Marilyn Monroe's first movie about a narrow gauge railroad in Colorado

If it runs, like on the CBS Sunday night movie, l would definitely watch it, for the favored subject matter...not for one of many, although hopefully more lucky, starlets of the day.

JohnActon: Thanks so much for the post! My wife and I just watched this fun movie! Yes, Marilyn is in it as well as an interesting old train and actors. Walter Brennan is always fun and the bad guys got it in the end!

Any movie with an interesting story, at least one pretty girl and a happy ending has a very good chance of being a winner. This one even has a train!

Guess there is no aft draft in this flick!

If memory serves me correctly wasn't this the movie where in one scene they needed to move a locomotive across some terrain sans tracks?  If it was then I recall reading they tried to used a real engine for the move and discovered they couldn't do it so they built a wooden replica as a stand in for the real thing. 

   The real star of the movie (the #20 locomotive)  can still be seen at the Colorado Railroad Museum.

I remember seeing it in the theatre with my dad at about age eight. Of course, it was several years later when I learned who Marilyn Monroe was.

I remember them having to dismantle the engine and even at age eight found that hard to believe they could actually do that! More fantasy than usual, even for Hollywood!

@Tinplate Art posted:

I remember them having to dismantle the engine and even at age eight found that hard to believe they could actually do that! More fantasy than usual, even for Hollywood!

Everything was bolted gas or electric welding had not been invented. So if you had wrenches you could unbolt most of it. However that is not the part which I find hard to believe.  It seemed to be rolling as the mules were towing it. If you actually tried to tow a locomotive in dirt or sand the weight on the small contact patch of the locomotive wheels would cause the loco to sink into the dirt up to the frame. If you look closly at the wheels as it is being towed the ground under them is perfectly flat.  Looks to me they covered track with sand and raked it flat.  I try not to dissect movies as I watch them it is hard not to find some imperfection in any movie.          j

Let us agree the entire premise was highly improbable and overall a silly movie.

Don’t forget the fist fight on top of the moving loco! 

Good old-fashioned 50s hokum. 

@JohnActon posted:

If you actually tried to tow a locomotive in dirt or sand the weight on the small contact patch of the locomotive wheels would cause the loco to sink into the dirt up to the frame.

In this vein, you might wish to read up on Stonewall Jackson's theft of 18 engines from the B&O and moving them 38 miles cross-country:

http://civilwarscholars.com/20...les-1861-early-1862/

@palallin posted:

In this vein, you might wish to read up on Stonewall Jackson's theft of 18 engines from the B&O and moving them 38 miles cross-country:

http://civilwarscholars.com/20...les-1861-early-1862/

Certainly not to diminish the accomplishments of these men which was super human or at least super horse. Macadam is a much different surface than what was the pretense in the movie.   Macadam is an engineered surface with layers of stone and the grit and dust produced in crushing the stone mixed together with a layer of bitumen on top for water resistance.  Macadam was essentially the super highway of the nineteenth century common well into the middle of the twentieth century.   Never the less one heck of an accomplishment.  Thanks for showing that to us, well worth the read.  Probably a better read than the movie was a watch. I'm glad I saw both though.          j

This movie was just plain old fashion fun!

Monroe should thank her lucky stars they didn't give her screen credits. Don

Marilyn Monroe's first movie can be a little hard to determine. IIRC there are like four movies c.1949-52 where the credits say "and Introducing Marilyn Monroe", implying each one was her first movie.

Typical of Hollywood where fantasy and reality are often at odds! What else is new?

@Tinplate Art posted:

Typical of Hollywood where fantasy and reality are often at odds! What else is new?

Ticket to Tomahawk wasn't intended to be a historical documentary on railroading or the wild west.  It was intended as entertainment and escapism.   The film works on that level.

Rusty

Rusty: My last post was a response to the one by Stix regarding "And introducing Marilyn Monroe" credits in more than one film!

@Tinplate Art posted:

Rusty: My last post was a response to the one by Stix regarding "And introducing Marilyn Monroe" credits in more than one film!

In that case, while MM may have "first" performed in four different films, there's no guarantee as to which one would have been released to theaters first.

Rusty