Paul Newman’s 65-Year-Old Hit Western Movie Continued 1 Giant Billy The Kid Mistake

Despite many film adaptations of the Old West outlaw Billy the Kid, Paul Newman's portrayal in an Arthur Penn classic is one of the most inaccurate.

Aaron OzrovitzOctober 28, 2023

0 277 3 minutes read

Paul Newman’s portrayal of Billy the Kid in “The Left Handed Gun” inaccurately depicted the real William H. Bonney as a disoriented and erratic killer.
The film perpetuated the misconception that Bonney was left-handed based on a false conclusion from a photograph, despite historical evidence proving otherwise.
While Newman’s performance had some accurate elements, such as depicting Bonney’s ability to win over romantic partners, the film mostly prioritized Hollywood sensibilities over historical accuracy.

One of Paul Newman’s classic Western films continued one mythical misconception about the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid. The real-life William H. Bonney generated a great deal of legendary tales and hyperbolized feats during his brief 21-year life that often deviated from historical accounts in various films and television adaptations. The subject of many modern Western cinematic interpretations, Bonney is also the protagonist of the MGM+ series Billy the Kid, which chronicles a dramatized retelling of the historic and feudal Lincoln County War.

While still one of the best actors who played Billy the Kid, Newman’s portrayal is somewhat controversial given its inaccuracy of the real William H. Bonney’s likeness. The cultural impact of James Dean’s breakthrough 1955 performances in East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause appear to heavily inform Newman’s interpretation of the character, which paints Bonney as a far more erratic and disturbed person than he was in reality. Despite Newman’s outstanding talent, Tom Blyth’s rendition of Bonney in the MGM+ series Billy the Kid is much closer to the charismatic and likable personality that the real Bonney was described to have.

The Left Handed Gun Falsely Portrays Billy The Kid As Being Left-Handed

Paul Newman took on the pivotal Old West character in Arthur Penn’s The Left Handed Gun, which was released in 1958. As one of Newman’s earlier leading roles in movies, almost a decade before his iconic performance in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke, the young actor was heavily inspired by the influence of James Dean, who Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man) had originally wanted for the part of Billy the Kid before his tragic death. As a result, Newman brought an eccentric energy into the role of the notorious gunslinger, which falsely portrayed Bonney as a disoriented even maniacal cold-blooded killer.

Newman’s over-the-top performance of Billy the Kid’s personality wasn’t even the most inaccurate part of his portrayal of the character in The Left Handed Gun. The entire concept of the film itself is based on the common misconception that the real William H. Bonney was left-handed, when in fact he was right-handed. The premise of making Newman’s Billy the Kid left-handed was seemingly intended to highlight his unusual nature, acting as a signifying motif to the uncommon and often erratic behaviors of the supposedly “troubled and educated” naive cowboy, as the film’s IMDb logline describes.

Newman’s Billy The Kid Was Inspired By An Infamous Reversed Photograph

The blame for the inaccurate notion of Billy the Kid being left-handed doesn’t fall entirely on Newman’s shoulders, or Penn’s for that matter. The most famous photograph of William H. Bonney, and one of the few that still exists of the real-life gunslinger, makes it seem like Billy the Kid was actually left-handed based on his gun holster appearing on his left hip. In reality, a false conclusion was drawn because old photographs taken at that time were automatically reversed.

The reversed photograph made Bonney’s hostler appear as if it rested on his left hip when it was actually on his right. The entire concept of Bonney being left-handed was eventually debunked, much like the mythical notion that Billy the Kid killed 21 men during his short life. While the entire concept of Newman’s Billy being lefthanded in The Left Handed Gun doesn’t alter too much of the actual story, it remains indicative of the continuous misconceptions about the real-life William H. Bonney throughout American film history.

Billy The Kid Was Actually Right Handed, But Could Shoot Ambidextrously

Bonney could shoot ambidextrously, as portrayed in the MGM+ series Billy the Kid, but his right hand was in fact his more dominant one. Newman’s portrayal in The Left Handed Gun was accurate in some ways, particularly in how Bonney was known to win over the affection of several romantic partners. This melodramatic angle was a commonality of many Western films of the era, allowing the relatively inexperienced Newman to sway back and forth between the rambunctious traits of Billy’s personality to some of the more psychological and even sentimental elements of the character.

The Left Handed Gun is inevitably a product of the time that it was created in, playing more into the sensibilities of 1950s Hollywood than the historical accuracies of the real-life William H. Bonney. This would be simple to overlook if the film itself wasn’t marketed as the true story of Billy the Kid, which even by its title alone is objectively incorrect. The Left Handed Gun places an interesting albeit fictional lens on Paul Newman’s Billy the Kid, which might have been a better film after the major success of both Newman and Penn in the late 1960s.