If not for the "dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard," Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 - April 3, 1882), the guerrilla fighter, outlaw and killer, might be celebrating his 160th birthday today. Look, in 1966, folklore suggested he might have met FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER. A steampunk fantasy could easily put them together again with regard to the search for immortality.
According to time tables and geography, Jesse had nothing to do with Billy the Kid or other notable old west characters, but folklore brought them together, particularly in the dime novels and silent films. Even on TV's THE TWILIGHT ZONE, the reel life Jesse James confronts fictional TV cowboy star Rance McGrew (who is portraying Billy the Kid) and winds up becoming his Hollywood agent. I suppose even with his murder by Bob Ford, we could come up with the right setting to celebrate Jesse's 160th, as long as folklore didn't object, which it rarely does, if ever.
Well, Warner Brothers and Plan B Entertainment have offered us an opportunity to at least recognize the trials and tribulations of an American historical icon. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is adapted from Ron Hansen's 1983 novel by director and screenwriter Andrew Dominik. Dominik knows a bit about criminality, his 2000 film CHOPPER tells the story of Mark "Chopper" Read, a convicted murderer who wrote his autobiography in prison. This new film on the killing of Jesse James stars Brad Pitt as Jesse James and Casey Affleck as Bob Ford. After playing Achillies in TROY, Pitt has proven to have the heroic qualities necessary to play Jesse James and Affleck appears to have the requisite creepyness to play Bob Ford. The film is due to be released September 21, 2007, thus missing Jesse's 160th birthday by 16 days.
While I'm looking forward to this new film, I want to mention other Jesse James movies I've enjoyed. In my favorite, Samuel Fuller's 1949 I SHOT JESSE JAMES, Jesse's death is prologue. The story follows the sufferings of Bob Ford, neurotically played by John Ireland, as he spends the rest of his life contemplating his Judas act. In that golden year of cinema, 1939, 20th Century Fox laid down the foundations that subsequent Jesse James films would follow. In Fox's JESSE JAMES, Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda are Jesse and Frank, respectively, who are presented as the victims of the brutal reconstruction era. While the melodrama is thick, I continue to laugh hysterically upon each viewing, when Henry Hull, playing the pro-south, mudslinging newspaperman Major Rufus Cobb, rants and raves about his enemies, repeatedly charging the public, "If we are ever to have law and order in the West, the first thing we gotta do is take out all the lawyers and shoot 'em down like dogs." The object of his wrath changes with his enemies, but his refrain remains the same. Walter Hill's 1980 THE LONG RIDERS casts four sets of actor brothers as the real-life sets of brothers, Jesse and Frank James (James and Stacey Keach), Cole, Jim and Bob Younger (David, Keith, and Robert Carradine), Ed and Clell Miller (Dennis and Randy Quaid), and Charley and Robert Ford (Christopher and Nicholas Guest). The more recent films, FRANK AND JESSE (1994) and AMERICAN OUTLAWS (2001) are definitely worth watching, but add little to the common legend or known facts. Perhaps the most daring portrayal of Jesse James can be found in Philip Kaufman's THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1972). Robert Duvall plays Jesse as a deranged maniac, spouting his contempt for Yankees like a Pentecostal preacher on the pulpit denouncing Satan. Kaufman balances Duvall's extreme characterization of Jesse with Cliff Robertson's portrayal of a sober and intelligent Cole Younger. "Ain't that a wonderment?" is his constant comic refrain. The cinematic history of Jesse James is a wonderment indeed.
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