 Nevertheless, Vidor's "Billy the Kid" set the pattern for Billy the Kid movies for the next fifty years, as other filmmakers followed its formula and made the Kid an instrument of justified vengeance and his enemies the villains of the story.As Billy the Kid was reborn a romantic or tragic figure in literature and films of the 1920s–1940s; high culture began to turn its attention to his legend in the late 1930s.Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder with George Balanchine of the School of American Ballet, drew material from Burns' book to write the libretto for a ballet to be called "Billy the Kid", performed by his new group, the "Ballet Caravan".