The Brave Engineer
The Brave Engineer is a 1950 Walt Disney-produced short subject cartoon, loosely based on the exploits of legendary railroad engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones. It was narrated by madcap comic and radio funny-man Jerry Colonna and was a fanficiful re-telling of the story related in the famous Wallace Saunders ballad.
Synopsis
The film opens with an overhead shot of a sprawling railroad yard in the morning, where all the trains are "fast asleep". The shot begins to focus on a single train, Casey's, which is "slow asleep", and eventually cuts to a closeup of the cab window, where Jones is revealed to be sleeping in his engine cab.
Doffing his bedclothes (he is fully dressed in blue overalls and a stereotypical engineer's cap underneath), he checks his watch and realizing that he is behind schedule, hurriedly readies the engine to depart. Mail is loaded aboard the train and with a toot on the whistle, Casey sets off at a dangerously high speed through the maze of switches and sidings, nearly t-boning two other trains in the process before making it safely out of the yard (much to the switchman's relief).
At first, the trip is uneventful and we see Casey relaxing in a rocking chair in front of the open firedoor, casually stoking it one piece of coal at a time as if it were a parlour stove. Further on, however, the weather turns nasty, flooding the tracks like "the bed of a creek" and all but swamping the train. Eight hours late, but none the less undaunted, Casey climbs up on the cab roof and uses his coal shovel as a paddle. Before long, he has cleared the flood and is on his way again.
No sooner is the train back up to full speed, though, then Casey is forced to bring it screeching to a hault: standing in the middle of the tracks grazing, is a large brown cow which finally moves aside after much shouting and whistle blowing on Casey's part.
But now, a new problem presents itself. A stereotypical villain with a black handlebar mustache has tied a lady to the tracks in front of Casey's train! Unwilling to waste anymore time stopping, Casey rushes forward and stands on the locomotive's cowcatcher, scooping the terrified woman up just seconds before the train would have run her over. He is in such a hurry, that he doesn't even stop to let her off, depositing her (rope and all) in the arms of a pleasantly surprised station master as he rushes past the next platform at full speed.
Differences between the cartoon and real life.
- The Brave Engineer depicts the wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi as a head-on collision with a train steaming in the opposite direction. In the real accident, Jones' engine struck the rear end of a train which was stopped on the tracks due to a broken air line.
- The accident takes place in broad daylight in the cartoon. The real life wreck occurred at night.
- The Brave Engineer ends with Casey looking a little beat-up after the wreck, but very much alive. In real life, Jones was critically injured and did not survive the accident.
- The cartoon shows Casey's locomotive as being an American Standard 4-4-0, number 2. His real engine on the fateful trip was a Ten-Wheeler 4-6-0, number 382.
- Casey is depicted operating the engine single-handedly in the cartoon. In reality, an African-American fireman, Simeon "Sim" Webb, was with him until mere seconds before the crash.
Censorship
Like many other classic Disney cartoons, The Brave Engineer has recently been subject to censorship editing in a controversial attempt to make it more politically correct. In this case, a brief scene depicting train robbers brandishing knives and guns has been edited out.
Additional Info
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Release Date: March 3, 1950
Director: Jack Kinney.
Animators: Milt Kahl, Fred Moore, Al Bertino, Ward Kimball.
Effects Animation: Andy Engman.
Layout: Don DaGradi.
Backgrounds: Ray Huffine.
Writers: Dick Kinney, Dick Shaw.
Musical Score: Ken Darby.
Based on "The Ballad of Casey Jones" by Eddie Newton, T. Lawrence Seibert.
Vocals: The King's Men.
Running Time: 7 min. 38 sec. (un-edited)