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OUTLAWS:Newest movies comes closeijto portraying 'real' James GangBy Tim BryantOf United Press InternationalKEARNEY — At least 30 American films and serials have been made about the Missouri outlaw Jesse James, with the leading role played by — amond others — Tyrone Power, Roy Rogers, Clayton Moore and once even by Jesse’s son.“The Long Riders’’ is the latest in the string and the best. At least that’s what an authority on the James' family says.“You have to remember it’s entertainment, not history,” Milton Perry says of the film. “It makes no pretense to be a documentary. But it’s the best movie made on prank and Jesse.”Frank, of course, was Jesse’s older brother. With the Younger boys, who lived in nearby Independence, and other desperadoes, Frank and Jesse robbed banks and trains across much of the Midwest during the years following the Civil War.At the time, many people considered railroads at the top of the corporate bad guy list and the James Gang’s exploits seen in that context became a type of revenge. That view became more popular when Pinkerton detectives hired by the railroads threw a bomb meant for Jesse into the James’ house that instead killed the outlaw’s younger half-brother.Perry is curator of the Clay County Museum, of which the James’ home near Kearney is a part, and can talk about Jesse as if the bandit just walked from the room carrying his Navy Colt revolver and a bag of ill-gotten money.Jim Keach is the latest celluloid Jesse and Perry says while Keach’s role makes Jesse “more of a stern character” than the original, the actor’s appearance is genuine.“Everybody said the real Jesse had piercing eyes,”Perry says. “The makeup is quite well done. ”The film was shot in Georgia and Texas, although producers at first wanted to make it on the rolling northwest Missouri prairie near the James’ home. However, the Missouri countryside has changed a great deal in the century following the gang’s adventures.“We worked very hard for authenticity,” director Walter Hill said. “We wanted to shoot it in Missouri, in the area where the Jameses had lived, but there were too many fast-food restaurants and concrete telephone poles ... Georgia turned out to be just right.”Another, and unusual, facet of the film is that it stars four sets of acting brothers who comprise the James Gang. Stacy and Jim Keach play Frank and Jesse James; David, Keith and Robert Carradine portray Cole, James and Bobby Younger; Dennis and Christopher Guest play Bob and Charlie Ford, and Randy and Dennis Quaid play Ed and Clell Miller.Perry says while the motion picture stands out because much of it is a character study rather than the standard shoot-’em-up, it still has some lapses. The most notable were a fictitious liaison between Cole Younger and frontier bad girl Belle Starr and a train robbery done the hard way, he says.“It (robbing a train) would be a very tough thing to do by chasing a train at 40 mph,” Perry says. “Jesse and Frank did the easy thing by piling things on the tracks and stopping the train.”All in all. Perry says “The Long Riders” is the best of the “James genre,” which began with a circa 1920 film made in Kansas City, with Jesse E. James, the outlaw's son, in the starring role.Many more James films followed with various stars generally giving the role the Hollywood treatment. Shaking his head, Perry says with a sigh that the least authentic portrayl of the James legend was a movie called “Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.”
Newspaper Details
Independence Examiner
Independence, Missouri, US
Sat, Nov 29, 1980
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Joplin P.
MO, USA 04 Aug 2024
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Independence Examiner
