Jesse James

Henry King directed this 1939 Western, which centres on the James brothers and the pressure that railroad expansion put on farming families in nineteenth-century Missouri. Jesse and Frank James are living quietly with their mother when agents working for the railway company use threats and deception to force landowners off the property along the planned route. The family resists, and the dispute turns violent. Driven by revenge, the two brothers take up arms and turn to banditry, robbing banks and trains with a gang of their own, while a growing bounty makes Jesse a hunted man.

The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century Fox on a budget of two million dollars, with a screenplay by Nunnally Johnson. Tyrone Power plays Jesse Woodson James and Henry Fonda plays his older brother Frank, with Nancy Kelly as Zerelda "Zee" Cobb, Randolph Scott as Marshall Will Wright and Henry Hull as Maj. Rufus Cobb. It came early in Henry King's directing career, ahead of The Black Swan, Twelve O'Clock High, The Gunfighter and David and Bathsheba.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 5,400 votes; on TMDB it has a rating of 6.6 out of 10 from about 115 votes.