"Butch Cassidy" breakout star: The bull with unbustable balls
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The Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 17, 1968. Image via Utah Digital Newspapers, the University of Utah
As the stars descended on the ghost town of Grafton, Utah in the late 1960s to film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," one outshone them all: A gentle bull named Bill.
- This is Old News, our weekly roundup of Utah history.
Why it matters: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" premiered 55 years ago this week, showcasing a Utah legend alongside the state's breathtaking scenery, and vaulting "America's Film Set" into the popular imagination.
Zoom in: During the iconic "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" sequence, Paul Newman's Cassidy crashes a bicycle into a bullpen before being charged by the angry hereford inside.
Yes, but: Bill, the animal actor who was shipped to Utah from Hollywood for this one scene, wasn't feeling very aggro.
Behind the curtain: Bill was "a friendly-type bull," so his handlers brought a chemical irritant that would provoke him to charge, director George Roy Hill said in a "making-of" documentary from 1970 with footage of Bill strolling around Grafton on a leash.
- "When I'd give the cue, they'd squirt it on poor old Bill's balls, and he'd take off in whatever direction he happened to be headed," Hill said. "I don't know what kind of Hollywood training actually was necessary for that."
Between the lines: "Maybe Bill's forte was that he just didn't turn ugly afterwards," Hill conceded. "He kept coming back for more without any noticeable change in disposition."
The bull encounter took all day to shoot, with Newman and co-star Katherine Ross repeatedly executing their stunts as Bill swerved off camera or stopped charging mid-take, according to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter who watched the scene unfold.
What they said: "That was a good bull," Newman told the Tribune as the shoot wrapped. "He was real sweet."
The big picture: The film was famous for its pioneering genre-fusion of western, drama and comedy — a feature the creative team attributed to the personality of Butch Cassidy himself.
- While his Wild Bunch gang was among the most feared and notorious bands of outlaws in the West, Cassidy was widely known for his good-natured ease and charm.
The bottom line: Even Bill the bull, like the titular Cassidy, proved far more affable than he might have seemed.