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Hollywood Trains By J C Suares Hard cover with dust jacket
Hollywood Trains By J C Suares
80 Pages
Copyright 1994
Hard cover with DUST JACKET
INTRODUCTION
What's faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a steel locomotive, and able to leap Alpine passes in a single bound? Hollywood trains, of course. From the first silent shorts at the turn of the century to the big-budget box-office bonanzas of today, moviemakers' love affair with the railway car has marked some of the best-loved motion pictures of all time.
Hollywood's transportation of choice for almost a century, these speeding locomotives, transcontinental luxury liners, and streamlined railroad can have graced more pictures with their steam-spewing, engine-churning glory and old-fashioned romance than all of the big-screen's automobiles, steamships, and airplanes combined. Often real-life models or meticulously crafted facsimiles of the originals, a number of trains have outshined their star passengers and made Hollywood history in their own right.
Assembling a cast of thousands and retooling the original railway cars for his epic about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, director John Ford created a classic in 1924 with The Iron Horse and defined the Western genre for future filmmakers in the process. Cecil B. deMille topped him fifteen years later with Union Pacific, and John Frankenheimer made both the trains and the French railwaymen who ran them the stars of his 1964 WWII actioner, The Train, starring Burt Lancaster.
Featured less prominently in countless film formats ranging from silent one-reelers and "B" Westerns to period dramas and love stories (the trainside farewell kiss is almost a cinematic clich), the train setting is perhaps best remembered in hundreds of action-packed spy thrillers and mysteries.
From Josef von Sternberg's seminal story of wartime intrigue, Shanghai Express, to celluloid crowd pleasers like Night Train to Munich and Murder on the Orient arm, terror-filled train rides have made passengers and audiences alike cower in their seats and think twice before buying another railway ticket on a luxury locomotive.
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, is also the master of the train-mystery thriller, and claustrophobic railroad cars figure prominently in some of the director's best-loved films, including The Lady Vanishes, Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, and North by Northwest. Although these classics depend more on story line than technical wizardry (a model was used for outside shots of the speeding train in The lady Vanishes), they provide more frame-for-frame fun-filled terror than any number of lackluster imitations.
Not every Hollywood train ride ends in murder and mayhem, however. Just as many end in mirth and mayhem, and in comedy classics such as My Little Chickadee, Hu, Palm Beach Story, and Some Like It Hot, the sidesplitting humor is still on track today. There are even a few pictures that manage to induce screams of laughter and screams of horror at the same time (Throw Momma From the Train and Silver Streak), and at least one celebrated train scene that is sure to make you cry (Anna Karenina).
Why have trains fascinated moviemakers and moviegoers for so long? Maybe it's the speed, or the sheer physical power of the diesel-driven machines. Or maybe it's just a longing for a bygone era when railroads were a one-way ticket to adventure-and good old-fashioned romance.
From luxurious pullman and parlor ears to gritty freighters and boxcars, trains have been Hollywood's transportation of choice for over seventy-five years. Hollywood Trains documents the virtual trainload of films that have featured railway cars in all of their steam-spewing, engine-churning glory. Speed down the tracks with the thrilling suspense of North Northwest and Von Ryan's Express, and laugh at the high-ball comedy of Some Like It Hot and My Link Chickadee. Ponder whodunit with Murder on the Orient Express, and marvel as Tracy and Hepburn platonically share a sleeping car in Without Love.
Filled with witty captions and stunning black-and-white photographs by Hollywood's premier lensmen, Hollywood Traits will thrill movie fans and train lovers from New York and L.A. to Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe.
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