The Midnight Limited
About The Midnight Limited
Alan Morse, a vagrant and sometime crook, tries to rob the safe at a lonely railroad station. The stationmaster, Sam Foster, catches him and has a paralytic stroke. Alan meets Sam's daughter Mary, stays on, and takes over the telegraph and the station duties he once knew. Old partners arrive to steal a gold shipment. He stops them. They then release the brakes on freight cars sitting on a steep grade, and he blows up a bridge so the cars will not hit the Midnight Limited. Sam forgives him, and he and Mary plan to marry.
Cast & crew
More about The Midnight Limited
Oscar Apfel directed. Jack Natteford wrote the story and the scenario. Ernest F. Smith photographed. Paul Gerson produced. W. Ray Johnston presented it by arrangement with B. Berger. Rayart Pictures distributed it. Released 1 February 1926. Silent Era lists six reels and 5,600 feet; AFI lists 5,800 feet.
Themes
Making
A Rayart railroad melodrama built around a former operator who has to stop both his old gang and a runaway string of freight cars.
Look
Ernest F. Smith photographed it.
Preservation
Silent Era lists a surviving print. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Gaston Glass plays Alan Bennett, also called Alan Morse. Wanda Hawley plays Mary Foster. Sam Allen plays Sam Foster.
- William Humphrey plays John Reynolds, Mathilde Brundage plays Mrs. Reynolds, and Ashton Dearholt (billed Richard Holt) plays Hal Reynolds.
- Also credited: L. J. O'Connor, Eric Mayne as Doctor Harrington, Fred Holmes as Doctor Jones, Hayford Hobbs as the dispatcher, and Monte Collins as a night-club patron.
- Variety reviewed it under the wrong title, The Midnight Express.
- AFI subjects include bandits, a stationmaster, a gold robbery, a stroke, telegraphers, and tramps.
- A file is on Wikimedia Commons as Midnight Limited (1926).webm.
Scenes
- Sam Foster has a stroke while catching Alan at the station safe.
- Alan blows up a bridge so the loose freight cars will not hit the Midnight Limited.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Midnight Limited (1926).webm)
