Alias Smith and Jones 1969 film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. (Universal contract player Ben Murphy was offered to the producers because he was considered a Paul Newman lookalike.) A number of similarities are seen between the film and the TV series: One of the lead characters in the film was called Harvey Logan (played by Ted Cassidy). In real life, Harvey Logan, also known by the nickname of Kid Curry, was an associate of the real Butch Cassidy, and unlike the TV version, was a cold-blooded killer. The TV series also featured a group of robbers
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it authentic as a novel. Goldman later stated: The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longbaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary