The Brave Engineer

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The Brave Engineer
Directed byJack Kinney[1]
Story byDick Kinney
Dick Shaw
Based onThe Ballad of Casey Jones by Eddie Newton
T. Lawrence Seibert
Produced byWalt Disney
StarringThe King's Men
Narrated byJerry Colonna
Music byKen Darby
Animation byMilt Kahl
Fred Moore
Al Bertino
Layouts byDon DaGradi
Backgrounds byRay Huffine
Production
company
Distributed byRKO Radio Pictures
Release date
March 3, 1950
Running time
7:38
CountryUnited States

The Brave Engineer is a 1950 Walt Disney-produced animated short film,[2] based on the exploits of legendary railroad engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones.[3] It is narrated by comic Jerry Colonna and is a comedically madcap fanciful re-telling[4] of the story[5] related in the Wallace Saunders ballad, later made famous by Eddie Newton and T. Lawrence Seibert. It was also released fifty years after Casey was killed.

Plot

The cartoon opens to a railroad yard where "all the trains are fast asleep". The sun rises, and engineer Casey Jones wakes from his slumber in the cab of his engine, Johnny, No. 2, an American Standard 4-4-0 tender engine that is hauling a small, yet valuable train known as the Western Mail. His train begins the journey and Casey is intent on making his schedule at all costs.

Casey is confronted by a variety of obstacles along the way. He has to paddle his train through flooded wetlands, stop for a cow crossing the tracks, and save a woman who was tied up on the tracks by a stereotypical villain character. Another villain destroys a span of tracks on a trestle, and as Casey has to get the Western Mail across a gorge without those tracks, his train heads on into a dry desert canyon. He fights off a group of criminals, who climb onto the cab of his engine in an attempt to rob the train.

To make up for lost time, Casey runs his engine well past his mechanical limits, plowing through two tunnels (one which exploded since the last one didn't), passing a five-mile sign causing it and the tracks to melt. While focusing completely on repairing the engine, he drives the Western Mail at full speed down a hill on a collision course with another train, which is a double-headed slow freight train, that is hauled by Zeb and Zeek, two other engines, No. 77 and No. 5. The conductor sees the other train, but gasps, and runs up, and attempts to warn Casey about the oncoming train, but Casey is too busy fixing the engine to pay attention and can't hear him, and so the counductor jumps for his life, only to be seen in the far away next shot on the engine's roof, as do the crew of their other train. As Casey only notices at the last second and just has time to scream, the two trains collide with a large explosion in a cloud of black smoke. The station porter's initial disappointment of thinking the train won't arrive is quickly dispelled as Casey arrives, with the remains of his engine, almost on time.

Differences between the cartoon and real life

  • The short depicts the accident as a head-on collision in an Ozark-like mountain range near Reno, Wyoming. In real life, Casey's train struck the back of another that had stopped near Vaughan due to a broken air brake line.
  • The accident takes place in broad daylight and clear conditions in the cartoon. The real accident occurred at night during a rainstorm.
  • The short ends with Casey looking mildly injured after the wreck, but very much alive. In real life, Casey was fatally injured and died shortly after the crash.
  • Casey operates his engine single-handedly in the short. In real life, Casey was assisted by an African American fireman named Sim Webb.
  • The engine, Johnny, in the short (No. 2), is an American Standard 4-4-0 tender engine taking the Western Mail (possibly resembling Central Pacific #173). Casey's real engine was a 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" engine No. 382, which was repaired following the wreck, and later scrapped in 1935. A replica of that engine is on display at the Casey Jones US History Museum in Jackson, Tennessee, because another engine No. 99 is doiled to be disguised as that engine.
  • The other engines, Zeb and Zeek, in the short (No. 77 and No. 5), are two American Mastodon 4-8-0 tender engines, hauling their freight train.
  • The railroad, that Casey and his engine ran through Fort Reno to Frisco, may have possibly the first transcontinental railroad, but wasn't the Illinois Central Railroad like the real life counterpart worked on.

Home media

The short was released on December 6, 2005, on Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts: 1920s–1960s.[6]

Additional releases include:

Legacy

This short has appeared on many television programs and specials such as Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1954), The Mouse Factory (1972), Good Morning, Mickey! (1983), Walt Disney Cartoon Classics (1983), DTV (1984), American Folk Heroes (1985), Disney's Sing Along Songs (1986), Disney's Rootin' Tootin' Roundup (1990), Mickey's Mouse Tracks (1992), Donald's Quack Attack (1992), Sing Me a Story with Belle (1995), The Ink and Paint Club (1997), Walt Disney Treasures (2001), and Disney's American Legends (2001).

Casey Jones's train (alias Johnny a.k.a. Engine No. 2, the mail car, and caboose #53) has also appeared in Out of Scale (1951), and A Cowboy Needs a Horse (1956).

See also

References

  1. ^ AllMovie
  2. ^ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. p. 153. ISBN 0-8160-3831-7.
  3. ^ FilmAffinity
  4. ^ Letterboxd
  5. ^ MUBI
  6. ^ "Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts: 1920s - 1960s DVD Review". DVD Dizzy. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  7. ^ American Legends (Video 2001) - IMDB

External links

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