AS SEEN ON TV: BILLY THE KID

Toobworld Central published two other ASOTV showcases for Billy the Kid in the past - a "Two For Tuesday" spotlight on his appearances in 'Stories Of The Century' and 'The Time Tunnel', and in the Tooniverse during a wild yarn told by Commander McBragg.

Both of those were not the true depictions of Billy the Kid in Earth Prime-Time. 'Stories Of The Century' featured fabrications told by former railroad detective Matt Clark for the penny dreadfuls. And the Billy the Kid who encountered the time travelers Doug and Tony was from a parallel dimension.

As mentioned in the previous post, I think the Billy the Kid played by Dennis Hopper in the 'Sugarfoot' pilot was Billy Turlock and not Henry McCarty AKA William Bonney.

And the Billy the Kid whom Bret 'Maverick' met was an escapee from the local asylum outside of Bubbly Springs.

  But I will accept one portrayal of Billy the Kid to be the official version for Earth Prime-Time......

BILLY THE KID

AS SEEN IN:
'The Tall Man'

AS PLAYED BY:
Clu Gulager

The show was about the uneasy relationship between Billy and "the tall man," Pat Garrett - which may have existed only in legend......

From Wikipedia:
During this time [November of 1880], McCarty became acquainted with an ambitious local bartender and former buffalo hunter named Pat Garrett. While popular accounts often depict McCarty and Garrett as "bosom buddies", there is no concrete evidence that they were ever friends. Running on a pledge to rid the area of rustlers, Garrett was elected as sheriff of Lincoln County in November 1880, and in early December, he assembled a posse and set out to arrest McCarty, at that time known almost exclusively as "Billy the Kid", and he carried a $500 bounty on his head that had been authorized by governor Lew Wallace.

The posse led by Garrett fared well, and his men closed in quickly. On December 19, McCarty barely escaped a midnight ambush in Fort Sumner, which left one member of the gang, Tom O'Folliard, dead. On December 23, the Kid was tracked to an abandoned stone building located in a remote location known as Stinking Springs (near present-day Taiban, New Mexico). While McCarty and his gang were asleep inside, Garrett's posse surrounded the building and waited for sunrise. The next morning, a cattle rustler named Charlie Bowdre stepped outside to feed his horse. Mistaken for McCarty, he was shot down by the posse. Soon afterward, somebody from within the building reached for the horse's halter rope, but Garrett shot and killed the horse, whose body blocked the building's only exit. As the lawmen began to cook breakfast over an open fire, Garrett and McCarty engaged in a friendly exchange, with Garrett inviting McCarty outside to eat, and McCarty inviting Garrett to "go to hell". Realizing that they had no hope of escape, the besieged and hungry outlaws finally surrendered later that day and were allowed to join in the meal.

Sheriff Pat Garrett offered that he responded to rumors that McCarty was lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape. Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881, to question one of the town's residents, a friend of McCarty's named Pete Maxwell (son of land baron Lucien Maxwell). Close to midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, McCarty unexpectedly entered the room.

There are at least two versions of what happened next. One version suggests that as the Kid entered, he failed to recognize Garrett in the poor light. McCarty drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?"). Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet striking McCarty in the chest just above his heart, killing him. In a second version, McCarty entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone in the darkness, and uttered the words, "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style. Although the popularity of the first story persists, and portrays Garrett in a better light, some historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one. A markedly different theory, in which Garrett and his posse set a trap for McCarty, has also been suggested. Most recently explored in the 2004 Discovery Channel documentary, "Billy the Kid: Unmasked", this theory contends that Garrett went to the bedroom of Pedro Maxwell's sister, Paulita, and bound and gagged her in her bed. When McCarty arrived, Garrett was waiting behind Paulita's bed and shot the Kid.

That part of the story never came up during the run of 'The Tall Man'......

It's a somewhat flexible rule of Toobworld Central that if an historical figure gets his or her own TV series, then that should be the official version for Earth Prime-Time. This would trump the "First Come, First Served" rule. So even though 'The Tall Man' strays far from the truth, that matters little in a universe where time travelers and robots roam the Wild West.

As for depictions of Billy in mini-series and TV movies, like similar portrayals of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe, they all get separate homes in alternate TV dimensions.

So Clu Gulager is the official Billy the Kid for Toobworld.

BCnU!