Wordiezett So much average

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

bkoganbing In the days before he was permanently playing himself in stories of the modern west, Roy Rogers played a number of real western characters and in Jesse James At Bay he plays the title role. And we learn the 'true' story that being that Jesse was not shot in the back by Bob Ford.When a couple of sharp crooks played by Pierre Watkin and Hal Taliaferro cheat a bunch of honest ranchers and farmers out of their spreads, sheriff Gabby Hayes on the Q.T. sends for Jesse who's been lying quiet in Nebraska and out of the reach of Missouri law enforcement. Of course this does present an ethical problem for Gabby as he is the sheriff and he is sending for a wanted outlaw.But not to be outdone Watkin and Taliaferro use a gambler named Clint Burns also played by Roy Rogers to sully Jesse's image as a Robin Hood. Nevertheless Gabby and Roy as Jesse get on to the scheme and turn it to their advantage quite cleverly.Roy does quite well in the dual role although later on I doubt his public would have tolerated a villainous Roy Rogers. Roy and Gabby have to contend with a pair of reporters played by Sally Payne and Gale Storm who want the 'real' story.As what was said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 'print the legend'.

MartinHafer This is yet another wildly inaccurate Jesse James picture--and certainly not the first one featuring Roy Rogers. In fact, I just saw "Days of Jesse James" starring Rogers yesterday. Now call me a glutton for punishment, but I was just hoping that this film would at least try to be accurate---like Rogers' "Billy the Kid Returns". But, once again, it's just another poor film trying to capitalize on the myth of Jesse James. Because it's pure myth, in this film James is good. Sure, in real life he murdered several people and stole money from innocent folks--but here, he's like Robin Hood--and a Robin Hood that almost never kills anyone and, like a typical Rogers films, mostly shoots people in their shooting hand! Rogers plays Clint Burns and Jesse using the old 'identical strangers' cliché. Oddly, Burns is a bad man--a lookalike who evil bankers and speculators (it's ALWAYS evil bankers and speculators) have hired to commit crimes while posing as Jesse. That way, the nice Jesse will get blamed and the common folk will stop supporting him. But, eventually, Burns overplays his hand and is killed by Jesse in self-defense (his only killing in the film--again, it's SELF-DEFENSE!). Now Jesse pretends to be Burns and works to expose the schemers for who they really are.Along for the ride are Gabby Hayes (a Rogers regular supporting actor) and he plays the sheriff (again, a pretty common role for this grizzled old buzzard) as well as a nosy reporter lady (a common cliché, though very, very few existed in the mid-late 19th century) and her friend.Overall, a historical nightmare for history teachers like me, as almost nothing about this film approaches who James really was. On top of that, the story just abounds with clichés and feels like yet another sub-par Rogers film. He did do better films than this--a lot better. With better music and MUCH better stories.By the way, this is a VERY unusual film in that Roy does NOT play a particularly good guy and he also does not use this name for his character. A strange moral compass in this film, that's for sure.

Brian Camp In JESSE JAMES AT BAY (1941), Roy Rogers does a good job enacting a dual role as Jesse James and Clint Burns, a Jesse look-alike employed to commit crimes to besmirch Jesse's reputation among the farmers of Missouri. The plotting of this Republic Pictures B-western starts out strong as farmers are given options on parcels of land along the railroad right-of-way in order to encourage development, only to lose the land after they've farmed it when the court throws out their options. The broker who convinced them to make the deal then forces the farmers out so he can sell the land at a profit. The real Jesse comes out of retirement to rob the land broker and give the money to the farmers so they can buy up their own land. The land broker then hires the Jesse look-alike to burn farmhouses and terrorize farmers in Jesse's name in order to thwart their support of Jesse. One's credulity gets severely strained, however, when the Jesse look-alike begins palling around with the land broker in full public view and no one puts two-and-two together. At this point, two goofy lady reporters from St. Louis (played by Gale Storm and Sally Payne) start nosing around and popping up everywhere and the whole plot starts to sink under the weight of its own silliness. Now it was a given in B-westerns that the villains behind the scenes were usually high-level capitalists and land barons, but they usually had plenty of henchmen to do the dirty work. Here, things get utterly ridiculous when the land broker and the shady lawyer get on horses and whip out guns themselves and chase the sheriff and the incorruptible judge into the foothills, culminating in a shootout in the rocks among middle-aged men, three of them in suits.Roy is quite a revelation in his scenes as the criminal look-alike. His sullen look and behavior in the role indicate a darker side that, unfortunately, never got exploited in his long career. Also on hand are Gabby Hayes as the sheriff, Hal Taliaferro as the lawyer, Roy Barcroft as a henchman, and Pierre Watkin as the devilishly smooth land broker. Storm and Payne are actually quite funny as the lady reporters, but the comic relief seems a little misplaced at that point in the film, helping to undermine the already weakened suspense. The film has a lot of good elements and started out on a promising note, but the script ran away from itself making the end result just another minor B-western capitalizing on the Jesse James name.

Ron Baker Roy plays a dual role in this classic western. He plays both Jesse James and the identical bad-guy Clint burns. The case of mistaken identity causes some problems for Jesse as he gets put in jail, then accused of burning down Gabby's house. Gale plays a newspaper reporter who is trying to get the scoop on Jesse. Together she and Roy capture the James Gang. This film may not be historically accurate, but it is great fun and a must-see if you're a Roy Rogers fan or a Gale Storm fan. (Gale steals the picture from Roy).