Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Rob a Train, 1899
The lives of Butch Cassidy (Robert Leroy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh) have become legend. As early as 1903, their exploits inspired the first modern film - The Great Train Robbery by Edwin Porter. Almost seventy years later their artistic inspiration continued with the production of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The endurance of the legend is perhaps due to nostalgia for the rough and tumble frontier of the Old West. These two outlaws symbolize the vanquishing of a romantic era in American history by twentieth century industrialization and urbanization.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid no doubt had a much different view of their lives. They were, after all, bank and train robbers constantly looking over their shoulders in hopes of escaping capture by the law or death by a rival. Butch Cassidy came to a remote and wild area of Wyoming known as "The Hole in the Wall" in 1896. He surrounded himself with as many as 200 other outlaws and began a career of robbing banks and trains. The gang became know by the name of the place they called home or by the term "The Wild Bunch." The Sundance Kid joined the gang a few years later.
Holdup
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/cassidy.htm
