lugonian JESSE JAMES (20th Century-Fox, 1939), directed by Henry King, stars Tyrone Power in the title role as the legendary outlaw of Missouri, Jesse Woodson James (1847-1882). Aside from Jesse James, there's his brother, Frank James (1843-1915) also taking the spotlight, perfectly played by Henry Fonda as part of "The Legend of Frank and Jesse James." Released at the time when westerns were becoming full scale productions, with actors who've never appeared in westerns before now taking part of that genre, this one offered Power a chance to broaden his range from light romantic comedies, occasional costume dramas, or occasional musical to western setting where his guns do the talking. Rather than an accurate account on Jesse James, the writers mix fact and fiction instead. Taken from an original screenplay by Sam Hellman and Nunnally Johnson, with historical data assembled by Rosalind Shaffer and Jo Frances James, the "Forward" passage fills the viewer to what's to be shown: "After the tragic war between the states, America turned to the winning of the West. The symbol of that era was the building of the Trans-Continental railroads. The advance of the railroad was, in some cases, predatory and unscrupulous. Whole communities found themselves victimized by the ever-growing orge - the Iron Horse. It was this uncertain and lawless age that gave to the world, for good or ill, its most famous outlaws, the brothers of Frank and Jesse James." As the opening (and later closing) titles begin to roll using the same underscoring borrowed from Tyrone Power's earlier success, IN OLD CHICAGO (1937), the story, set in Liberty, Missouri, fades in with Barshee (Brian Donlevy), a representative from the St. Louis Midland Railroad, and his three assistants, going from farm to farm informing its landowners of a railroad coming through their property with the government to confiscate it and owners getting nothing. In "good faith," Barshee offers them a dollar an acre. Anyone refusing to believe his scare tactics and sign over their property to him, Barshee's men use their methods of "persuasion." This is not the case as the men approach the farmland of widow woman, Mrs. Samuels (Jane Darwell). Her son, Frank (Henry Fonda), comes to her aide when he finds she's being peer pressured to sign and not to bother seeing a lawyer. A fight ensues between Frank and Barshee, with Jesse (Tyrone Power), the other son, standing guard holding his pistol on the other men until the Frank is finished with Barshee. After the intruders get forced off their land, the James brothers form a meeting with neighboring farmers to fight for their rights and acquire enough money for a lawyer. In the meantime, Barshee gets a warrant from the sheriff to have the James boys arrested for assault with attempt to kill. Major Rufus Cobb (Henry Hull), editor and publisher of the Liberty Weekly Gazette, whose daughter, Zerelda (Nancy Kelly), loves Jesse, runs over to the farm to warn the boys to advise them to hide in the mountains, which they do. After Barshee comes to arrest the brothers, an accident on his part takes place, causing the death of their sickly mother. This incident soon starts Frank and Jesse James' vengeance against the railroad, followed by train and bank robberies that lead to their rise as wanted outlaws. Will Wright (Randolph Scott), United States Marshal, is hired by railroad president Mr. McCoy (Donald Meek), to have the James gang, consisting of Bob (John Carradine) and Charlie Ford (Charles Tannen), arrested and put in jail. Easier said than done.Others members of the cast include J. Edward Bromberg (George Runyan); Slim Summerville (The Jailer); Ernest Whitman ("Pinky" Washington, Frank and Jesse's loyal farmhand); and little John Russell (Jesse James Jr.). Keep a sharp eye for the bearded Lon Chaney Jr. playing one of Jesse's gang members; and Gene Lockhart in a cameo as a bearded citizen commenting on Jesse James' Wanted-Dead or Alive sign with $1,000 reward.Of the many movies dealing with the legend of Jesse James, including the long forgotten 1927 silent edition starring Fred Thomson for Paramount, this edition is obviously one of the best. Whether the film toys with the facts or not really doesn't matter. There's plenty of action-packed excitement ranging from robberies, chases and humor to keep this 106 minute product from being anything but a disappointment. Power may seem all wrong at in his title role, but as the film progresses, he convincingly changes from boyish farmer to mustached hard-hitting outlaw. Fonda on the other hand, is excellent as his brother Frank. Sporting a heavy mustache himself, he nearly draws more attention from Power with his interpretation of a soft-spoken, self-confident spitting tobacco chewer who, in one memorable scene, has a brother-to-brother talk to Jesse about his mad ways and treatment towards one of his friends, even at the risk of getting shot himself. Nancy Kelly, still new to the movies in leading lady capacity, makes a fine "Zee," the woman who loves and marries Jesse, becoming his long-suffering wife, while Henry Hull hams it up with his constant catch phrase of "Shoot them down like dogs." Another bonus besides Randolph Scott in fine support is its rich full Technicolor along with its reported actual location filming in and around Missouri.One of the most televised of the Power and/or Fonda movies, JESSE JAMES, distributed to home video and later DVD, was also broadcast on numerous cable TV networks, including American Movie Classics (1999-2003); Fox Movie Channel, and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: August 25, 2012). Highly recommended viewing along with its sequel: THE RETURN OF FRANK JAMES (1940) once again with Henry Fonda. (****)

James Hitchcock There are certain similarities between "Jesse James" and "They Died with Their Boots On", another Western from two years later. Both films are loosely based on the life of a legendary hero of the Old West, James here and General Custer in the supporting film. (At least, the films treat their subjects as heroes; whether either man really deserves that title is another matter). Both feature a famously handsome and dashing star in the leading role. Both are notorious for their historical inaccuracy and gloss over many aspects of their subjects' lives, especially their character flaws. And in both films the main villains are the representatives of a corrupt railroad company; during the era of the "New Deal" Hollywood seems to have been more critical of Big Business than it was to become after the war. The film's departures from historical fact are many and varied; some are major, others minor. Among the minor discrepancies; James's killer Robert Ford was much younger than the character played here by John Carradine. The maiden name of James's wife Zerelda (known as Zee) was Mimms, not Cobb. James and Zee were first cousins, but this fact is omitted from the script, possibly because cousin marriage, quite common in the America of James's day, had been banned in many states by 1939. More seriously, James's mother (also named Zerelda- her niece was named after her) was not killed by agents of the railroad as shown here. In fact, she outlived her son by many years, dying in 1911 at the age of 86. In the film it is this incident which forces Jesse and his brother Frank, previously honest, law-abiding young men, into a life of crime as they can see no other way of getting justice for their mother's death. In reality, the brothers began their life of crime as "bushwhackers", pro-Confederate irregulars during the Civil War, but the political aspects of their career are totally ignored by the film. The standard of acting tends to vary. Nancy Kelly makes a rather weak, simpering Zee, but the most annoying actor in the film must be Henry Hull as Zee's uncle Rufus, an elderly and comically eccentric newspaper editor. (The Annoying Old Man became a stock comic figure in Westerns; "They Died with Their Boots On" has another example in the figure of California). There is a running joke about how Rufus is always running the same editorial in his paper insisting that the only solution to the problems of the West is to take some group of people and "shoot them down like dogs", the only difference being the identity of the group which Rufus wants shot. (Politicians, lawyers, dentists, railroad executives). This sort of comic relief does not sit well with the generally serious, at times tragic, tone of the film, and seems particularly inappropriate in a film made in 1939, a year in which the leaders of Germany and Russia were, in all seriousness, advocating collective murder as the solution to all the world's problems. The two male leads, however, are splendid, their different styles of acting complementing each other well. Tyrone Power plays Jesse as the more dashing, hot-headed and impetuous of the two brothers, while Henry Fonda's Frank is the calmer and more level-headed. There is also a good contribution from Randolph Scott as Marshal Will Wright, the lawman investigating the crimes of the James gang. Marshal Wright is something of a morally ambiguous character; on the one hand he is a liberal who sees the James brothers as being as much sinned against as sinning and who is concerned that they receive a fair trial, unlike the railroad company who would prefer to see them lynched. On the other hand, there is an implication that he may be motivated as much by a romantic interest in Zee as by any abstract concern for justice. "Jesse James" was made in Technicolor at a time when black-and-white was very much the rule rather than the exception. This suggests that the studio intended it to be a grand, spectacular movie, and to some extent they succeeded in this. It's not quite "Gone with the Wind", but it contains a lot more in the way of action sequences than do most films from the thirties, and some of them stand out, particularly the train robbery and the raid on the bank at Northfield. Nobody would go to a film like this for a history lesson, at least not if you wanted a lesson about the life of Jesse James himself, although today films like this do, if only inadvertently, perhaps offer us a lesson about the period during which they were made. "Jesse James" today can be seen as a highly entertaining example of the way in which Hollywood sought to mythologise America's past and to provide folk- heroes for what was still a relatively young nation. This film might not show Jesse James as he was in real life, but it certainly shows him as people preferred to remember him. 7/10

JLRMovieReviews Tyrone Power is the outlaw Jesse James brought to life in director Henry King's 1939 treatment of the story. This holds nothing back and packs a wallop from beginning to end. We begin with Brian Donlevy going from house to house swindling people out of their property and paying little to no money for it. Apparently, he's a representative of the railroad company, whose new tracks have to go through their property. When they get to Jesse James' mother, played by Jane Darwell, to sign the deed, she shows some sense and flat out won't sign it. A ruckus is started when sons Jesse and Frank order them off their property with a gun and a fistfight. When Brian Donlevy goes to the law and asks to be deputized to arrest Jesse James, they go back after them. But someone has already told them to 'git,' so they ran. It's easy to say these things, I know, but that was their first mistake. From there on, one sees the path that Jesse James and brother Frank get on. Through a series of bad decisions and poor judgment, they rationalize what they do against the railroad company that did wrong by so many of their neighbors, by robbing trains of the passengers' money and encouraging them to sue the company for compensation, because the railroad company is liable for it. They segue to banks and continue their criminal activities. The movie also stars Henry Fonda, as brother Frank James, Randolph Scott as the law, Donald Meek as the railroad president, John Carradine as "the coward" Robert Ford, and Slim Summerville, as a jailer who has a plum role as a jailer who says "them James boys keep their word. When they say they's going to do something, they do it." He was quite good. But despite the whole production and treatment of the story, Henry Hull practically stole the show as the crankiest, sermonizing, over-the-top, over-acting, hammiest newspaperman ever, who's all the time dictating another editorial on lawyers (liars), governors, or you name it. "If we are ever to have law and order in this here area, we have to take out all the (fill in the blank) and shoot 'em down like a dog." Also, Nancy Kelly is memorable and touching as "Zee," who devotedly and almost stubbornly loves Jesse, no matter what. I still can see her in bed distraught over Jesse and having just had a baby. If you want a non-stop, emotional film about the story behind Jesse James, which has no music score throughout the film (I was very impressed by that,) then this is for you. But having said all that, I was a little miffed about the ending speech given by Henry Hull, who says they're not ashamed of Jesse James, because he represented the fighting spirit and gumption of the human race needed in order to overcome wrongs done to you. He did interject they don't have much to say to the fact that Jesse James ultimately became an outlaw. What can family say or do, when a loved one goes down the wrong path, but stay on their side and love them and pray for their salvation? The movie shows what Jesse's original motivations were and also when and where he started to be out of control. And while I know they tried to be fair to Jesse James and to its subject matter and to show him as human, I still feel it glamorizes the outlaw lifestyle, as the film Bonnie and Clyde does. But, I do recommend this film, because it is an example of movie-making at its best. If Henry Hull's speech was made at the end to leave you thinking about who we see as our role models and to question the real credibility of the choice of Jesse James as one, then that's good. His life is here to scrutinize. Decide for yourself.

Spikeopath We are at the time of the Iron Horse birth, the railroads are buying out the farm land at ridiculously low prices, even resorting to bully tactics to get the signature rights. When one particularly nasty railroad agent tries his strong arm tactics on the mother of the James brothers, he gets more than he bargained for. In an act of almost vengeful negligence, the agent causes the death of Mrs James and thus sets the wheels in motion for what was to become folklore notoriety, Jesse James, his brother Frank, and a gang of seemingly loyal thieves, went on to etch their names in outlaw history.There is no getting away from the fact that history tells us that this is a highly fictionalised account of Jesse James and his exploits. What we are given here by director Henry King and his screenwriter Nunally Johnson, is a more romanticised look at the legend of the man himself; which sure as heck fire makes for one dandy and enjoyable watch. The cast is one to savour, Tyrone Power (Jesse James), Henry Fonda (Frank James), Randolph Scott (Will Wright), Brian Donlevy (Barshee) and John Carradine (Bob Ford) all line up to entertain the masses with fine results, with Fonda possibly owing his subsequent career to his appearance here. He would return a year later in the successful sequel The Return Of Frank James and subsequently go on to greater and more rewarding projects. Power of course would go on and pick up the trusty blade and start swishing away, a career beckoned for this matinée idol for sure, but it's nice to revisit this particular picture to see that Power could indeed be an actor of note, capable of some emotional depth instead of making Jesse just another outlawish thug. If the makers have made the character too "heroic" then that's for debate, it's one of the many historical "itches" that have irked historians over the years. But Power plays it as such and it works very well. One of the film's main strengths is the pairing of Power and Fonda, very believable as a kinship united in ideals, with both men expertly handled by the reliable Henry King. The Technicolor from Howard Greene and George Barnes is wonderfully put to good use here, splendidly capturing the essence of the time with eye catching results. While the film itself has a fine action quota, gun play and galloping horses all feature throughout, and the characterisations of the main players lend themselves to pulse raising sequences. To leave us with what? A highly accomplished Western picture that ends in the way that history has showed it should, whilst the rest of the film is flimsy history at best... Yes. But ultimately it really doesn't matter if one is after some Western entertainment, because for sure this picture scores high in that regard. 8/10