Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance s lover, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee to Bolivia to escape the posse.

In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. The American Film Institute ranked Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as the 73rd-greatest American film on its AFI s 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were ranked 20th-greatest heroes on AFI s 100 Years…100 Heroes & Villains . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was selected by the American Film Institute as the 7th-greatest Western of all time in the AFI s 10 Top 10 list in 2008.

Plot

In 1899 Wyoming, Butch Cassidy is the affable, clever, talkative leader of the outlaw Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. His closest companion is the laconic dead-shot Sundance Kid . The two return to their hideout at Hole-in-the-Wall (Wyoming) to discover that the rest of the gang, irked at Cassidy s long absences, have selected Harvey Logan as their new leader.

Logan challenges Cassidy to a knife fight over the gang s leadership. Cassidy defeats him using trickery, but embraces Logan s idea to rob the Union Pacific Overland Flyer train on both its eastward and westward runs, agreeing that the second robbery would be unexpected and likely reap even more money than the first.

The first robbery goes well. To celebrate, Cassidy visits a favorite brothel in a nearby town and watches, amused, as the town marshal unsuccessfully attempts to organize a posse to track down the gang, only to have his address to the townsfolk hijacked by a friendly bicycle salesman (he calls it the future ). Sundance visits his lover, schoolteacher Etta Place, and they spend the night together. Cassidy joins up with them early the next morning, and takes Place for a ride on his new bike.

On the second train robbery, Cassidy uses too much dynamite to blow open the safe, which is much larger than the safe on the previous job. The explosion demolishes the baggage car in the process. As the gang scrambles to gather up the money, a second train arrives carrying a six-man team of lawmen. The crack squad doggedly pursues Cassidy and Sundance, who try various ruses to get away, all of which fail. They try to hide out in the brothel, and then to seek amnesty from the friendly Sheriff Bledsoe, but he tells them their days are numbered and all they can do is flee.

As the posse remains in pursuit, despite all attempts to elude them, Cassidy and Sundance determine that the group includes renowned Indian tracker Lord Baltimore and relentless lawman Joe Lefors, recognizable by his white skimmer. They finally elude their pursuers by jumping from a cliff into a river far below. They learn from Place that the posse has been paid by Union Pacific head E. H. Harriman to remain on their trail until they are both killed.

Cassidy convinces Sundance and Place that the three should go to Bolivia, which he envisions as a robber s paradise. On their arrival there, Sundance is dismayed by the living conditions and regards the country with contempt, but Cassidy remains optimistic. They discover that they know too little Spanish to pull off a bank robbery, so Place attempts to teach them the language. With her as an accomplice, they become successful bank robbers known as Los Bandidos Yanquis. However, their confidence drops when they see a man wearing a white hat (the signature of determined lawman Lefors) and fear that Harriman s posse is still after them.

Cassidy suggests going straight , and he and Sundance land their first honest job as payroll guards for a mining company. However, they are ambushed by local bandits on their first run and their boss, Percy Garris, is killed. They kill the bandits, the first time Cassidy has ever shot someone. Place recommends farming or ranching as other lines of work, but they conclude the straight life isn t for them. Sensing they will be killed should they return to robbery, Place decides to go back to the United States.

Cassidy and Sundance steal a payroll and a burro used to carry it, and arrive in a small town. A boy recognizes the burro s livestock branding and alerts the local police, leading to a gunfight with the outlaws. Cassidy has to make a desperate run to the burro to get ammunition, while Sundance provides covering fire. Wounded, the two men take cover inside a nearby building. Cassidy suggests the duo s next destination should be Australia. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the two of them, the local police have called on the Bolivian Army to deal with the two outlaws. Confident of their ability to escape, the pair charge out of the building, guns blazing, directly into a hail of bullets from the massed troops who have occupied all of the surrounding vantage points. The film ends on a freeze-frame, as sounds of the Bolivian troops firing on the doomed outlaws are heard.

Cast

• Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy
• Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid
• Katharine Ross as Etta Place
• Strother Martin as Percy Garris
• Henry Jones as Bike Salesman
• Jeff Corey as Sheriff Bledsoe
• George Furth as Woodcock
• Cloris Leachman as Agnes
• Ted Cassidy as Harvey Logan
• Kenneth Mars as Marshal
• Donnelly Rhodes as Macon
• Timothy Scott as News Carver
• Charles Dierkop as Flat Nose Curry
• Paul Bryar as Card Player #1
• Sam Elliott as Card Player #2
• Jody Gilbert as Large Woman on Train

Production

Screenplay

William Goldman first came across the story of Butch Cassidy in the late 1950s and researched intermittently for eight years before starting to write the screenplay. Goldman says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it as authentic as a novel. Goldman later stated:

The whole reason I wrote the … thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, There are no second acts in American lives. When I read about Cassidy and Longabaugh and the superposse coming after them—that s phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary in South America than they had been in the old West … It s a great story. Those two guys and that pretty girl going down to South America and all that stuff. It just seems to me it s a wonderful piece of material.

The characters flight to South America caused one executive to reject the script, as it was then unusual in Western films for the protagonists to flee.

Development

According to Goldman, when he first wrote the script and sent it out for consideration, only one studio wanted to buy it—and that was with the proviso that the two lead characters did not flee to South America. When Goldman protested that that was what had happened, the studio head responded, I don t give a shit. All I know is John Wayne don t run away.

Goldman rewrote the script, didn t change it more than a few pages, and subsequently found that every studio wanted it.

The role of Sundance was offered to Jack Lemmon, whose production company, JML, had produced the film Cool Hand Luke (1967) starring Newman. Lemmon, however, turned down the role because he did not like riding horses and felt that he had already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid s character before. Other actors considered for the role of Sundance were Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty, who both turned it down, with Beatty claiming that the film was too similar to Bonnie and Clyde. According to Goldman, McQueen and Newman both read the scripts at the same time and agreed to do the film. McQueen eventually backed out of the film due to disagreements with Newman. The two actors would eventually team up in the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno. Jacqueline Bisset was a top contender for the role of Etta Place.

Filming locations include the ghost town of Grafton, Zion National Park, Snow Canyon State Park, and the city of St. George. These areas remain popular film tourism destinations, including the Cassidy Trail in Reds Canyon.

Soundtrack

Personnel

• Marvin Stamm − trumpet
• Pete Jolly − piano
• Hubert Laws − flute
• Bob Bain, Bill Pitman − guitar
• Tommy Tedesco − ukelele
• Carol Kaye − electric bass
• Emil Richards − percussion

Release

Premieres

The world premiere of the film was on September 23, 1969, at the Roger Sherman Theater, in New Haven, Connecticut. The premiere was attended by Paul Newman, his wife Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford, George Roy Hill, William Goldman, and John Foreman, among others. It opened the next day in New York City at the Penthouse and Sutton theatres.

Home media

The film became available on DVD on May 16, 2000, in a Special Edition that is also available on VHS.

Reception

Box office

The film grossed $82,625 in its opening week from two theatres in New York City. The following week it expanded and became the number one film in the United States and Canada for two weeks. It went on to earn $15 million in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada by the end of 1969. According to Fox records the film required $13,850,000 in rentals to break even and by December 11, 1970, had made $36,825,000 so made a considerable profit to the studio. It eventually returned $45,953,000 in rentals.

With a final US gross of over $100 million, it was the top-grossing film released in 1969.

It was the eighth-most-popular film of 1970 in France.

Critical response

Early reviews gave the film mediocre grades, and New York and national reviews were mixed to terrible though better elsewhere, screenwriter William Goldman recalled in his book Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade.

Time magazine said the film s two male stars are afflicted with cinematic schizophrenia. One moment they are sinewy, battered remnants of a discarded tradition. The next, they are low comedians whose chaffing relationship—and dialogue—could have been lifted from a Batman and Robin episode. Time also criticized the film s score as absurd and anachronistic.

Roger Ebert s review of the movie was a mixed 2.5 out of 4 stars. He praised the beginning of the film and its three lead actors, but felt the film progressed too slowly and had an unsatisfactory ending. But after Harriman hires his posse, Ebert thought the movie s quality declined: Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood he couldn t bear to edit them out of the final version. So the Super-posse chases our heroes unceasingly, until we ve long since forgotten how well the movie started.”

Over time, major American movie reviewers have been widely favorable. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% approval rating based on 52 reviews and an average score of 8.3/10. The site s critical consensus reads: With its iconic pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, jaunty screenplay and Burt Bacharach score, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has gone down as among the defining moments in late- 60s American cinema.

The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #11 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

Accolades

Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result
Academy Awards	Best Picture	John Foreman	Nominated
	Best Director	George Roy Hill	Nominated
	Best Story and Screenplay – Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced	William Goldman	Won
	Best Cinematography	Conrad Hall	Won
	Best Original Score for a Motion Picture (Not a Musical)	Burt Bacharach	Won
	Best Song – Original for the Picture	Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head – Burt Bacharach and Hal David	Won
	Best Sound	William Edmondson and David Dockendorf	Nominated
American Cinema Editors Awards	Best Edited Feature Film	John C. Howard and Richard C. Meyer	Nominated
ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards	Most Performed Feature Film Standards	Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head – Burt Bacharach and Hal David	Won
British Academy Film Awards	Best Film	George Roy Hill	Won
	Best Direction		Won
	Best Actor in a Leading Role	Paul Newman	Nominated
		Robert Redford	Won
	Best Actress in a Leading Role	Katharine Ross	Won
	Best Screenplay	William Goldman	Won
	Best Cinematography	Conrad Hall	Won
	Best Editing	John C. Howard and Richard C. Meyer	Won
	Best Original Music	Burt Bacharach	Won
	Best Sound	Don Hall, William Edmondson and David Dockendorf	Won
Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures	George Roy Hill	Nominated
Golden Globe Awards	Best Motion Picture – Drama		Nominated
	Best Screenplay – Motion Picture	William Goldman	Nominated
	Best Original Score – Motion Picture	Burt Bacharach	Won
	Best Original Song – Motion Picture	Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head – Burt Bacharach and Hal David	Nominated
Grammy Awards	Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special	Burt Bacharach	Won
Laurel Awards	Top Action Drama		Won
	Top Action Performance	Paul Newman	Nominated
		Robert Redford	5th Place
	Top Cinematographer	Conrad L. Hall	4th Place
	Top Music Man	Burt Bacharach	Won
National Film Preservation Board	National Film Registry		Inducted
National Society of Film Critics Awards	Best Actor	Robert Redford	3rd Place
Online Film & Television Association Awards	Hall of Fame – Motion Picture		Won
Satellite Awards	Best Classic DVD	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (as part of Paul Newman: The Tribute Collection)	Nominated
Turkish Film Critics Association Awards	Best Foreign Film		8th Place
Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Drama – Written Directly for the Screen	William Goldman	Won

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2008 – AFI s 10 Top 10: Western – #7

Legacy

The film inspired the television series Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as outlaws trying to earn an amnesty.

A parody titled Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid was published in Mad. It was illustrated by Mort Drucker and written by Arnie Kogen in issue No. 136, July 1970.

In 1979 Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, a prequel, was released starring Tom Berenger as Butch Cassidy and William Katt as the Sundance Kid. It was directed by Richard Lester and written by Allan Burns. William Goldman, the writer of the original film, was an executive producer. Jeff Corey was the only actor to appear in the original and the prequel.

Year	1969
ReleaseDate	1969-09-24
RuntimeMins	110
RuntimeStr	1h 50min
Plot	Wyoming, early 1900s. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid are the leaders of a band of outlaws. After a train robbery goes wrong they find themselves on the run with a posse hard on their heels. Their solution – escape to Bolivia.
Awards	Won 4 Oscars, 21 wins & 15 nominations total
Directors	George Roy Hill
Writers	William Goldman
Stars	Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Produced by	John Foreman,Paul Monash,Paul Newman,Richard D. Zanuck
Music by	Burt Bacharach
Cinematography by	Conrad L. Hall
Film Editing by	John C. Howard,Richard C. Meyer
Art Direction by	Philip M. Jefferies,Jack Martin Smith
Set Decoration by	Chester Bayhi,Walter M. Scott
Costume Design by	Edith Head
Makeup Department	Edith Lindon,Daniel C. Striepeke,Dick Dawson,Laura Lee Grubich,Leo Lotito Jr.,Jay Sebring
Production Management	Lloyd Anderson
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director	Steven Bernhardt,Norman A. Cook,Michael D. Moore,Randell Henderson,Steve Siporin
Art Department	Fred Chapman
Sound Department	David Dockendorf,Bill Edmondson,Adam Howell,Don Hall,Don MacDougall
Special Effects by	Abel Contreras
Visual Effects by	L.B. Abbott,Art Cruickshank
Stunts	M. James Arnett,Eldon Burke,Joe Canutt,Steven Chambers,Rip Clark,Matt Connors,Bill Couch,Howard Curtis,Richard Farnsworth,Jim Feazell,Joe Finnegan,Mickey Gilbert,Conrad L. Hall,Fred Lerner,Ben Miller,William Neal,Danny Sands,Dick Shane,Dean Smith,Bob Stephens,Fred Zendar
Camera and Electrical Department	Peter Bergmann,Lawrence Schiller,Harold E. Wellman,Arthur Brooker,Earl L. Clark,Jordan Cronenweth,Thomas Del Ruth,Dave Friedman,Bobby Greene,Edward Hutton,Douglas Kirkland,Harry Sundby
Costume and Wardrobe Department	Joe Drury,Wesley Trist,Diana Wilson
Editorial Department	Gregory Creaser,Hugh K. Cummings,Mark Nakamine
Location Management	Lew Tate
Music Department	Burt Bacharach,Jack Hayes,Leo Shuken,Robert Bain,Tommy Morgan,Thurl Ravenscroft,Ernie Rosecrans,Glen Rosecrans,Sally Stevens
Script and Continuity Department	Tom Moore,Lynn A. Aber
Transportation Department	Chris Haynes,Jim Martell
Additional Crew	Robert Crawford Jr.,John Neuhart,Ron Preissman,Tyler Atkinson,Stanley Bielecki,Court Ernst, Chema Hernandez,Gaines Johnston,Annabelle King,Arvo Ojala,Steve Urzykowski
Genres	Biography, Crime, Drama
Companies	Campanile Productions, George Roy Hill-Paul Monash Production, Newman-Foreman Company
Countries	USA, Mexico
Languages	English, Spanish
ContentRating	PG
ImDbRating	8
ImDbRatingVotes	215455
MetacriticRating	66
Keywords	outlaw,bolivia,fast draw,bank robbery,outlaw gang