Vintage original "Photoplay Edition" hardback book with dust jacket from the epic 1920's Transcontinental Railroad-themed silent film historical western drama, THE IRON HORSE, released in 1924 by Fox Film Corporation and directed by John Ford.
The front cover features artwork depicting a Native American on a summit as he gazes down upon a passenger train as it makes its way through the unspoiled western landscape. The interior features 6 full-pages with black-and-white photographs from the film. It is in overal fine- condition.
Starting in the early 1920’s, the publishing house Grosset & Dunlap crafted a deal with the prominent Hollywood studios to issue novelizations of their major, original releases and among those was The Iron Horse. The author was Edwin C. Hill, then a journalist, who would become a prominent radio broadcaster, best remembered for a show called, The Human Side of the News.
*"The Iron Horse is a 1924 American silent Western film directed by John Ford and produced by Fox Film. It was a major milestone in Ford's career, and his lifelong connection to the western film genre. It was Ford's first major film, in part because the hastily planned production went over budget, as Fox was making a hurried response to the success of another studio's western.
Among the extras used in the Central Pacific sequences were several Chinese men playing coolies who worked on the railroad. They were in fact retired Central Pacific Railroad employees who had helped build the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierras, who came out to participate in the filming as a lark. There is a note in the title before this scene that the two original locomotives from the 1869 event are used in the film, although this is false - both engines (Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter) were scrapped before 1910.
Starting in the early 1920s the publishing house Grosset and Dunlap crafted a deal with the prominent Hollywood studios to issue novelizations of their major, original releases and among those was The Iron Horse (1924, 329pp). The author was Edwin C. Hill, then a journalist, who would become a prominent radio broadcaster, best remembered for a show called The Human Side of the News.
In 2011, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The film is about the construction of the American first transcontinental railroad. It depicts Irish, Italian, and Chinese immigrants, as well as African Americans, as the men who did the backbreaking work that made this feat possible. The primary villain is an unscrupulous businessman who masquerades as a renegade Cheyenne. It culminates with the scene of driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869."
*(source: Wikipedia)
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