STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 August 1939, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

JESSE JAMES. THE ROBIN HOOD

OF AMERICA

The most romantic outlaw in the history of America, the desperado whose daring coloured a whole era and endowed it with the title of the “Serious Seventies,” the man who invented bank hold-ups and introduced train robberies —has been brought to the screen in Darryl F. Zanuck’s production, "Jesse James,” the 20th CenturyFox technicolour epic, starring Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly, and Randolph Scott, which will be shown at the State Theatre tonight. "Jesse James” opens with the introduction of the “Iron Horse” in its journey through the old West, cutting ruthlessly across the farms of the simple, hardy pioneers. It shows how Jesse James (.who was known as the Robin Hood of America) and his equally notorious brother Frank (Henry Fonda) began their career of crime as a direct result of the murder of their mother by an unscrupulous hireling of the St. Louis Midland railroad, in the person of one Barshee, played by Brian Donlevy. Jesse shoots Barshee and swears to avenge his mother’s death. A murderer with an ever-increasing price on his head, he goes from raid to raid. Love conies to Jesse in the person of Zerelda, better known as Zee, played by Nancy Kelly, a gently nurtured girl who gave up a life of ease to share the wild, reckless life of this hunted outlaw as his wife, and to bear his son alone in the hills. When Zee finally leaves him, Jesse becomes a cold and ruthless desperado, and the film follows his reckless deeds across five States, climaxing in his betrayal and death at the hands of Bob Ford, the -dirty little coward” of song and story, who sold him out to the law.