Viva Villa!

Writer Ben Hecht never thought much of Hollywood or screenplays in general, but had few peers for this kind of scene, with Wallace Beery as the bandit title character meeting the scholarly revolutionary Madero (Henry B. Walthall), in MGM’s Viva Villa!, 1934.

Taking a town as his notoriety grows, Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa browses females (C.B. DeMille's part-Italian adopted daughter Katherine as Rosita, in one of her earliest roles) then, with sidekick Sierra (Leo Carrillo), meets nervous American journalist Sykes (Stuart Erwin), in Viva Villa!, 1934.

Commanding prologue and screenplay by Ben Hecht, directed by either ultimately-dismissed Howard Hawks or credited Jack Conway, with Phillip Cooper as the young title character and Frank Puglia his dad, from MGM’s hit Viva Villa!, 1934, starring Wallace Beery.

Some scale as the revolution gathers pace, Wallace Beery (title character) rallies volunteers, visits sympathetic aristocrat Teresa (Fay Wray) and reporter Sykes (Stuart Erwin), then a montage, with writer Ben Hecht more successful than the rear-screen process shots, David Durand the bugle boy, inViva Villa! , 1934.

First appearance for Wallace Beery in the title role, his mob seizing a town after several peasants were convicted and hanged, with aide Sierra (Leo Carrillo), flipping the script on the ruling class (Nigel De Brulier the magistrate), in MGM’s Viva Villa!, 1934.

Wallace Beery stars in Viva Villa! (1934), the story of the bandit chief who led the battle for Mexican independence.