In an El Paso hotel room on the seventh day of January 1914, Pancho Villa came to terms with a Hollywood studio to make a silent movie about the role of the bandit-turned-rebel in the Mexican Revolution.
No one can say for sure whose idea it was to shoot the “Centaur of the North” and his peasant army in action or how much the “star” was paid. Villa may have approached director D.W. Griffith instead of the other way around because he grasped the importance of the new medium as a propaganda tool.
The money meant as much or more to Pancho, who never seemed to have enough to feed, clothe and arm his troops. According to one story, he received a lump-sum payment of $25,000, a tale likely more folklore than fact, while another claims the contract entitled him to $5,000 in gold coins for every month the movie was in production…