Billy the Kid, 1930 directed by King Vidor

Billy the Kid is a 1930 American pre-Code Western film directed in widescreen by King Vidor about the relationship between frontier outlaw Billy the Kid (Johnny Mack Brown, billed as “John Mack Brown” during his brief career peak) and lawman Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery).

Directed by King Vidor, the movie was filmed in an early widescreen process called Realife, a 70mm format similar to Fox Film Corporation’s Grandeur used for the lavish The Big Trail the same year.

While The Big Trail, starring John Wayne, has been restored so that the 1930 widescreen process can be evaluated by modern viewers, no widescreen prints of Billy the Kid are known to currently exist and the movie can be viewed only in a standard-width version that was filmed simultaneously with the widescreen version. The widescreen format did not get a commercial foothold with movie-going audiences until The Robe two decades later, largely because the Depression was under way by 1930 and few theatres could afford to upgrade their equipment after just converting to sound.