Bad Men of Missouri

If you look to Hollywood for a good history lesson, more often than not you'll end up more mixed up than before you started! This is particularly true in older films but still happens a lot today. Much of this is because film studio executives are NOT history teachers and their concern is selling tickets and making money.

I mention this because it's very important as you watch "Bad Men of Missour" that you understand that the movie is mostly fiction and makes evil criminals heroes! According to this film and many others, following the US Civil War, evil Northerners descended on the newly conquered South in order to exploit and humiliate them. So, in these movies, to counter these evil 'Carpetbaggers', good vigilantes kicked them out and restored law and order....at least that's how it is in the films. So who were these 'nice' vigilantes' according to Hollywood? Well, they'd either be career criminals (such as the Younger and James brothers) or the KKK!! Talk about an insane view of history!!

The story begins just at the close of the Civil War. Southern troops are planning on returning home. But when Cole Younger (Dennis Morgan) returns to his beloved Missouri, he finds evil Yankees there...robbing and killing and exploiting his people. So, he and his friends have no choice but to take the law into their own hands. This movie shows their exploits and the 'nice' stuff the Younger gang did.

The problems with the story are many. But hte most obvious is that the Youngers (as well as their friends, the James brothers) were bank robbers and murdered people. They were NOT Robin Hoods but robbing hoods.

So, if you divorce this film completely from fact and just look at it as fiction, is it worth seeing? Yes...provided you don't internalize its awful message. Morgan and the rest are very good actors and the baddies (Walter Catlett, Howard De Silva and Victor Jory) were wonderfully hateful. The story, incidentally, is pretty similar to most B-westerns of the era but with the Carpetbagger and Younger brothers elements added. Without this, the film would have been more enjoyable and honest.

If I had been 10 in the 1940's, this would have been one of my favorites. This movie had everything a boy could ask for: fistfights, gun battles, comic relief, stagecoach wrecks, minimal romance, a clever and satisfying ending and Dennis Morgan singing. O.K., I could have done without the last one but what boy wouldn't like that combination? The movie doesn't make any great dramatic statements and I'm sure that it ignores history with its portrayal of the Younger brothers but how many movies are historically accurate? All I know is that with Howard Da Silva as the corrupt sheriff, Victory Jory as the smooth villainous carpetbagger and Walter Catlett as the bumbling treasurer how can one lose? The one odd note is the casting of Arthur Kennedy as the romantic lead. I'm just used to seeing him as the grizzled cop, gunslinger or bum. Fun movie.

Someone must have been looking at the success that 20th Century Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck were enjoying with the release of Jesse James two years earlier with Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda. The reasoning must have gone with Jack Warner that we would have even more success with those other Missouri bad men, the Younger Brothers. There are three of them and only two of the James boys.

Warner Brothers did not give Bad Men Of Missouri the A picture treatment the way Zanuck did with Jesse James. This was definitely a B film, but it did have its assets, chief of which are three of Warner Brothers younger contract players, Dennis Morgan, Arthur Kennedy, and Wayne Morris playing the Youngers. They do a fine job in the leads and like the James brothers they are portrayed as the Robin Hoods of post Civil War Missouri.

In Jesse James, the brothers take to the outlaw ways because the railroad is trying to grab land and their agents kill the James brothers mother, Jane Darwell, and burn down the family farm. In this film it's the Younger Brothers father played by Russell Simpson who is killed when land grabbers are trying to steal the Younger property.

After that the film follows pretty much the plot of Jesse James. But being that the real story of the Younger Brothers is not as known as Jesse and Frank James, a great deal more liberty is taken with the plot.

Faye Emerson and Jane Wyman are the girl friends of two of the Youngers. The villains are land agent Victor Jory and his chief henchman Howard DaSilva. Walter Catlett as a very good part he makes the most of as Jory's bumbling bookkeeper. Alan Baxter plays Jesse James and he's most definitely supporting the brothers.

Bad Men Of Missouri follows the typical Hollywood pattern of taking real characters of the west and weaving whole new plots around their lives. Still it moves at a very fast clip which for B western fans should be fun. After all you don't want any riding and shooting to be hampered by too much dialog.

Sanitized telling of the Younger brothers tale with poor casting choices in the leads.

Dennis Morgan was an agreeable entertainer and if his role of Cole Younger had been a singing cowboy he would have been fine. However the Youngers were a tough band of outlaws and nothing in Dennis's demeanor indicates anything close to that. The same goes for Wayne Morris cast as brother Bob. He was a fine light comic player and also very believable in war pictures since he was a real life flying ace but all wrong in an 1860's Western setting. The only one of the actors who is remotely believable is Arthur Kennedy as Jim Younger and even he seems a bit callow.

Along for the ride and giving a truly atrocious performance is Alan Baxter as Jesse James. He could not possibly be less animated and his line readings have all the expression of someone reading from the phone book.

As the love interest for Arthur's character there is a very blonde Jane Wyman early in her career. She's pretty and tart but also seems somewhat out of place. Really the only actor that seems entirely at home is Victor Jory in his usual villainous mode. He's squirrelly and slick but at least seems comfortable in his part.

Not a dreadful movie, though hardly the place to look for the true facts of the lives of the Youngers, but really just another programmer churned out to fill the bottom of a double bill using performers on their way up whether they are suitable or not.

The Warner Bros company provided so many westerns in the forties and early fifties, all fast paced, gritty, tight, sharp, never boring, and action packed....the company trademark, using Old West legends such as Younger Brothers and Jesse James, Quantrill and the Daltons... Ray Enright and Edwin L Marin were the directors who were chosen and the likes of Dennis Morgan, Victor Jory, Wayne Morris, Randolph Scott were hired as the main leads. All the same kind of atmosphere for the best audiences pleasure. If you like this one, then don't miss THE SPOILERS, MEN OF TEXAS, TRAIL STREEET, RETURN OF THE BADMEN; not all from Warner though, but RKO too. It is in black and white. I highly recommend it.