Borrowing widely from Nunally Johnson's script for Henry King's 1939 version of the legend, Nicholas Ray's film stars Robert Wagner as the legendary outlaw, with Jeffrey Hunter as his brother Frank. As he did in Rebel without a Cause, Ray portrays James as a rebel rather than a simple outlaw, driven to a life of crime by Northern sympathisers after the Civil War, as the film follows the last 18 years of his life.