Reel Classics: ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’

In September 2025 we learned of the death of Hollywood leg­end Robert Redford.  He was famous as an actor, direc­tor,  pro­duc­er and founder of the Sundance Film Institute.  Though he began his act­ing career in tele­vi­sion, it was his films that brought him fame.  One of the ear­ly films in which he starred was the very pop­u­lar Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid co-star­ring Paul Newman and Katherine Ross.

Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) are out­laws who actu­al­ly exist­ed and oper­at­ed in the 1890s in Wyoming.  The film opens in the year 1899 with the “Hole-in-the-Wall Gang” plan­ning a cou­ple of rail­road rob­beries.  The first one goes well and Butch and Sundance rest up in a near­by town while plan­ning for the sec­ond train rob­bery.  In this town Sundance meets up with his lover, school­teacher Etta Place (Katherine Ross).  Butch meets up with a bicy­cle sales­man and decides to pur­chase a bicy­cle.  Butch lat­er joins Sundance and Etta and takes Etta for a ride on his new bicy­cle (more about this scene later). 

The boys and the gang are off to rob the sec­ond train but events do not go as planned.  Butch uses too much dyna­mite to blow open the safe and the mon­ey flies every­where.    While the gang attempts to pick up the scat­tered bills a sec­ond train arrives with a posse that pur­sues Butch and Sundance.  They have to leap off of a cliff into a riv­er to escape and lat­er learn from Etta Place that the posse has been hired by the head of the Union Pacific Railroad to pur­sue Butch and Sundance until they are killed. 

The three decide to leave the United States and head to Bolivia in South America.  We fol­low them on their jour­ney that takes them first to New York and then on to South America.  They again take up their thiev­ing ways and find them­selves pur­sued by the Bolivian army.  It becomes more con­cern­ing to the boys when they sus­pect they see mem­bers of the posse from Wyoming as well. 

As men­tioned above, the sto­ry is based on actu­al per­sons and events.  While the writ­ers took some lib­er­ties, the movie poster states it well–”Not that it mat­ters, but most of it is true.”  The orig­i­nal title of the screen­play was The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy.  The film was to star Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, who was to play the Sundance Kid.  However, Steve McQueen dropped out of the project and the role went to rel­a­tive new­com­er Robert Redford.  As Newman was a huge Hollywood star at this time he got top billing and the names were reversed in the title. 

Filming was done in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico.  A good deal of the scenes with land­scape were filmed in Zion National Park in Utah.  Interestingly, a fre­quent vis­i­tor to the set dur­ing the film­ing was Lula Parker Betenson.  She was the sis­ter of Butch Cassidy and often would enter­tain cast and crew with sto­ries about her broth­er’s adven­tures.  Reportedly she stat­ed that the script and Paul Newman’s por­tray­al of her broth­er were accu­rate.  The stu­dio learned of her vis­its and got her to do  a series of ads for the­aters to pro­mote the film. 

Along with Newman, Redford and Ross there are oth­er famil­iar names and faces in this film includ­ing Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars and Ted Cassidy (Lurch from the Addams Family).  Another well-known actor made an appear­ance in this film.  Sam Elliott is a card play­er in one of his ear­li­est film appear­ances.  Interestingly, he mar­ried the film’s co-star Katherine Ross in 1984.

One of the more mem­o­rable scenes in the film involves Butch Cassidy tak­ing Etta Place for a ride on his new bicy­cle.  The scenes are accom­pa­nied by the Burt Bacharach and Hal David com­po­si­tion “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” sung by B.J. Thomas.  Though some from the movie stu­dio thought the song did not fit the pic­ture direc­tor George Roy Hill insist­ed that it be includ­ed.  One of those who dis­ap­proved was Robert Redford.  He was lat­er quot­ed:  “When the film was released, I was high­ly crit­i­cal.  How did the song fit with the film?  There was no rain.  At the time, it seemed like a dumb idea.  How wrong I was, as it turned out to be a giant hit.”  In fact, the song won an Oscar.   An inter­est­ing note about the song is that Bob Dylan was asked to sing the song for the film but he declined.

William Goldman, the writer of the screen­play, is well known for his many efforts that include The Princess Bride, All The President’s Men, The Stepford Wives and A Bridge Too Far.  His efforts in this film earned him an Academy Award.  He had researched the sto­ry of the two out­laws for years before writ­ing the screen­play.  He lat­er was quot­ed “When I read about Cassidy and Longabaugh (Sundance Kid) and the super posse 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 has 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.”

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­en Academy Awards and won four Oscars.  Though upon its release, movie crit­ics were luke­warm to the film, movie­go­ers ignored their con­cerns and flocked to the the­aters.  It became the high­est-gross­ing Western and held that dis­tinc­tion until Dances with Wolves in 1990.  A review­er for Time wrote that Newman and Redford were “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.”  Roger Ebert described the film as a “turkey” and could not under­stand its success. 

As often is the case, more recent reviews are more pos­i­tive.  In 2023 England’s The Times stat­ed “It’s light­heart­ed and lik­able, a cool, 1960s spin on a genre that at the time had become a lit­tle tired.”  The crit­ics con­sen­sus from the Rotten Tomatoes site states;  “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.”  In 2003 it was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.  In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked it a num­ber sev­en­ty-three on their list of Greatest Movies of All Time.

It’s box-office suc­cess stim­u­lat­ed a cou­ple of fol­low-up projects.  In 1976 a made-for-tele­vi­sion sequel, Wanted:  The Sundance Woman, was released focus­ing on the Etta Place char­ac­ter and star­ring Katherine Ross.  In 1979 a pre­quel was released titled Butch and Sundance:  The Early Days.  It starred Tom Berenger as Butch Cassidy and William Katt as the Sundance Kid. 

The Sixties were a time of change in our soci­ety.  The days of the Westerns so famil­iar from the 1940s and 1950s were fad­ing.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid focused more on the rela­tion­ship between the three char­ac­ters though there was plen­ty of action.  Goldman had dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting a stu­dio inter­est­ed in his screen­play.  According to Goldman one stu­dio head did not like the idea that the two out­laws fled the coun­try.  Goldman told him that was what actu­al­ly hap­pened.  The stu­dio head said “I don’t give a s**t.”  All I know is John Wayne don’t run away.”  The times, they were a‑changin’. 

The Internet Movie Database rates the film at 8 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 89% and an Audience Score of 92%.  In search­ing my Roku device I found it avail­able for free stream­ing on the Retro Movie site.  There is also a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.