as far as his discussion of other people , " Hatch says . " It was one of those deals where he did have a conscience , but he was n’t a moral someone whatsoever . "
2. Butch Was a Born Leader
Robert ( or Bob , the future Butch ) was the first of 12 Thomas Kyd born to Ann and Max , and displayed a knack for being a boss early on . " He was the big minor , a foster founder . He expend a pot of time with his siblings and the neighbour kids , " Hatch says . " He was the kingpin . He organized game . They had grasshopper races , thing like that , that he would get them all to do . swim out in the pond and all that . "
Organizing was a trait that he ’d carry into maturity as the mastermind behind the Wild Bunch , his ever - changing gang of gear - rob , money box - bust outlaws that on affair admit Harry Longabaugh , aka the Sundance Kid .
Butch ’s attention to provision — place fresh horses a few miles from the situation of a criminal offence , for example , to distance the gang from the tiring horses of their pursuers — and his insistence on doing a neat job , without any shootings , endeared him to heavily - hearted lawbreakers and the world likewise .
" In a deplorable operation , theappearanceof cruelty was cardinal to a smooth , safe operation , he knew , " writes Charles Leerhsen in " Butch Cassidy : The True Story of an American Outlaw , " released in 2020 , " just as being newly bathed and well - dressed sent a signal that he and his cohort were serious professional person not to be piddle with . "
3. A Minor Crime as a Youth May Have Set Him on His Path
When he was about 14 , the tale goes , Bob ride into his Utah town to purchase a freshpair of jeans . Upon arriving and seeing the store close , Bob finagled his way through the back threshold ( he apparently was n’t coming all that path for nothing ) , catch a dyad of jeans that fit , snag a piece of pie for near measure and , on his means out , leave a note for the owner that he ’d make up up when next the two saw each other .
The shopkeeper was having none of that . So the jurisprudence was call , and a trial was held . Bob was acquitted . Did n’t matter . " That forever left a bad taste in his mouth , " Hatch says , " and a dislike of authority . "
4. The Movie Pretty Much Nailed Him
The Newman - Redford film , which also asterisk immature Katharine Ross as love interest Etta Place , was ahuge commercial-grade success(a box position of $ 102 million , or about $ 720 million today).It picks up when Bob — now Butch Cassidy , the outlaw , with a last name borrowed from an old ally who pushed him to the wrong side of the law — is 35 years erstwhile . He ’s already partner with the Sundance Kid .
" I ’ll tell you , the film , amazingly enough , is one of the few that does kind of parallel and does portray their lives pretty closely , " Hatch articulate . " They were attractive , wise - cracking outlaws . They robbed money box with their gang . Always got away with the loot . And that was pretty much truthful to life . "
As to be expected , the movie feature some Hollywood embellishment . But the famous scene whereButch and Sundance use a little too much dynamite to blow open a geartrain carloaded with money ? " That happened . I have a impression of the express car in my book , " Hatch says .
And the cockamamie conniption withButch register off for Etta on a bicycle ? Butch , it turns out , was a trick rider .
In real life , Butch stole only from big businesses — Sir Joseph Banks , string — and never from individual . He was careful not to engross in gunplay either on or off the line of work . Sure , he like to company . But , as portrayed by Newman in the movie , he was friendly and gregarious and as generally harmless a Wild West criminal as anyone would ever want to ply up against . Until South America .
5. Butch Never Killed Anyone… Until ‘The End’
After years of theft , Butch and Sundance ( along with Etta ) rent a long-neck clam to Argentina to nullify capture by a unrelenting group ofPinkertonagents . They nail down on a big ranch there in 1901 .
They still pulled off robberies , and had to take flight to various character of South America on occasion to keep onward of the authorities . But it was n’t until 1908 , finally surrounded by the law in Bolivia that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end .
In the picture , they go off out of the house guns blaze away , a cadre of Bolivian soldier aim and at the quick , into a authoritative movie halt systema skeletale . In real life , Hatch say , it was more lifelike and less quixotic . Pinned down and injured , knowing he was in trouble after kill a soldier close in on them — the first sentence he ever kill anyone — Butch shoot his badly wound cooperator in the forehead and then put a gun to his temple and learn his life .
Butch was 42 . Sundance was about 41 .
As it is with legends , many still wonder whatreallyhappened in Bolivia , partially due to the slightly ambiguous movie ending and the fact that the bodies of Butch and Sundance were set in unmarked graves , never to be institute . But most historians , and Hatch , are convince the two outlaws died , wounded and out of choices , by Butch ’s own manus .
" You know , " says Hatch , who has a whole chapter in his playscript on various hypothesis about how Butch and Sundance died , or if they did in Bolivia , " Old West ikon are not inter deeply enough to cash in one’s chips . Ever . To stay buried . They crawl out of that tomb all the prison term . "
