Viva Villa!
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Viva Villa! is a 1934 movie that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was written by Ben Hecht, from a novel by Edgecumb Pinchon and Odo B. Stade. The film was directed by Jack Conway. There was special, uncredited help with the script by Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman also contributed uncredited directing help.
The movie is a fictionalized biography of Pancho Villa, starring Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo and Fay Wray. Lee Tracy was originally cast in a supporting role but was fired after drunkenly urinating off a balcony onto the Mexican crowd below. Tracy's career never fully recovered from this incident, although he did make other films, most notably Gore Vidal's The Best Man thirty years later.
"Viva Villa!"
"Viva Villa!" is also a shout meant to praise Pancho Villa in times of injustice. Much like "Viva Zapata!"
Trivia
- This film partially inspired the creation of the 1952 film titled, Viva Zapata!. The screenplay was written by author John Steinbeck.