Silver Streak (1976) on Netflix
Aboard the Silver Streak from Los Angeles to Chicago, book editor George Caldwell meets Hilly Burns and sees a body thrown from the train. Nobody on board believes him.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.9/1023,723 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
George Caldwell, a book editor, boards the Silver Streak in Los Angeles for the trip to his sister's wedding in Chicago. On board he meets Bob Sweet, a salesman, and Hilly Burns, who works as secretary to Professor Schreiner, a historian of Rembrandt. Hilly has dinner with George, and the two go to her cabin. There he sees a body fall from the train, though Hilly tells him he mistook a reflection in the window. He finds no one who will believe him, and when he interrupts men searching the professor's compartment, one of them throws him off the train.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Silver Streak (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Silver Streak was the first film to pair Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and the partnership went so well that the two were later teamed in three more films.
- After reading Colin Higgins' script, Gene Wilder felt its blackface sequence would only work with Richard Pryor and asked that he be given the role. Both men knew the scene was offensive; Higgins had written a white man falling for the disguise, and Pryor changed the character into a Black man who sees right through it.
- Paramount hesitated over Colin Higgins' script because it wanted Amtrak's approval, so Alan Ladd Jr. and Frank Yablans at 20th Century Fox bought it for a then-record $400,000, at the time a record price for a screenplay.
- Because Amtrak objected to parts of the script, the movie was shot using CP Rail equipment, with Canadian Pacific's transcontinental train The Canadian disguised as the fictional AMRoad's Silver Streak.
- Colin Higgins, then best known for writing Harold and Maude, wrote the screenplay because he had always wanted to get on a train and meet a blonde; since it never happened, he wrote a script instead.
- Colin Higgins wanted George Segal for the lead, but 20th Century Fox preferred Gene Wilder; Alan Ladd Jr. argued Wilder was more identifiable for younger audiences, so average and ordinary that he got caught up in crazy adventures.
- Richard Pryor's ad-libbing pushed Gene Wilder to improvise on screen for the first time in his career, and the two actors, inspired by Buster Keaton, did their own stunts in the film.
- Henry Mancini's complete Silver Streak score only reached album in 2002, from Intrada Records; the stereo recordings, stored on 35 mm movie film, had badly degraded, so the label used the film's full-quality mono mixes and included both versions.
