Best of the Badmen
Best of the Badmen is a 1951 Western film directed by William D. Russell and starring Robert Ryan, Claire Trevor and Robert Preston. Its plot involves the notorious James–Younger Gang of 19th century Missouri.
Plot
Jeff Clanton, an Army major from Missouri, captures the survivors of the Confederacy's Quantrill's Raiders and convinces them to surrender and pledge their allegiance to the Union. Clanton pledges that they will be paroled, but Matthew Fowler, a carpetbagger who owns a powerful detective agency, is determined to arrest them for the reward. Fowler's deputy wounds one of the captives and is killed in the return fire. Clanton is unjustly arrested for murdering Fowler's deputy, tried by a kangaroo court and sentenced to be hanged the following morning. He escapes that night and leads the band of outlaws including Jesse James and the Younger brothers in a vendetta against Fowler's detective agency.
More details
| author | Derek Twist John Twist Robert Hardy Andrews |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Missouri |
| director | William D. Russell |
| editor | Desmond Marquette |
| genre | adventure drama western |
| keywords | army major arrest carpetbagger confederacy confederate states of america detective agency hang james–younger gang jesse james kangaroo court kill morning quantrill's raiders reward union younger brothers |
| musicBy | Paul Sawtell |
| producer | Samuel Bischoff |
| publisher | RKO Radio Pictures |
| recordedAt | Utah |
| theme | war |