Paul Newman played the outlaw Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Released in 1969, the film pairs Newman’s charismatic, talkative Cassidy with Robert Redford’s quieter gunslinger, the Sundance Kid.
The movie was inspired by the real-life Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws associated with Butch Cassidy, whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker. The film fictionalizes much of their story, following the pair through train robberies, escapes, and their flight from relentless pursuit.
William Goldman’s screenplay mixes Western action with comedy, romance, and melancholy. Katharine Ross plays Etta Place, Sundance’s companion, while the title deliberately distinguishes the two men: Newman is Butch Cassidy, and Redford is the Sundance Kid.
The film became one of the defining American movies of the late 1960s. Its famous bicycle sequence, Burt Bacharach’s score, and the deliberately unresolved final freeze-frame helped give it a distinctive modern tone. Harvey Logan, one of the wrong options, was the real name of another outlaw, Kid Curry.