This Saturday, May 8th, is the 3rd annual National Train Day, so to celebrate we cast a nod to the importance train travel has had in old movies. As you probably know, the Golden Age of Hollywood was also the era in which most people moved about the country by train.
When James Cagney pursues Priscilla Lane, he does it on the train. For more on "The Roaring Twenties" (1939), have a look here.
When Harold Lloyd goes to college, he arrives on the train. For more on "The Freshman" (1925), have a look here.
Whether it's Alan Hale and Barbara Stanwyck behaving in an unseemly manner on a train in "Stella Dallas" (1937), or Barabara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray throwing her dead husband's body off one in "Double Indemnity" (1944), trains are so much a part of classic film because they were so much a part of American life up until the late 1950s and early 1960s when a network of highways and a generation of muscle cars made them quaint and anachronistic, if not exactly obsolete. They have never been obsolete. For many reasons environmental, political, and logistical, passenger train travel may one day grow to be as important as ever in many areas of the country. The movies found them irresistable from the start. Here is "The Great Train Robbery" (1903).
For more on National Train Day and the history of train travel in the US, have a look at these websites.
