Viva Villa!

Viva Villa! is a 1934 American pre-Code film directed by Jack Conway and starring Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The screenplay was written by Ben Hecht, adapted from the 1933 book Viva Villa! by Edgecumb Pinchon and O. B. Stade. The film was shot on location in Mexico and produced by David O. Selznick. There was uncredited assistance with the script by Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman were also uncredited directors on the film.

The film is a fictionalized biography of Pancho Villa starring Beery in the titular role and featuring Fay Wray, who had played the leading lady in King Kong the previous year. The supporting cast includes Leo Carillo, Donald Cook, Stuart Erwin, Henry B. Walthall, Joseph Schildkraut and Katherine DeMille.

Viva Villa! (1934)

Plot

After an overseer beats his peon father to death, a young Pancho Villa spills his first blood when he enacts revenge on the man. Retreating to the hills, Villa (Wallace Beery) spends a number of years as a vicious bandit, brutally attacking the wealthy, which earns him the respect of the poor. When revolutionary Don Felipe de Castillo (Donald Cook) realizes he can utilize Villa's bloodlust, he brings the bandit to the revolutionary leader Francisco Madero (Henry B. Walthall).