The Brave Engineer

A Walt Disney Cartoon.

THE BRAVE ENGINEER Casey Jones won't let anything stop him from getting his mail train to Frisco on time.

The American Tall Tale hero comes to comic life in this funny, fast moving little film. Boisterous radio comedian Jerry Colonna is the perfect singing narrator, his special brand of silliness completely in tune with the tone of the cartoon. Look fast early on for the name of Ward Kimball on the engine yard schedule sheet - this zany Disney animator was a tremendous train enthusiast.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

"The Brave Engineer" is a Walt Disney animated short about the legendary Casey Jones. This is one of several cartoon shorts made by the Disney studios over the years that celebrate American legends. Some such legends are myths but others are based on real people. Casey Jones was one of them. He was a railroad engineer who became famous after his fatal train crash of April 30, 1900. He was immortalized by a 1909 song, "The Ballad of Casey Jones."

This cartoon short focuses on Jones's reputation for being on-time with train schedules. In many instances, he made up considerable time when incoming trains had fallen way behind schedule. In one scene in this short, Jones rescues a damsel in distress. That is a parody of a real-life incident in which Jones stood on the outside front of his engine and pulled a little girl off the tracks, keeping her from being run over by the train.

Jones worked for the Illinois Central Railroad and operated trains in the South, from Tennessee to Louisiana. The Casey Jones Home and Railroad Museum is located in Jackson, Tenn. Water Valley, Miss. Has a Casey Jones Railroad Museum, and the Casey Jones State Park is located in Vaughan, Miss.

The Brave Engineer: My wife and I rented this video as part of a compilation of Disney "Americana" cartoons, including "Johnny Appleseed" and others. We were pleasantly surprised to find my Dad receive animator credits at the end. So many of the old Disney cartoons they show on T.V. now just list "brought to you my the talents of many...etc" or something like that. My Dad is 92 now (12/31/03), but still very much alive and kickin'. He worked at Disney Studios in Burbank from the animating of "Snow White" to about the finish of the animated "Jungle book, about 1971 I think. He went into production in some kind of middle-management position and didn't do enough footage to get animator credits sometime after this cartoon.

Fun cartoon from Disney that's loosely based on real-life train engineer Casey Jones. The story finds Casey determined to get his cargo to its destination on time, despite all the obstacles that stand in his way. It's very cute and fun with wonderful voice work from Jerry Colonna. I'm a sucker for train stories so it has that added value for me. I read that this cartoon has been censored now by Disney, specifically the scene with the robbers being edited out because they have guns. A textbook example of the stupidity of political correctness and 21st century Disney's cowardice. Thankfully I did not watch that version.

I haven't seen this since I was at most eleven, on a VHS compilation of Disney shorts, at the babysitter's house. I always had a memory of the collision course bit, so this morning I decided to try to find this film. I distinctly remembered the contrast between the frenzied musical theme over Casey's train screaming down the hill, & the weary but menacing theme over the uphill freight.

The film is rated rather poorly here on IMDb, but I don't see why. It is a tragic/comedic animated short produced by Disney in 01950 - what more do you want? It could have been made a little longer, mind you - but its runtime is long enough for a child's attention span.