Jesse James was shot on April 3, 1882. By the next theatrical season three different companies were presenting the story of the James gang to New York audiences.
Drama about American frontier figures was nothing new; late nineteenth century audiences were enamoured of tales of the frontier. Frank Murdoch's Davy Crockett, in which Frank Mayo starred for over twenty years, and William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody's Wild West show, which played for over thirty years, were but the most famous and successful of the hundreds of plays, lectures, exhibitions, and demonstrations about frontier life that regaled theatre patrons.