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 CASEY JonesIana 

 

With the runaway success of "Casey Jones" the name was now a recognizable brand with products continuing to come out capitalizing on the national familiarity with this tragic American hero. 

The September-December 1927 issue of Exhibitor's Herald features a publicity shot for Casey Jones a seven-reel melodrama by the low-rent Rayart studio (a forerunner of Monogram Pictures.) 

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The film, considered lost, featured two Buster Keaton alums: Al St. John (L) who started out in comedy shorts with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton and ended as the beloved/bewhiskered 1940s cowboy sidekick Al "Fuzzy" St. John, and Kate Price who co-starred as his wife in the short, "My Wife's Relations." (thanks to Keatonologist, Aurelia Perry for the latter.)

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The record actor Ralph Lewis is holding touted as "new" in the blurb might be by Vernon Dalhart whose second version came out that year. 

EXHIBITOR'S HERALD  Sept-December 1927 .

In 1933, Monogram produced a low-rent drama only slightly less based on the real-life Casey Jones than the earlier Rayart offering. Film high note: a rare opportunity to see otherwise hirsute western sidekick George ("Gabby") Hayes with both his teeth and clean-shaven. 

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perhaps because it was the fiftieth anniversary of the disaster, a number of Casey Jones related products came out in the 1950s starting with a US Postal Service 3c Casey Jones memorial worth 99 cents today. 

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Around the same time, Philadelphia-based Quaker City Confectionery launched a TV campaign for their signature product, Good & Plenty candy.  New York ad agency Ogilvy and Mather branded the product with a railroad motif, penning its jingle to the Casey Jones melody but renaming the cartoon character  "Choo Choo Charlie" (itself, a Casey Jones-era football moniker.)  The simple limited animation ad — with its incessant candy box rattling in train rhythm —would air into the 1970s becoming permanently imprinted onto millions of TV watching Baby Boomers.  

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In 1957, Screen Gems launched  "Casey Jones," a syndicated children's TV series that ran for 32 half-hour episodes triggering a short-lived fad for railroader hats and a spin-off comic book. 

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The show starred Alan Hale, Jr. best known as the "Skipper" in the 1960s TV comedy "Gilligan's Island." Again, the plots had nothing to do with the real-life Jones, but interestingly, the name of one character, "Wallie Simms" was a clever conflation of  "Wallace Saunders" (credited with the original song) and "Simm Webb", (Jones' fireman.) Though both men were black, the role was played by the white Dubb Taylor. 

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