The Great Missouri Raid (1951)

Macdonald Carey and Wendell Corey play the roles of Jesse and Frank James in Paramount's The Great Missouri Raid. The James brothers story has never ceased to fascinate people and any number of Hollywood legends have taken a crack at one brother or the other.

Ray Rennahan who is the Mercedes Benz of color cinematographers lends his talents to a nicely photographed western, this is one of the best things about The Great Missouri Raid.

Part of the screen time here is shared with Ward Bond, first as a Union Cavalry Major and then as the head of a private detective agency Bond is obsessed with bringing in the James brothers after his brother James Millican is killed raiding the James farm. That was the way it was in Missouri, the James brothers rode with Quantrill who were border raiders, not regular troops. Bond sees no reason to extend any clemency to these two especially after Millican is killed.

Ellen Drew and Lois Chartrand are the women Jesse and Frank woo and wed and Anne Revere just before her blacklist hiatus days registers strongly as their mother who lost an arm in a rather ill conceived move by the authorities to get the James boys.

No new ground broken her, still western fans will enjoy this retelling of the Saga of the James Brothers.