BOETTICHER’S CLASSIC RESTORED : AN <i> OLE!</i> FOR ‘BULLFIGHTER’ DIRECTOR

When director Budd Boetticher sees the newly restored version of the “Bullfighter and the Lady” at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall tonight, it will be a moment of splendid vindication.

The film--an intense, authentic portrait of the torero’s world, based on his own experiences--was shorn of 37 minutes, by studio order, before its 1950 release. And Boetticher’s preferred cut, which the public has never seen, has only recently been reassembled by UCLA’s Robert Gitt, from a variety of sources.

For Boetticher, it’s a long-delayed “premiere” of a genuine classic. Despite that, he isn’t bitter about the man who did the cutting--Western grandmaster John Ford. “Jack didn’t do it maliciously,” Boetticher said. “He thought the original movie was great. Jack cut it as the studio wanted: to fit as a program picture. And he did it as a personal favor to me.”

Boetticher is hard to capture in a few sentences. He has been a college football star, a professional matador, Hollywood maverick, and--in the opinion of many film historians--one of the five or six finest directors of Westerns.

Just the titles of those movies summon up their atmosphere: spare, tense, charged with violence and machismo : “The Tall T,” “Ride Lonesome,” “Buchanan Rides Alone.” Boetticher admirers may even envision him from those films--perhaps in the mold of his usual ‘50s movie hero, tall and taciturn Randolph Scott. But, when you meet him in person--at his stables outside Ramona where he raises Lusitana horses--his persona seems closer to “Bullfighter and the Lady” star Robert Stack (whom he picked to play himself). Or even some of his heavies: the Lee Marvins, Richard Boones and Jim Coburns. Like them, he’s a loquacious guy with a tough code, few illusions, a ready smile and a darkly unsentimental sense of humor.

His bullfighting--which began during a prolonged Latin American vacation as a college student--led directly to his Hollywood career. He started as technical adviser on 1941’s “Blood and Sand” and, as he recalled: “I walked into Darryl Zanuck’s office and he’s sitting behind his desk with a big cigar. And there’s (scenarist) Jo Swerling, (production head) Bill Koenig and Rouben Mamoulian. And Zanuck said to me, ‘Young man, what do you know about bullfighting?’ And I said, ‘Mr. Zanuck, that’s like telling a bunch of atheists you’ve got five minutes to tell them all about Catholicism. I might as well go back to Mexico.’

“Swerling saw Zanuck was about to dismiss me, so he said, ‘Young man, how do you give the alternativa? ‘ I showed him. And soon all the executives--amazing for those days--were picking up the rugs, clearing the room, and making an arena for me. In five minutes, I’ve got Zanuck running a chair upside-down, as a bull, and I’m making passes. And in 10 minutes, he’s making veronicas. I got the job.”

A decade later, he made “Bullfighter and the Lady” for John Wayne’s Batjac productions. But, though modeled on his Mexican experiences, it still pales beside reality. Take the famous scene where Katy Jurado, as the wife of matador Gilbert Roland, takes a sword to a drunken heckler.

“In the real scene” according to Boetticher, “The wife of Armillita (a legendary matador) was eight months’ pregnant, when Armillita and I went to my first big tienta. Everything happened as it did in the movie: Armillita broke his wrist and couldn’t fight, and the drunk was abusing him. And he was going to go out and fight with one hand, like Gilbert did. And all of a sudden, we heard, “Hey, hey!” And we look out in the ring, and here’s his wife, Anita--eight months’ pregnant--and it was too dangerous to stop her. She’s got his cape, and she finished four or five passes with the bull. And then she walked over and threw the cape in the guy’s face, and said: “You go home and get down on your knees in front of this cape, and remember that in my belly today is more man than you and your worthless family will ever have.”

“I told that to Duke (his producer, John Wayne), and he said: ‘Well, geez . . . . Nobody would believe it.’ So we wrote the scene as it is in the movie. But today, I would have done it.”

Stack will be with Boetticher when “Bullfighter and the Lady” screens at 8 tonight. So, health permitting, will Roland--and it will be the first reunion of the trio in 35 years. “Without them, and Duke Wayne,” Boetticher said, “the picture could never have been made.”

How does he feel now about the cutting of his magnum opus? “I was angry and hurt about some of the cuts then. But, if the picture had been released as it is now, I would have gone to MGM. Gilbert Roland would have won the Academy Award as best supporting actor. I would have been nominated not only for ‘best story,’ but possibly for direction, too. And I’d have been dead now--and I wouldn’t be married to Mary. So, I haven’t got a kick in the world.”