Broncho Billy's Redemption (1910)
released 30th July 1910
Cast:
Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson
Clara Williams
Franklyn Hall
Chick Morrison
Broncho Billy's Redemption (1910)
Western
950ft
Essanay
Director:
Writer:
Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson
"A dramatic picture of the West"
One spring morning in 1910, Gilbert M. Anderson and George Spoor, joint-owners of the Essanay Studios, were standing outside the Savoy Hotel in downtown Denver when a stranger approached Anderson and began, “Are you—?”
Before he could finish his question, Anderson said, “Yes, I am the man in the pictures.”
These exchanges had grown more frequent as the burly actor’s popularity had grown. Spoor related the encounter to a reporter for the British trade journal the Bioscope while touring Europe to develop Essanay’s overseas distribution network. It had reinforced what Spoor already knew: that Anderson’s rugged Western persona was a major box-office draw; was, in fact, the reason for the expansion that sent him to Europe, even though the domestic Western market was suffering a slump.
In the three years that Anderson’s production unit had been touring the west to make its movies, it had focused on delivering exciting stories that took place in authentic settings, rather than creating a single, heroic figure that audiences could root for: the concept of one character featuring in a series of western adventures simply didn’t exist.
While deciding to create such a character, Anderson may have been conscious of increasing local and regional censorship bodies run by those who assumed the role of society’s moral guardians. In 1909, the MPPC established the National Board of Censorship, which monitored members’ products to ensure they adhered to traditional family values. These gatekeepers frowned upon Westerns, which appealed mainly to children, sections of the working class, and immigrants. The films, which depicted outlaws—often based on real figures such as Jesse James—in a positive light, soon struggled to find exhibitors in certain parts of the country.
These developments created the perfect conditions for the creation of a clean-cut ‘good-bad man’ who could always be relied upon to forsake his life of crime and take the honourable course of action when faced with a moral dilemma. Anderson ensured that Broncho Billy fell firmly within the boundaries acceptable to both censorship bodies and audiences.
Like so much of early cinema history, Broncho Billy’s origins are shrouded in uncertainty. In 1958, Anderson revealed in an interview that he borrowed the name Broncho Billy from a short story called Broncho Billy and the Baby, written by Peter B. Kyne. However, David Kiehn, in his book Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company, claims that Kyne never wrote a story called Broncho Billy and the Baby—although Anderson did make a film of that name in 1915—and that the author didn’t write westerns until penning the oft-filmed The Three Godfathers in 1913. He speculates that prolific twenty-three-year-old Essanay staff writer H. Tipton Steck might have been the source of the Broncho Billy name, although he offers no reason for such conjecture other than Steck’s prodigious output.
Gilbert M. Anderson in Broncho Billy's Redemption (1910)
However he came by the name, Anderson, seeking to create a “central figure for the audience to get interested in,” developed the character to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. He initially had no intention of making a series of films featuring the character, however. Broncho Bill’s Last Spree (1911), Billy’s second outing, appeared more than a year after his first and was motivated by the amount of fan mail Anderson received addressed to ‘Broncho Billy.’ He continued to play other western characters after Last Spree, but all were so similar to Broncho Billy they were virtually interchangeable.
Like Anderson’s successor, William S. Hart, his good/bad man character committed illegal acts not out of malice or greed, but for altruistic purposes or to right a wrong. At the end of each film, having cast off the bad guy persona, Billy would almost always conform to society’s rules. And while Billy had no wife or children, Anderson was careful to depict his relationship with the family unit in a positive light, often showing him assuming the responsibilities a child’s stricken parents are unable to fulfil. In Broncho Billy’s Redemption, for example, Billy is a rustler who risks his freedom to help a sick rancher and his daughter. The redemptive power of Christianity also played a major part in many Broncho Billy films, with his character turning to the Bible as part of his reformation.
All these traits were a calculated attempt to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of society: families, young men, children, Christians. Essanay marketed Billy to appeal to middle-class audiences while keeping his character firmly entrenched among the working class. Billy wore functional clothes and never displayed signs of wealth. His character was a wanderer who rarely owned property. And yet, while in one film he may be portrayed as a saddle bum, in the next he could be a ranch foreman, thwarting any attempt to align him with any particular section of society.
Broncho Billy enraptured audiences for almost five years before the formula started to wear thin around 1915. The plots of his films were simple, and eventually he began recycling them. Also, Essanay was one of the few early major studios to resist the transition to feature-length films, which put them at a major disadvantage following the release of The Birth of a Nation (1915). With audiences declining, the studio announced the end of the Broncho Billy series in January 1916, and Anderson sold his shares to Spoor shortly after.
In 1917, perhaps motivated by the need for money after his unsuccessful theatrical ventures, Anderson started his own production company and revived the series with several features. Consequently, the ailing Essanay reissued many of his old shorts, flooding the market and damaging Anderson’s hopes of a successful comeback.
Sources: Shooting Cowboys and Indians, Andrew Brodie Smith; Hollywood of the Rockies: Colorado, the West, and America’s Film Pioneers, Michael Spencer; Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company, David Kiehn.