Arguably the only good movie to ever contain an exclamation point in its title, director Jack Conway's Viva Villa! is an exciting MGM biopic based on the life of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, and was one of the major box-office successes of 1934, but, truth be told, Conway didn't really direct all of it.

Historical accuracy was seldom a priority with this type of film, but producer David O. Selznick (who called Viva Villa! one of his favorite pictures) tried to balance out the theatrics with at least partial authenticity. The movie was shot mostly in Mexico, adding thousands of dollars to its budget. Some alterations to the original screenplay were also made after it was negatively assessed by both the Mexican government and Villa's widow. Still, Wallace Beery's performance as Villa is so extravagant, it nearly overwhelms any sense of reality.

Screenwriter Ben Hecht attempts to lay some emotional groundwork for Villa's future rampaging: when young Pancho (Phillip Cooper) sees his father whipped to death by a soldier, the boy kills the officer, grows up to become Wallace Beery, and rounds up a group of bandits who pillage the Mexican countryside, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. Along the way, Pancho encounters Johnny Sykes (Stuart Erwin), an American newspaper reporter who helps spread the bandit's legend in print.

On his crime spree, Villa meets a wealthy landowner (Donald Cook) and his beautiful sister (Fay Wray), who approve of their charismatic friend's Robin Hood philosophy. Through them, Villa joins forces with Madero (Henry B. Walthall), the scholarly leader of the quickly escalating peasant revolt. Pancho's unbridled enthusiasm gets the best of him, however, when he starts robbing banks and shooting innocent people. Soon, he's out of control, making enemies and then corpses of the very folks who originally supported him. Sykes, of course, prints the Villa myth, rather than the reality, every step of the way.

Major hit or not, Viva Villa!'s troubled production was a studio-era predecessor to what Francis Ford Coppola and his crew endured while filming Apocalypse Now (1979). If anything could go wrong, it did, up to and including the loss of both the original director and one of the lead actors. Louis B. Mayer even got punched in the mouth at one point.

Howard Hawks was Viva Villa!'s first director, and he did a lot more than make a few casting decisions. To this day, it's unclear how much of the finished picture is his, but Hawks understood the theoretical prestige of working for MGM, not that it suited his personality. In later years he wrote, "Metro was the best place in the world for getting a script and handing it to a director with it all cast and the sets all built - they had the best set designers, and they had good writers - but I don't think an independent worked well over there."

During the location shoot, real soldiers and peasants were used as extras, and some of them were quite a bit wilder than MGM expected. Hawks claimed that he was once interrupted by a man who poked a rifle in his ribs and, in Spanish, shouted "this is for the revolution." The director decked him without shouting anything at all.

Shootings often took place near the set, and one man inexplicably turned a pistol on himself after speeding by and crashing his car through a fence. MGM's crew was housed in old railroad cars, and they were regularly served nearly inedible food (Hawks said he survived mostly on brandy and oranges). As a special bonus, the film became the subject of angry debate among Mexican citizens and government leaders who were leery of romanticizing Villa. Several reels of footage were also destroyed when a plane that was carrying them crashed on the way to California.

But that, believe it or not, isn't the worst of it. Lee Tracy was known as one of the more enthusiastic drinkers in the film industry; his name was often mentioned in the same breath as such famous imbibers as John Barrymore and W.C. Fields. Tracy's fast-talking persona was perfect for the character Johnny Sykes, and he filmed several key scenes with Hawks behind the camera. One Sunday, during a national holiday, the cast and crew were celebrating in the streets with the locals...except for Tracy, who was standing buck-naked on a balcony, shouting obscenities at the crowd. Eventually, he urinated on a group of Mexican military cadets and had to be rushed out of the country lest he be strung up for his anti-social behavior.

This all led to the firing of Tracy, as well as Selznick having to send a letter of apology to the Mexican government. The firing, in turn, led to an argument between Mayer and Hawks, who wanted Tracy to stay on the picture regardless of the actor's bad reputation. Hawks belted Mayer, another pink slip was written up, and much of the picture had to be re-shot with Conway directing. Ah, the glamour of Hollywood!

Producer: David O. Selznick
Director: Jack Conway, Howard Hawks (uncredited)
Screenplay: Ben Hecht
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Editing: Robert J. Kern
Music: Herbert Stothart Art Design: Harry Oliver
Set Design: Edwin B. Willis
Costumes: Dolly Tree
Principal Cast: Wallace Beery (Pancho Villa), Fay Wray (Teresa), Stuart Irwin (Johnny Sykes), Donald Cook (Don Felipe), George E. Stone (Chavito), Leo Carrillo (Sierra), Henry B. Walthall (Madero).
BW-111m.

by Paul Tatara