The Raiders Go To Hollywood

Two major movies have been made depicting the raid to some degree – Buster Keaton's The General and Walt Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase.

A silent one-reeler entitled The Railroad Raiders of '62 was released in 1911 by Kalem Studios. It had no historical ties to the event, but followed a story line similar to the 1862 raid. A federal soldier dressed as a woman, stands on the track and flags down a train. A chase ensues between the captured train and the Confederates on another engine. When the captured train runs out of fuel, the captors flee, but are hunted down and captured or shot.

Kalem Studios re-released the film in 1915 with five extra minutes added and it became part of the "Hazards of Helen" series.

Andrews Raid To Be Put In Movies

Nashville, Tenn. – Once again, the old "General" famous Civil War engine which figured in one of the most thrilling episodes of the War Between the States, is to feel the surge of steam through its ancient pipes.

The "General" is going to be in the movies.

The old engine of the Western & Atlantic Railroad is to be the principal character in reenacting the scene in which the "General" was captured sixty-four years ago at Marietta, Ga. by the Andrews Raiders, a band of disguised Federal soldiers. After a desperate chase in the "Texas," another historic engine, now at Grant Park, the trainmen and Confederate soldiers recaptured the stolen engine and brought eight of the Raiders back to Atlanta, where they were shot as spies.

Buster Keaton will film the "Great Locomotive Chase" for United Artists and will spare no expense in making the picture. He himself will play the part of the young Confederate engineer in charge of the "General" when the engine was stolen.

Pittenger's "The Great Locomotive Chase" will be used as the basis for the picture, and all facts in it will be followed closely in order that the film may be historically accurate. Of course, says Buster, no young Confederate engineer, especially in Georgia, could be without a sweetheart, and, as a result, poetic license will be taken to the extent of presenting a love story to be interwoven with the picture.

Work To Begin Next Month

The film is to be named "The General," and work of producing it will be begin next month, according to announcement.

Instead of being filmed in Georgia, the scene of the Andrews Raid, the picture is to be produced for the most part on a spur track near Cowan, Tenn., which already had been leased by Keaton. Other scenes will be made along various parts of the main line between Nashville and Atlanta. But the filming will be only a few miles from the place where the "General" was abandoned by the Federal Raiders sixty four years ago, and the ancient engine may well feel again within it steel bones the thrill of that memorable day of '62.

And although the major part of the production will be done actually in Tennessee, Georgia citizens may well feel that the film is rightly theirs, portraying as it does an episode of Georgia history.

It was only through the chance of an excellent "location" being available in Tennessee that the picture is to be made in Georgia's neighbor state rather than in the Old Empire State of the South itself.

A full force of technicians, numbering more than fifty, is to be brought to Nashville, where general headquarters will be established for the production. Actual "shooting" of scenes will be done mostly on the spur track at Cowan, half way between Nashville and Chattanooga.

W.S. Howland, Atlanta Journal, Sunday, May 9, 1926