Gore Vidal was fascinated by the story of outlaw Billy the Kid. In 1955, he wrote a television play for NBC called The Death of Billy the Kid, starring Paul Newman as Billy and Frank Overton as Pat Garett. Warner Brothers picked it up for the big screen, keeping Newman in the central role and changing the title to The Left Handed Gun (though Billy the Kid’s left-handedness was apparently a myth based on a popular photo of him printed in reverse). Arthur Penn’s directorial debut presented William H. Bonney as a tormented punk—portrayed by Newman with a subtle eccentricity—in a trigger-happy world.

Penn did not oversee the final edit, and neither he nor Vidal were entirely pleased with the results; writer Leslie Stevens had made numerous changes to the script. Vidal later realized his original vision in 1989 with a script for TNT, Billy the Kid starring Val Kilmer, in which Vidal himself plays The Preacher.