Under assumed names, they settled down with their wives and children near Nashville. Townspeople surrounded the bank and a huge posse went after the gang, killing or capturing everyone but Frank and Jesse.

When a bookkeeper refused to open the safe, they killed him. The next year the gang made a disastrous bank robbery attempt in Northfield, Minn. In 1875, Pinkerton detectives made a raid on the James house, killing Jesse's half-brother and severing part of his mother's right arm. James loved the attention and actually began leaving press releases at the sites of his crimes. As editor of The Kansas City Times, which has been described as the voice of the lost cause of the Confederacy, Edwards deliberately created the myth that James and his men stole only from the rich, like the big railroad companies, and were kind to the poor. James's exploits caught the attention of John Newman Edwards, a newspaperman. The manager wasn't around, so the James gang shot and killed the unarmed cashier instead. And they started by robbing banks, killing casually along the way.Īn 1869 bank robbery, for instance, was planned as revenge against the bank manager, who had killed the Confederate guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson. Rather than accepting the new order, the James brothers turned on it. When the North won the Civil War, James took it personally. There were beheadings and disembowelments. At what is known as the Centralia massacre, skulls were broken, throats slashed, scalps taken and noses cut off. This was, according to the film, incredibly savage fighting. During the Civil War, he joined his brother Frank and other guerrillas fighting in the Missouri woods. But he felt he had an excuse.īorn in Missouri in 1847, James grew up in a household that was unequivocally, passionately pro-South. Actually, he was a ruthless, amoral killer. He thought of himself as a Southern hero. The point that Mark Zwonitzer, the documentary's writer, director and producer, really wants to make is that James was no romantic rebel and hardly a Wild West Robin Hood, as some have contended. In 'Jesse James,' the straightforward, slightly static 'American Experience' documentary that has its premiere tonight on public television, he is described as a slight, boyish fellow (about 5 feet 6 inches tall, 120 pounds).

Jesse James, the notorious 19th-century outlaw, is a hard guy to pin down. Brad Pitt is up next, in a film scheduled to open later this year. He has been played by Tyrone Power, Colin Farrell, James Coburn, Roy Rogers, Robert Duvall, Kris Kristofferson, James Dean (on CBS's 'You Are There') and Rob Lowe.

Bloody Bill Anderson by Thomas Goodrich