Silver Streak (film)

Silver Streak is a 1976 American thriller comedy film, about a murder on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago train journey. It was directed by Arthur Hiller and stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, and Richard Pryor, with Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Clifton James, Ray Walston, Scatman Crothers, and Richard Kiel in supporting roles. The film score is by Henry Mancini. This film marked the first pairing of Wilder and Pryor, who were later paired in three other films.

The film is primarily set on a train called Silver Streak. A passenger accidentally finds out about the murder of an art historian, and about efforts to discredit the victim's book. A shady art dealer is profiting from forged works of Rembrandt, and is willing to kill in order to maintain secrecy about his crimes.

Plot
Aboard the Silver Streak train to Chicago, book editor George Caldwell meets salesman Bob Sweet and Hilly Burns, secretary to Rembrandt historian Professor Schreiner. Hilly and George share an instant attraction and she invites him to her cabin. There, he sees Schreiner's body fall from the train's roof outside her window. Hilly believes George is mistaken, so he goes to investigate Schreiner's cabin, where he encounters Whiney and Reace, searching Schreiner's belongings. After Whiney implies that Hilly is in trouble, the burly Reace throws George off the train. Concerned about Hilly, George follows the train tracks until he meets a farmer, who flies George in her biplane to a station ahead of the Silver Streak where he can reboard.

Once aboard the train again, George sees Hilly with art dealer Roger Devereau and assumes they are romantically involved. He confronts Devereau, who explains that Wiley and Reace are in his employ and their confrontation was a misunderstanding. Devereau also introduces George to a seemingly-alive Schreiner (in actuality his other employee, Johnson, in disguise).

Convinced he was wrong, and upset at Hilly's presumed relationship with Devereau, George gets drunk and explains the situation to Sweet, who reveals himself to be an undercover FBI agent named Stevens. He explains that the FBI has been investigating Devereau, a ruthless criminal known publicly as a professional art appraiser. Stevens believes Devereau wants Schreiner's Rembrandt letters, which could expose Devereau for authenticating forged paintings as genuine Rembrandts. George realizes the letters are hidden inside Schreiner's book, and shows them to Stevens.

Reace interrupts and attempts to assassinate George but inadvertently kills Stevens. Reace pursues George to the train's roof, where George kills him with a harpoon gun. George falls from the roof of the moving train, and again finds himself on foot.

George seeks help from a local sheriff, who finds George's story unbelievable. Learning that George is a suspect in Stevens' murder, he attempts to arrest him. George escapes the inept sheriff and steals a patrol car, unaware that arrested car thief Grover T. Muldoon is in the back. George and Grover work together to catch up to the train at Kansas City so George can save Hilly.

With police searching for George, Grover disguises George as a black man using shoe polish so they can reboard the train. Devereau captures George, recovers the Rembrandt letters and later burns them. Devereau tells George and Hilly he plans to frame them for Schreiner's murder, then make their deaths look like murder-suicide.

Grover poses as a steward and rescues George and Hilly but, after a shootout with Devereau's men, Grover and George are forced to jump from the train to escape. They are promptly arrested and taken to Stevens' boss, Chief Donaldson, who says he knows George is innocent. He explains that the FBI planted the news that George was guilty to convince Devereau he was safe, while ensuring the police would find George to keep him safe.

As George and Grover amicably part ways, Donaldson has the train stopped and surrounded by police, then evacuates the passengers. A firefight erupts, Whiney is wounded, and George, alongside a returning Grover, boards the train to kill Johnson and rescue Hilly. Devereau seizes the train controls, setting it to run at fullspeed without a driver, and throws Whiney from the train. Donaldson provides supporting fire from a helicopter, and George mortally wounds Devereau, who is decapitated by an oncoming freight train.

Unable to stop the driverless Silver Streak, George and a porter uncouple the train cars from the engine to trigger their brakes, saving the remaining passengers. But the runaway engine crashes into Chicago's Central Station, destroying everything in its path. George, Hilly and Grover survey the damaged engine as Grover drives away in a stolen car. George and Hilly bid him goodbye and leave to begin their new relationship.

Cast

 * Gene Wilder as George Caldwell
 * Jill Clayburgh as Hildegarde "Hilly" Burns
 * Richard Pryor as Grover T. Muldoon
 * Patrick McGoohan as Roger Devereau
 * Ned Beatty as FBI Agent Bob Stevens / Bob Sweet
 * Clifton James as Sheriff Oliver Chauncey
 * Gordon Hurst as Deputy "Moose"
 * Ray Walston as Edgar Whiney
 * Scatman Crothers as Porter Ralston
 * Len Birman as FBI Agent Donaldson
 * Lucille Benson as Rita Babtree
 * Stefan Gierasch as Professor Arthur Schreiner / Johnson
 * Valerie Curtin as Plain Jane
 * Richard Kiel as Reace
 * Fred Willard as Jerry Jarvis
 * Ed McNamara as Benny
 * Henry Beckman as Conventioneer
 * Harvey Atkin as Conventioneer
 * Robert Culp as FBI Agent (uncredited)
 * J.A. Preston as The Waiter (uncredited)

Production
The film was based on an original screenplay by Colin Higgins, who at the time was best known for writing Harold and Maude. He wrote Silver Streak "because I had always wanted to get on a train and meet some blonde. It never happened, so I wrote a script."

Higgins wrote Silver Streak for the producers of The Devil's Daughter, a TV film he had written. Both they and Higgins wanted to get into television. The script was sent out to auction. It was set on an Amtrak train and Paramount was interested, but wanted Amtrak to give its approval. Alan Ladd Jr. and Frank Yablans at 20th Century Fox didn't want to wait and bought the script for a then-record $400,000. Ladd said "It was like the old Laurel and Hardy comedies. The hero is Laurel, he falls off the train, stumbles about, makes a fool of himself, but still gets the pretty girl. Audiences have identified with that since Buster Keaton."

Colin Higgins wanted George Segal for the hero – the character's name is George – but Fox preferred Gene Wilder. Ladd reasoned that Wilder was "younger, more identifiable for the younger audience. And he's so average, so ordinary, and he gets caught up in all these crazy adventures." (Wilder was actually older than Segal.)

Colin Higgins claimed the producers did not want Richard Pryor cast because Pryor had recently walked off The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings; he says the producer at one stage considered casting another black actor as a backup. However, Pryor was very professional during the shoot.

Release
The film had over 400 previews around the United States starting November 28, 1976 in New York City. It had its premiere at Tower East Theater in New York on Tuesday, December 7, 1976 and opened in New York City the following day. It opened in Los Angeles on Friday, December 10 before opening nationwide in an additional 350 theaters on December 22.

Reception
The film grossed over $51 million at the box office and was praised by critics, including Roger Ebert. It maintains a 76% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 25 reviews. Ruth Batchelor of the Los Angeles Free Press described it as a "fabulous, funny, suspenseful, wonderful, marvelous, sexy, fantastic trip on a train, with the most lovable group of characters ever assembled." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, however, called the film "a needlessly convoluted mystery yarn, which calls everyone's identity into question except Wilder's." Siskel, who gave the film just two stars, added that "the story isn't easy to follow" and that "I'm still not sure whether Clayburgh's character, secretary to Devereaux, was in on the hustle from the beginning." (Hilly Burns was actually Professor Schreiner's secretary, not Devereaux's.)

Awards and honors

 * Academy Award nomination: Best Sound (Donald O. Mitchell, Douglas O. Williams, Richard Tyler, and Harold M. Etherington)
 * Nomination: Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy — Gene Wilder
 * Writers Guild of America nomination: Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen – Colin Higgins
 * The film was chosen for the Royal Film Performance in 1977.
 * In 2000, American Film Institute included the film in AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #95.

Score and soundtrack
Though the film dates to 1976, Henry Mancini's score was never officially released on a soundtrack album. Intrada Records' 2002 compilation became one of the year's best-selling special releases.