The True Story of Jesse James
1957 film by Nicholas Ray
The True Story of Jesse James is a 1957 American Western drama film adapted from Henry King's 1939 film Jesse James, which was only loosely based on James' life. It was directed by Nicholas Ray, with Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter portraying Jesse and Frank James, respectively. Filming took place during 1955. Originally titled The James Brothers in the United Kingdom, the film focused on the relationship between the two James brothers during the last 18 years of Jesse James' life.
Plot
On September 7, 1876, Jesse and Frank James ride with their gang into Northfield, Minnesota on an unsuccessful bank robbery. During a gunfight, two members of the gang are killed and the James brothers escape to Missouri. Remington, the head of a detective agency, leads a posse on a manhunt for the James brothers to receive a $30,000 reward. During their search, Remington's posse kill gang member Sam Wells and capture Tucker, another gang member.
Years prior, during the Civil War, Frank joined the pro-Confederate guerrilla Quantrill's Raiders. The Jayhawkers interrogate their mother Zerelda and Jesse, who refuses to disclose his brother's whereabouts.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The True Story of Jesse James” as 1957 film by Nicholas Ray. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1957 film by Nicholas Ray. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3177619. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1939, 1955 and 1876.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The True Story of Jesse James” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.