Accustomed as I am to collecting character actors by cumulative exposure, it never occurred to me that I could begin my study of Ray Milland at the beginning without recourse to the BFI or at least a retrospective on the Criterion Channel, but to my pleased surprise nothing but a half-decent internet connection and a tolerance for silent melodrama is required to watch The Flying Scotsman (1929). It does help, however, if you like trains.
Scripted by Victor Kendall and Garnett Weston with the uncredited assistance of Freeman Wills Crofts, the plot efficiently sets up and pays off the eventful last run of Bob White (Moore Marriott), an engine driver on the eve of retirement after thirty years of safe and punctual service with the London and North Eastern Railway, all of which will go for nothing if his former fireman Crow (Alec Hurley) succeeds in wrecking the train in revenge for his dismissal for drunkenness. The enterprising Joan (Pauline Johnson) has followed the villain aboard after overhearing his threats against her father, but her as yet undisclosed relationship with newly promoted fireman Jim Edwards (Milland) could set off a bang on the footplate exceeding anything planned by Crow. Being a quota quickie, the film has less than an hour to get in all this slimly scripted steam and thunder in time for the main event of the run itself, unprecedentedly shot on location of the Hertford Loop. Luckily, Bob in a moment of valedictory affection for his life's work doesn't call the express service between London and Edinburgh "the old eighty-mile-an-hour" for nothing.
No human character in this scenario can really stand up to the documentary showcase of Gresley Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman in all its trainspotter's glory, but the actor formerly known as Alfred Reginald Jones makes a recognizable impression even at the age of twenty-one, his sharp-angled brows and triangular smile under a brilliantined flop of black hair. Billed for his screen debut as Raymond Milland, he's tall and slender and clown-graceful in one of the more tryhard modes of juvenile lead, a cocky rookie who fancies himself a ladykiller and meets cute with the heroine in the process of proving himself to be no such thing: expecting to hear that she rescued him from the territorial consequences of a jealous bruiser thanks to his natural, irresistible charm, he's crestfallen when she coolly replies, "I felt sorry for you—I saw you were afraid." Light-years from Hollywood sophistication with his schoolboyish bravado, he's introduced unfurling a hand of saucy postcards for his mates with the boast, "Trust me to pick the Fannies from the flops." He's right that Joan is a catch with her tart blonde intelligence, but as she watches him slip gallantly out a window to duck a fight he started, barely master the sticker shock of ordering ham sandwiches and brown ale in a French restaurant, and talk himself up to his driver's daughter as the chief engineer of the line, it's no wonder she doesn't give him her right name even when she's enjoying herself enough to let him see her home. They have a genuine spark despite his pick-up clumsiness, but he does their future no favors by unsubtly scooting at the first sign of her returning father, who doesn't take kindly to the unintroduced intrusion: "A man who would sneak in and out of my house like that is not worthy of you. And if ever I set eyes on him, I'll—" It entertains me immensely that even after a confrontation in the canteen which seems designed to set him up as a handy-fisted match for Crow, Jim redeems himself not through any train-saving heroics but by keeping shtum that Bob belted him almost out of the cab with the fire shovel on discovering his identity as the man who did the sneaking. The train-saving heroics are reserved for Joan, who doesn't just track her quarry through the rushing, rocking carriages, she swings out onto the running board and edges her way—in high heels—as far as the tender and then the engine, where she herself slows the runaway locomotive and safely sidetracks the murderously uncoupled train. Jim gets to lie like a long drink of laundry between the tracks and presently, adorably confess to Joan that he's only "a sort of engineer," a lightweight but legitimate romantic prize. The Flying Scotsman was released as a part-talkie, meaning in this case that after half an hour of silent acting and title cards, the rest of the picture is conducted through dialogue and more or less diegetic sound. With no prior dramatic experience—he had been hired directly from a sharpshooting job on The Informer (1929)—Milland is not fatally stiff in the new medium, but he makes a better mime than a talker; his voice is darker and blunter than the elastically expressive physicality that would still be in evidence half a career and a middle age later in films like The Safecracker (1958). I am not equipped to evaluate his accent in terms of its original Welsh, but it is notably not the mid-Atlantic of his Hollywood voice. At any rate, I wouldn't kick him off the train for eating crackers and, judging by his early filmography, neither did British International Pictures.
Castleton Knight directed more newsreels and documentaries than he did feature films and it is tempting to classify The Flying Scotsman as a kind of docudrama, especially in the second half when shots of meadows and rivers passing at full steam and shadows flattening over the verges absorb the viewer into the speed of the journey more than the tension of the plot; it would be unkind to Theodor Sparkuhl, whose photography is equally factual and elegant in less naturalistic sequences like the smoke of a celebratory cigar dissolving into a kettle's whistled steam or the streaming silver net of the tracks fading in and out of Joan's face as she dozes in the dining car. The stunts performed by the actors are as hair-raising as silent comedy—Hurley clinging to the handrail through the coal-blink of a tunnel, Johnson wreathed in white steam as the train billows beneath a bridge, even Milland sagging into a near-fall off the side of the engine. In combination with a depiction of successful sabotage, the effect apparently occasioned the priceless disclaimer "For the purposes of the film dramatic licence has been taken in regard to the safety equipment used on the 'FLYING SCOTSMAN.'" If it's true that Sir Nigel Gresley prevented the filming of further such productions in his lifetime, it was a loss to cinema. I sought out this movie for Milland, but more rail disasters should be averted by girls who know how to climb the length of an express train. Dailymotion has got you covered if you are of my mind. This star brought to you by my worthy backers at Patreon.
Scripted by Victor Kendall and Garnett Weston with the uncredited assistance of Freeman Wills Crofts, the plot efficiently sets up and pays off the eventful last run of Bob White (Moore Marriott), an engine driver on the eve of retirement after thirty years of safe and punctual service with the London and North Eastern Railway, all of which will go for nothing if his former fireman Crow (Alec Hurley) succeeds in wrecking the train in revenge for his dismissal for drunkenness. The enterprising Joan (Pauline Johnson) has followed the villain aboard after overhearing his threats against her father, but her as yet undisclosed relationship with newly promoted fireman Jim Edwards (Milland) could set off a bang on the footplate exceeding anything planned by Crow. Being a quota quickie, the film has less than an hour to get in all this slimly scripted steam and thunder in time for the main event of the run itself, unprecedentedly shot on location of the Hertford Loop. Luckily, Bob in a moment of valedictory affection for his life's work doesn't call the express service between London and Edinburgh "the old eighty-mile-an-hour" for nothing.
No human character in this scenario can really stand up to the documentary showcase of Gresley Pacific No. 4472 Flying Scotsman in all its trainspotter's glory, but the actor formerly known as Alfred Reginald Jones makes a recognizable impression even at the age of twenty-one, his sharp-angled brows and triangular smile under a brilliantined flop of black hair. Billed for his screen debut as Raymond Milland, he's tall and slender and clown-graceful in one of the more tryhard modes of juvenile lead, a cocky rookie who fancies himself a ladykiller and meets cute with the heroine in the process of proving himself to be no such thing: expecting to hear that she rescued him from the territorial consequences of a jealous bruiser thanks to his natural, irresistible charm, he's crestfallen when she coolly replies, "I felt sorry for you—I saw you were afraid." Light-years from Hollywood sophistication with his schoolboyish bravado, he's introduced unfurling a hand of saucy postcards for his mates with the boast, "Trust me to pick the Fannies from the flops." He's right that Joan is a catch with her tart blonde intelligence, but as she watches him slip gallantly out a window to duck a fight he started, barely master the sticker shock of ordering ham sandwiches and brown ale in a French restaurant, and talk himself up to his driver's daughter as the chief engineer of the line, it's no wonder she doesn't give him her right name even when she's enjoying herself enough to let him see her home. They have a genuine spark despite his pick-up clumsiness, but he does their future no favors by unsubtly scooting at the first sign of her returning father, who doesn't take kindly to the unintroduced intrusion: "A man who would sneak in and out of my house like that is not worthy of you. And if ever I set eyes on him, I'll—" It entertains me immensely that even after a confrontation in the canteen which seems designed to set him up as a handy-fisted match for Crow, Jim redeems himself not through any train-saving heroics but by keeping shtum that Bob belted him almost out of the cab with the fire shovel on discovering his identity as the man who did the sneaking. The train-saving heroics are reserved for Joan, who doesn't just track her quarry through the rushing, rocking carriages, she swings out onto the running board and edges her way—in high heels—as far as the tender and then the engine, where she herself slows the runaway locomotive and safely sidetracks the murderously uncoupled train. Jim gets to lie like a long drink of laundry between the tracks and presently, adorably confess to Joan that he's only "a sort of engineer," a lightweight but legitimate romantic prize. The Flying Scotsman was released as a part-talkie, meaning in this case that after half an hour of silent acting and title cards, the rest of the picture is conducted through dialogue and more or less diegetic sound. With no prior dramatic experience—he had been hired directly from a sharpshooting job on The Informer (1929)—Milland is not fatally stiff in the new medium, but he makes a better mime than a talker; his voice is darker and blunter than the elastically expressive physicality that would still be in evidence half a career and a middle age later in films like The Safecracker (1958). I am not equipped to evaluate his accent in terms of its original Welsh, but it is notably not the mid-Atlantic of his Hollywood voice. At any rate, I wouldn't kick him off the train for eating crackers and, judging by his early filmography, neither did British International Pictures.
Castleton Knight directed more newsreels and documentaries than he did feature films and it is tempting to classify The Flying Scotsman as a kind of docudrama, especially in the second half when shots of meadows and rivers passing at full steam and shadows flattening over the verges absorb the viewer into the speed of the journey more than the tension of the plot; it would be unkind to Theodor Sparkuhl, whose photography is equally factual and elegant in less naturalistic sequences like the smoke of a celebratory cigar dissolving into a kettle's whistled steam or the streaming silver net of the tracks fading in and out of Joan's face as she dozes in the dining car. The stunts performed by the actors are as hair-raising as silent comedy—Hurley clinging to the handrail through the coal-blink of a tunnel, Johnson wreathed in white steam as the train billows beneath a bridge, even Milland sagging into a near-fall off the side of the engine. In combination with a depiction of successful sabotage, the effect apparently occasioned the priceless disclaimer "For the purposes of the film dramatic licence has been taken in regard to the safety equipment used on the 'FLYING SCOTSMAN.'" If it's true that Sir Nigel Gresley prevented the filming of further such productions in his lifetime, it was a loss to cinema. I sought out this movie for Milland, but more rail disasters should be averted by girls who know how to climb the length of an express train. Dailymotion has got you covered if you are of my mind. This star brought to you by my worthy backers at Patreon.
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