Nostalgia & History > Buster Keaton's The General

The making of 'The General", Buster Keaton's masterpiece will be the topic of McMenamins Edgefield History Pub on Tuesday, September 27, 2016.  5 p.m. doors, 6:30 p.m. event in the Blackberry Hall.  Presented by Jim Scheppke and sponsored by McMenamins Edgefield & Troutdale Historical Society.   The Edgefield facility is located in Troutdale, Oregon east of Portland. 

Sounds like a good reason for a brew and some pub grub.........Arlen

Wrong coast for me,but sounds like a great time.

Btw....what is the name of the film he made with him riding a motorcar all over. I've seen only a part of it and look forward to seeing the whole movie. TIA

Regards,railburner

Posted from Android

I think that it was somthing like "The Railroder" filmed in Canada as somekind of advertising. Filmed when Keaton was "older"

The RAILROADER is the greatist movie ever! wag216

It was "The Railrodder." It was financed by The National Film Board of
Canada. BTW, Buster fought like Hell to do the scene where he crosses
that tall trestle with a huge piece of paper wrapped around his head.

https://vimeo.com/29397719

The making of "The General" in Cottage Grove in 1926 was quite an event for that little town.  Thee are a couple good books covering the filming.  The best one is "The Day Buster Smiled".

Martin

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Did the term "railrod" or "railrodder" have a meaning in railroad parlance before the Keaton film?  In the 1970's, Taber's Welding Inc. introduced a self-propelled MoW personal conveyance they called the "Rail Rod" that was even more bare-bones than Keaton's M19, but was the term in use even before the film was made in 1965?

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
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> Did the term "railrod" or "railrodder" have a
> meaning in railroad parlance before the Keaton
> film?  In the 1970's, Taber's Welding Inc.
> introduced a self-propelled MoW personal
> conveyance they called the "Rail Rod" that was
> even more bare-bones than Keaton's M19, but was
> the term in use even before the film was made in
> 1965?

Oh heavens, "railrod" dates to at least the 1830's, Dr. Werkema. A cursory review of the literature reveals the 1839 Kentucky House of Reps. entry below. You may find an even earlier example by consulting Wikipedia. "Railraod" is another common term for RR (I prefer to use the acronym for safety's sake). It dates back at least to my college thesis, which was many many years ago.


Otherwise, I wish that I could attend the presentation. Buster Keaton was not only a great actor, but apparently a tremendous athlete. How else would he have survived all of those crazy stunts that you see in his movies? No special effects in those days.

EO

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Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did the term "railrod" or "railrodder" have a
> meaning in railroad parlance before the Keaton
> film?  In the 1970's, Taber's Welding Inc.
> introduced a self-propelled MoW personal
> conveyance they called the "Rail Rod" that was
> even more bare-bones than Keaton's M19, but was
> the term in use even before the film was made in
> 1965?

Evan, the "Rail Rod" you speak of was certainly a "bare-bones" a piece of equipment used in the late 50's or 60's before the "hyrail" vehicles came about.  It was a 4-wheeled vehicle with rubber tires and metal flanges built on a pieced together, light square tubular frame, propelled by a Briggs-Stratton engine, having a padded seat for the operator and a tool box.  It was most often used by signalmen in reaching remote sections of poleline between section lines of highway vehicle roadways.  It was usually transported in the bed of a signalman's pickup truck and was partially assembled on site by pinning some of the tubing together, if not kept completely assembled.  It could handle carrying some wooden crossarms, wiring and other lightweight items.  I believe Taber's Welding, Inc. was somewhere in Oklahoma and know the Santa Fe Railway was one of the users of these vehicles in their signal department.  I've never seen or found a picture of such, but would be interesting if someone could produce such and operators manuals here on TO's.

hogheaded Wrote:

> Oh heavens, "railrod" dates to at least the
> 1830's, Dr. Werkema. A cursory review of the
> literature reveals the 1839 Kentucky House of
> Reps. entry below.

Ha!  Caught you dead to rights, or dead to wrongs in this case.  Everybody knows the Kentucky House branch wasn't even started until 1882 and didn't reach its namesake destination until the 1920's, so that "1839" reference is clearly fabricated, just like the Rail Rod was fabricated from metal tubing!  I saw immediately that this was nothing but an act concerning the,

> "Railraod" is
> another common term for RR (I prefer to use the
> acronym for safety's sake). It dates back at least
> to my college thesis,

...or at least something that rhymes with "theses."

> Otherwise, I wish that I could attend the
> presentation. Buster Keaton was not only a great
> actor, but apparently a tremendous athlete. How
> else would he have survived all of those crazy
> stunts that you see in his movies? No special
> effects in those days.

Actually, there were some "tricks" the silent guys used.  The climactic scene in the 1913 short "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life" (kind of ironic considering the body count by the end - spoilage alert, that smell you smell is decomposing Keystone Kops) is pretty clearly a double-exposure.  The climatic scene is also disappointing, bright and sunny throughout (in a grayscale sort of way).  Can't a villain get a good clap of lightning or bolt of thunder to embellish his overacting?  There must be a stop for that on the Mighty Wurlitzer.  You can always count on the Mighty Wurlitzer to arrive at the last possible moment to save the day!  It comes riding in on a Rail Rod, of course...what else would you expect from a "pipe" organ?

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> hogheaded Wrote:

> > "Railraod" is
> > another common term for RR (I prefer to use the
> > acronym for safety's sake). It dates back at
> least
> > to my college thesis,
> ...or at least something that rhymes with
> "theses."


Hey, this hurts! My "principles and analysis of tennis and golf" professor told me that this was the best thesis about railroads (sic) that the physical education department had ever received. When I reused it for a history class, I must admit the review wasn't so good...

> Actually, there were some "tricks" the silent guys
> used.  The climactic scene in the 1913 short
> "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life" (kind of
> ironic considering the body count by the end -
> spoilage alert, that smell you smell is
> decomposing Keystone Kops) is pretty clearly a
> double-exposure.  The climatic scene is also
> disappointing, bright and sunny throughout (in a
> grayscale sort of way).  Can't a villain get a
> good clap of lightning or bolt of thunder to
> embellish his overacting?  There must be a stop
> for that on the Mighty Wurlitzer.  You can always
> count on the Mighty Wurlitzer to arrive at the
> last possible moment to save the day!  It comes
> riding in on a Rail Rod, of course...what else
> would you expect from a "pipe" organ?

Yeah, yeah. And you are next going to point out that A Trip to the Moon was special effects-laden; that Captain Henri Delannoy was not really shot out of a cannon. Tou-bleeping-che"! I should note, however, that such bogus attempts were rejected by the movie-going public of the time - they wanted realism (unlike today's crowd that demands unmitigated claptrap) and regarded special effects with a certain disdain currently probably only matched for Presidential politics. In the Teens, any movie company worth its socks went out of its way to subject its stars to bodily harm.

Helen Gibson (Hazards of Helen - I like to think that she was a relative) constantly made trips to the emergency room, for example. Gloria Swanson was forced to jump into a deep pool in her underwear (this is where the term "Yahoo!" originated, I believe), even though she couldn't swim. Grace McHugh was thrown from her horse and into a river; her cameraman jumped in to save her; both drowned. Much later, Buster Keaton allowed that “I took a pretty good beating,” during filming of Steamboat Bill Jr (the one where the building facade flops down around him - he must have demanded an extra fifty bucks for that stunt). And then there is Harold Lloyd, the eptimum* of star-actor-slash-stuntman, who lost three fingers to a phony bomb that turned out to be not-so-phony. The outfall was he did all of his future stunts single-handedly (this is an old movie trade joke, BTW).

I could go on (and usually do) in pointing out your (all-too-common) errors in thinking, but piling-it-on is bad decorum** in all but UP Steam Program threads.

I'm always here to help, nevertheless!

A personal family note. About 1915, after repeatedly showing up to watch Essanay shoot westerns in Niles Canyon, my father worked up the courage to ask if he could work for them - he was a pretty good horseman and athlete. Though he was able to shake Bronco Billy Anderson's hand in the process (cool, eh?), he was politely told no. Nowadays, one of my daughters produces/directs movies/TV (what did we do before slashes were invented?), but the only time that she asked me to work as an extra, I ultimately was left on the cutting room floor. Her latest effort is a horror western, but I hate horses. They smell like decomposing Keystone Cops.

EO
* This is an interesting word, because it really isn't a word, possibly excepting in Albanian. Yet, people use it a lot, and I like it. Sort of a classy-sounding, optimal form of optimum, I judge.
** This word I do not like. I'm only using it here because Thesaurus.com locks up my computer.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/16 05:35 by hogheaded.

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