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.
