The real story… really told for the first time!
Having fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Jesse James and his brother Frank dream of a farm life in Missouri. Harassed by Union sympathizers, they assemble a gang of outlaws, robbing trains and becoming folk heroes in the process. Jesse marries his sweetheart, Zee, and maintains an aura of domesticity, but after a group of lawmen launch an attack on his mother's house, Jesse plans one more great raid -- on a Minnesota bank.
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Grave, earnest, cool and classical in form.
- gravecomic
- earnestironic
- cooloverwhelming
- classical in formformally daring
- resolvedopen-ended
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Reviews on TMDB
Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Tastebuds's numbers.
- tmdb76622195on TMDB · Sep 20236/10
Director Nicholas Ray, hot off of "Johnny Guitar" and "Rebel Without a Cause," had a bit of contractual obligation to take care of before leaving for Europe, and handed in this short biopic of the infamous American outlaw. Mostly told through overly long flashbacks, all the major points of Frank and Jesse James' lives are touched on. Robert Wagner plays Jesse, and Jeffrey Hunter is well cast as older brother Frank. After being driven to crime by the treatment of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers after the Civil War -according to Walter Newman's script, based on the Nunnally Johnson screenplay from the 1939 film "Jesse James," Jesse and his gang ride up and down the Missouri countryside, robbing banks and trains and giving the money to the poor. Jesse finds love with Zee (a bored Hope Lange), but must constantly abandon her for jobs, each time promising that the next heist will be the last heist. The James boys also have an overly sympathetic mother (Agnes Moorehead), who excuses everything they do, even after her farm house is bombed because of her sons. If you saw the incredible "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," then you know how our story ends base
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Cast
- Robert WagnerJesse James
- Jeffrey HunterFrank James
- Hope LangeZee James
- Agnes MooreheadMrs. Samuel
- Alan Hale Jr.Cole Younger
- Alan BaxterBarney Remington
- John CarradineRev. Jethro Bailey
- Rachel StephensAnne James
- Barney PhillipsDr. Samuel
- Biff ElliotJim Younger
Crew
- Nicholas RayDirector
- Walter NewmanScreenplay
- Nunnally JohnsonScreenplay
- Leigh HarlineOriginal Music Composer
- Robert L. SimpsonEditor
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