SHANLEY
Story Concept
Story and Screenplay by
Alan L. Foote and Craig Holyoak
By the middle of the 1920’s the Old West was dead; except on the Arizona Strip. Isolated from the large cities and railroads, the wild country between the Grand Canyon and St. George, Utah harbored the last of an exhausted breed of men. Hiding from the twentieth century, ranchers, settlers, cowboys, and thieves found the wide-open desolation of the Strip and took one last try at holding back time.
The challenges of telling Shanley’s story are many. Obviously he is a very colorful character possessing the potential of telling an audience much about the American West at the turn of the century. Shanley must be portrayed in a fresh, unique way. The clichés of the western adventure have to be avoided. The humor and the bravado of the man must be a center point of the story and while his admittedly antisocial behavior needs to be the focal point of the tale, the inner value of Shanley must be shown so that the audience will see the personable characteristics described by the people who really knew and admired this complex individual.
And that will be the main challenge of telling this story: keeping as close to the truth as possible while keeping Shanley a charismatic, identifiable character within the limitations of the film medium. The audience must be made to feel something special for the man – they must care for him.
The biography “Shanley” has provided much of the needed information for the screenplay and to increase the public interest in the life of Shanley the writers have made the most of any possible ties between Shanley and characters the public will more readily recognize – the hole-in-the-wall gang, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.
Shanley lived a long, full life that spanned more decades than could possibly be shown in a meaningful way in a feature film. Again, the writers have taken that into consideration and have only covered the most important and most exciting portions his early career.
The story opens with the scene that is so vividly portrayed in the biography where he is herding sheep and four strangers ride into camp.
At that point in his young life, Shanley is trying to decide who he is and one of those riders, Butch Cassidy, quickly and irreversibly molds a lifetime for the youngster. This experience, when contrasted with the less-than-favorable conditions of his parents’ home, sets in motion the life and adventures for young Shanley.
Years of rustling, thievery, loves, and suffering follow. The time spent in the Colorado State Prison will be a centerpiece of the film in providing Shanley not only maturity and added courage to endure but with an adversary in the form of the warden whose prize horse Shanley steals to escape. After the prison experience subtle changes are noted in Shanley: he has become his own man, convinced of his own values. This is a person who hated the cattle barons and avenged the death of his brother in a gunfight.
One element of the Shanley story that cannot be escaped and that closely parallels his life is the nature of the land itself. Wild, apparently hostile, yet loved by those who know it best, the country of the four corners, the Arizona Strip, southern Utah, is unalterably connected to Shanley’s destiny. In every scene and adventure of the story, the land must play a role and wherever possible actual locations should be used to the fullest advantage.
And as the land changed with the coming of a new age the life of Shanley took a final, melancholy course, and his heyday came to a close. But the story cannot end there. Although Shanley’s character seemed boxed in, stifled, by modern times there was no surrender in the man and his spirit endured.
And that is the appeal of Shanley.
Script Available Upon Request
SHANLEY
“He stole more cows than any man alive.”
ABOUT THE SCREENPLAY
A raw, rollicking, biography about a true Old-West cowboy who went by the moniker of Big Bill Shanley. Born George Franklin Bragg, September 18, 1885 in Aqua Chiquito, New Mexico, Big Bill Shanley’s life took him down many old-time trails, from a life of murder, cattle-rustling, horse stealing, rodeoing with the famous 101 Wild West Show, packing through the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, rustling, and running stolen livestock through Revolutionary Mexico. He ended up doing what he was best at doing, stealing cattle on the famous Arizona Strip – a stretch of wild land running from the Grand Canyon up into southern Utah.
Shanley learned his outlawry from the best, the notorious Butch Cassidy, who he met at Robber’s Roost, Utah, when he was 12-years old. Shanley shot a man on a Dolores, Colorado, street not too many years later and as a result ended up in the Colorado State Penitentiary, first serving a light sentence, and then having it boosted to life after he was convicted of first-degree murder while still in prison. Shanley escaped on the warden’s favorite horse. He stayed an escapee for the rest of his life – rustling, renegading, and roistering his way around three countries with a remarkable sense of humor.
Shanley met a 12 year-old kid, Grant Harris, in St. George, Utah, when he was thirty-one years old. That kid turned out to be Shanley’s best friend right up until the end of the outlaw’s life in 1959. The following is the kid’s interpretation of Shanley’s story. A wild one; a true one!
“Bank robber, cattle rustler, brawler, smuggler of aliens, brief acquaintance of the notorious Butch Cassidy, and killer of so many men he could hardly keep track – this was Shanley. And this was also a “hell-of-a-guy – a good bad man who bedeviled lawmen from Mexico to Canada and happily ran through roughly a half million dollars before dying peacefully and penniless in 1959.
“Shanley represented a lost breed in the American West, a group of men whose basic motivation was the love of freedom,” said the former head of the Nevada Alcoholism Division and one of Shanley’s drinking buddies. “People like Shanley hated three elements – the railroad, which took up all the grazing land; the banks, because that’s where all the big money was’ and, worse than anybody, the cattle barons, because they didn’t show the little guy any mercy at all.”
Butch Cassidy, perhaps one of the most famous train and bank robbers of all time, rode into Shanley’s life in 1897 just after having robbed the Castle Gate Coal Company of Price, Utah of around $10,000.00 in gold double eagles.
Shanley was a 12 year-old tending cattle at an isolated mountain camp at the time. Cassidy, 31, spent three weeks at the camp teaching Shanley all he knew and inviting him to become ‘the baby of the gang.’
The relaxed outlaw told Shanley how to make “unethical and illegal withdrawals from banks,’ and waxed philosophical about the fact that, “outlaws are always on the run – half are running after something while the other half are running from something.”
“Someday in the hereafter,” Cassidy told Shanley, “we will sit down to a banquet of consequences. Then and there we’ll admit our troubles were a self-inflicted fatal sickness which is terminated in only one way – by death.”
Cassidy, jingling the coins in his jeans, added that, “I should have been a Mormon missionary instead of an outlaw. But then, what the hell, this was more fun, and the money is better.”
Shanley didn’t join Cassidy’s gang, but he set out to follow his suggestion that he run whiskey to the Ute Indians and guns to the Navajos. He did wind up raiding U.S. Army wagons and stealing Winchesters, using the Navajo Reservation as an unassailable base of operation.
His life ran its skein of border shootouts, drunken brawls, numerous arrests in the Las Vegas area, triumphs at various rodeos, and at least one spectacular encounter – He went to Goldfield, Nevada, got drunk in a saloon, and had a 35-minute fist fight. After it was over the other guy introduced himself as Stanley Ketchel – pound for pound the best fighting man alive at the time.
Above all – Shanley was a ‘Robin Hood’ . . . always taking the side of the underdog. Goodness was the outstanding quality of the man. “I think it justified his being who he was. He had no fear and he was a very happy man,” said Grant Harris.
“I haven’t anything to leave you my little friend,” Old Shanley told Harris, “so I want you to tell the story of my life.”
Story Concept
Story and Screenplay by
Alan L. Foote and Craig Holyoak
By the middle of the 1920’s the Old West was dead; except on the Arizona Strip. Isolated from the large cities and railroads, the wild country between the Grand Canyon and St. George, Utah harbored the last of an exhausted breed of men. Hiding from the twentieth century, ranchers, settlers, cowboys, and thieves found the wide-open desolation of the Strip and took one last try at holding back time.
The challenges of telling Shanley’s story are many. Obviously he is a very colorful character possessing the potential of telling an audience much about the American West at the turn of the century. Shanley must be portrayed in a fresh, unique way. The clichés of the western adventure have to be avoided. The humor and the bravado of the man must be a center point of the story and while his admittedly antisocial behavior needs to be the focal point of the tale, the inner value of Shanley must be shown so that the audience will see the personable characteristics described by the people who really knew and admired this complex individual.
And that will be the main challenge of telling this story: keeping as close to the truth as possible while keeping Shanley a charismatic, identifiable character within the limitations of the film medium. The audience must be made to feel something special for the man – they must care for him.
The biography “Shanley” has provided much of the needed information for the screenplay and to increase the public interest in the life of Shanley the writers have made the most of any possible ties between Shanley and characters the public will more readily recognize – the hole-in-the-wall gang, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, etc.
Shanley lived a long, full life that spanned more decades than could possibly be shown in a meaningful way in a feature film. Again, the writers have taken that into consideration and have only covered the most important and most exciting portions his early career.
The story opens with the scene that is so vividly portrayed in the biography where he is herding sheep and four strangers ride into camp.
At that point in his young life, Shanley is trying to decide who he is and one of those riders, Butch Cassidy, quickly and irreversibly molds a lifetime for the youngster. This experience, when contrasted with the less-than-favorable conditions of his parents’ home, sets in motion the life and adventures for young Shanley.
Years of rustling, thievery, loves, and suffering follow. The time spent in the Colorado State Prison will be a centerpiece of the film in providing Shanley not only maturity and added courage to endure but with an adversary in the form of the warden whose prize horse Shanley steals to escape. After the prison experience subtle changes are noted in Shanley: he has become his own man, convinced of his own values. This is a person who hated the cattle barons and avenged the death of his brother in a gunfight.
One element of the Shanley story that cannot be escaped and that closely parallels his life is the nature of the land itself. Wild, apparently hostile, yet loved by those who know it best, the country of the four corners, the Arizona Strip, southern Utah, is unalterably connected to Shanley’s destiny. In every scene and adventure of the story, the land must play a role and wherever possible actual locations should be used to the fullest advantage.
And as the land changed with the coming of a new age the life of Shanley took a final, melancholy course, and his heyday came to a close. But the story cannot end there. Although Shanley’s character seemed boxed in, stifled, by modern times there was no surrender in the man and his spirit endured.
And that is the appeal of Shanley.
Script Available Upon Request
SHANLEY
“He stole more cows than any man alive.”
ABOUT THE SCREENPLAY
A raw, rollicking, biography about a true Old-West cowboy who went by the moniker of Big Bill Shanley. Born George Franklin Bragg, September 18, 1885 in Aqua Chiquito, New Mexico, Big Bill Shanley’s life took him down many old-time trails, from a life of murder, cattle-rustling, horse stealing, rodeoing with the famous 101 Wild West Show, packing through the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, rustling, and running stolen livestock through Revolutionary Mexico. He ended up doing what he was best at doing, stealing cattle on the famous Arizona Strip – a stretch of wild land running from the Grand Canyon up into southern Utah.
Shanley learned his outlawry from the best, the notorious Butch Cassidy, who he met at Robber’s Roost, Utah, when he was 12-years old. Shanley shot a man on a Dolores, Colorado, street not too many years later and as a result ended up in the Colorado State Penitentiary, first serving a light sentence, and then having it boosted to life after he was convicted of first-degree murder while still in prison. Shanley escaped on the warden’s favorite horse. He stayed an escapee for the rest of his life – rustling, renegading, and roistering his way around three countries with a remarkable sense of humor.
Shanley met a 12 year-old kid, Grant Harris, in St. George, Utah, when he was thirty-one years old. That kid turned out to be Shanley’s best friend right up until the end of the outlaw’s life in 1959. The following is the kid’s interpretation of Shanley’s story. A wild one; a true one!
“Bank robber, cattle rustler, brawler, smuggler of aliens, brief acquaintance of the notorious Butch Cassidy, and killer of so many men he could hardly keep track – this was Shanley. And this was also a “hell-of-a-guy – a good bad man who bedeviled lawmen from Mexico to Canada and happily ran through roughly a half million dollars before dying peacefully and penniless in 1959.
“Shanley represented a lost breed in the American West, a group of men whose basic motivation was the love of freedom,” said the former head of the Nevada Alcoholism Division and one of Shanley’s drinking buddies. “People like Shanley hated three elements – the railroad, which took up all the grazing land; the banks, because that’s where all the big money was’ and, worse than anybody, the cattle barons, because they didn’t show the little guy any mercy at all.”
Butch Cassidy, perhaps one of the most famous train and bank robbers of all time, rode into Shanley’s life in 1897 just after having robbed the Castle Gate Coal Company of Price, Utah of around $10,000.00 in gold double eagles.
Shanley was a 12 year-old tending cattle at an isolated mountain camp at the time. Cassidy, 31, spent three weeks at the camp teaching Shanley all he knew and inviting him to become ‘the baby of the gang.’
The relaxed outlaw told Shanley how to make “unethical and illegal withdrawals from banks,’ and waxed philosophical about the fact that, “outlaws are always on the run – half are running after something while the other half are running from something.”
“Someday in the hereafter,” Cassidy told Shanley, “we will sit down to a banquet of consequences. Then and there we’ll admit our troubles were a self-inflicted fatal sickness which is terminated in only one way – by death.”
Cassidy, jingling the coins in his jeans, added that, “I should have been a Mormon missionary instead of an outlaw. But then, what the hell, this was more fun, and the money is better.”
Shanley didn’t join Cassidy’s gang, but he set out to follow his suggestion that he run whiskey to the Ute Indians and guns to the Navajos. He did wind up raiding U.S. Army wagons and stealing Winchesters, using the Navajo Reservation as an unassailable base of operation.
His life ran its skein of border shootouts, drunken brawls, numerous arrests in the Las Vegas area, triumphs at various rodeos, and at least one spectacular encounter – He went to Goldfield, Nevada, got drunk in a saloon, and had a 35-minute fist fight. After it was over the other guy introduced himself as Stanley Ketchel – pound for pound the best fighting man alive at the time.
Above all – Shanley was a ‘Robin Hood’ . . . always taking the side of the underdog. Goodness was the outstanding quality of the man. “I think it justified his being who he was. He had no fear and he was a very happy man,” said Grant Harris.
“I haven’t anything to leave you my little friend,” Old Shanley told Harris, “so I want you to tell the story of my life.”