Burt Kennedy

The Man Who Wrote with Bullets

Burt Kennedy did not understand film without the rhythm of the vaudeville he learned as a child. He was born in Muskegon in 1922 and spent his childhood backstage with his parents' dance troupe. That gave him a sense of comic timing that he later applied to six-shooters.

War changed everything.

He served in World War II and returned home with a Silver Star and several shrapnel wounds. Instead of continuing to dance, he decided to write. He started in radio but soon moved to Hollywood, knowing that dialogue in the western had to be as dry as the Arizona desert.

His encounter with Budd Boetticher in the mid-1950s defined the genre forever. Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Seven Men from Now in 1956, and it was a revelation in its absolute austerity. His characters never talked just to talk.

Randolph Scott was the perfect vehicle for his words. Together they created the Ranown cycle, where revenge simmered slowly. They were low-budget films, but they redefined the ethics of the lone cowboy against the big productions of the era that chased easy spectacle.

The Turn to Comedy and the Decline of the Genre

Kennedy wanted to direct, and he got his chance in 1961 with The Canadians. But his real success behind the camera came when he decided to poke fun at the myths he had helped build years earlier. In 1969 he made Support Your Local Sheriff! and proved that James Garner could be a hero as deadly as he was funny.

And audiences responded by filling the theaters.

During the 1970s his star began to fade as the western lost favor with the major studios. He directed John Wayne in The Train Robbers in 1973, but the chemistry was not the same as he had achieved with Boetticher. He turned to television and commissioned screenplays to keep his work pace steady.

In his later years he worked on minor projects and direct-to-video films that barely recalled his past glory. In 1990 he tried to regain his footing with Suburban Commando, but the movie industry had already become a very different place. There was no longer room for the tough guys who could ride a horse and deliver a line with a quick draw.

Burt Kennedy died in Sherman Oaks on February 15, 2001 from lung cancer. He was 78 years old and left behind fifteen screenplays for the most important cycle of the B-western in American history.