The Outlaw is a 1943 American Western film directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston.

Doc is looking for his stolen horse, only to find the strawberry roan in the possession of Billy the Kid, who says he bought it from someone else.

[5] The next day, a stranger offers to shoot Garrett in the back while the Kid distracts the lawman, but Billy suspects a trap and guns the man down in self-defense.

Instead of killing the unconscious Kid, Rio is now drawn to him and nurses him back to health over the next month, even climbing in bed with him when he becomes chilled.

By the time Doc returns, Rio has fallen in love with Billy, and claims to have secretly married the still delirious gunslinger.

He handcuffs the lawman to a post, encouraging him to stick to his original yarn rather than admit having been left helpless by the Kid.

As Billy starts to ride away, he stops and looks back; Rio runs to join him and they gallop off together on the roan.

While filming The Outlaw, director Howard Hughes felt that the camera did not properly capture Jane Russell's bust, so he designed a cantilevered underwire bra to emphasize her figure.

He added curved metal supports that were sewn into the brassiere under each breast cup and connected to the bra's shoulder straps.

Contrary to many later media reports, Russell did not wear the bra during filming; she said in her 1988 autobiography that it was so uncomfortable that she secretly discarded it.

To prevent Hughes from noticing, Russell padded the cups with tissue and tightened the shoulder straps before returning to the set.

The Code office ordered cuts, and Hughes reluctantly removed about 40 feet, or a half-minute, of footage that prominently featured Russell's bust.

Facing the loss of millions of dollars, Hughes sought to create a public outcry for his film to be banned.

Hughes had his managers call ministers, women's clubs and housewives, informing them about the purportedly lewd film soon to be released.

[10][11][12][13] The film was due to play the Geary for three weeks before a two-week run at the Tivoli in San Francisco, with Hughes leasing the theatres.

[17] Following release, the Legion of Decency gave it their "condemned" classification due to its "glorification of crime and immoral actions" and "indecent" costuming.

[21] The Outlaw was rereleased by United Artists in the first week of March 1946 at the Loew's theatre in Richmond, Virginia where it set a house record for the weekend.

[3] Further cuts were made to secure the Production Code seal of approval in October 1949 and it also received a B rating (morally objectional in part) from the Legion of Decency.

[3] Hughes sued Classic Film Museum, Inc. and Alan J. Taylor for unlawful distribution of Hell's Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw.

The DVD version also features an audio commentary by Jane Russell and actress Terry Moore, Hughes's alleged wife.

"[citation needed] William Brogdon's review of the film in Variety in 1943 claimed "Beyond sex attraction of Miss Russell's frankly displayed charms, picture, according to accepted screen entertainment standards, falls short".

[1] After finally getting to see the film in 1947, The New York Times called it "a strictly second-rate Western, long and tedious and crudely acted for the most part, a great deal more soporific than swashbuckling".