Jesse James Rides Trigger
Roy Rogers was in two Republic pictures about Jesse James, Days of Jesse James (1939) and Jesse James At Bay (1941), both directed by Joseph Kane. They are 53 minute black and white progammers with no pretensions whatever but great fun.
Kane
was Republic’s go-to Western director (116 cowboy flicks), working a lot with
Rogers, Wayne and Autry, and must be the only movie director to have first been
a professional cellist.
What I like about these pictures is their honesty. On the title screen of both we get the plain declaration:
The characters and events depicted in this motion picture are fictional
and similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
There you are, you can’t say
plainer than that. Would that more Westerns had been so straightforward rather
than going for the ‘This is how it really happened’ line (and lie).
Actually, though, there may
have been good legal reasons because 20th Century Fox had done a
deal with the James family and jealously guarded their rights.
The villains are Captain
Worthington (Harry Woods), a crooked railroad detective, and a banker, Wyatt
(Arthur Loft) who is equally crooked. Obviously. All railroad men and bankers were crooks. As you may imagine, however, they get
their come-uppance at the hands of our hero Roy, ably assisted by Trigger.
Cole Younger (Glenn Strange the Great) has
a very dashing mustache and the sheriff (Fred Burns) is rather tall and
distinguished. Mrs. Samuels (Ma James)and her doctor husband, Jesse’s mother and
stepfather, are rather posh and there’s Buster, their son, Jesse’s young
half-brother. Buster and Mrs. Samuels are hurt but not killed because Roy saves
them when Capt. Worthington, the cad, firebombs the ranch.
Of course the railroad is the
problem. Jesse and Frank are only robbing trains to get back at the evil
railroad. When Jesse brings home the loot to Ma, he says it’s “a little
donation from the railroad company [for a local farmer], kinda makes up for the
way they cheated him out of that right-of-way.” This is a standard excuse for
James’s depredations in movies and gets Jesse off the moral hook for robbing.
Zee (Dorothy Sebastian) makes
a brief appearance with Jesse Jr, a baby. Zee looks rather Indian actually.
Anyway, it’s all harmless fun.
Jesse James At Bay is very similar. However, this time Roy is
Jesse (though he still rides Trigger). The old timer Gabby has now become the
sheriff. There’s no sign of Frank in this one but Jesse is still marauding.
There’s the old double trick, with lookalike Clint Burns (also played by Roy)
and loads of mixed-up identity. Republic must have watched Fox’s The Return of Frank James enviously because they went one better: they had two
female reporters, Polly and Jane (Sally Pane and Gale Storm). Polly is mighty
handy with a derringer and smitten by Jesse (not Clint, she can tell). There’s
a bad-guy gambler who tries to shoot Jesse with a derringer too. A
two-derringer picture! That’s the kind for me.
Roy sings a song to Polly as
they are ridin’ along. Yup, it’s got all the ingredients. 53 minutes of rootin’
tootin’ fun. By the way, Roy seems to have remarkably faithless to Gabby’s
granddaughter, she who featured so attractively in the 1939 picture. She is not
mentioned at all and Roy is free to dally with St Louis journalists. What
happened to her? Well, one doesn’t like to be indiscreet.
Jesse is a real Robin Hood,
robbing the trains and giving the railroad’s money to local farmers who risk
being evicted. This exchange will give you the idea:
Sheriff Gabby: Listen, Missy, I’ve
known Jesse since afore he was born.
Reporter: You have? Is he really a
ruthless outlaw and killer? Gabby: Course he ain’t. Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless it was workin’ for the railroad.
To be honest, I wouldn’t put
these two Roy Rogers Jesse James movies in the totally unmissable class.
Unless you are obsessed with
Westerns and a Jesseholic.
Oh, you too?
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