Favorite Characters: Johnnie Gray (The General)

Like Willie from Our Hospitality, Johnnie is a rather unique Buster Keaton character in that he’s never really all that fumbling.  He’s an unlikely leading man, to be sure, an underdog, but he doesn’t go through the same “hapless to heroic” journey that many of Buster’s arcs follow.  (Side note:  picking Willie and Johnnie as the first Buster characters I’ve singled out in no way indicates that I prefer characters that subvert Buster’s usual arc.  More than anything, it just indicates the films I’ve mostly recently rewatched.)

Early in the film, Johnnie is perhaps framed as fumbling or hapless, but it’s just a perception.  He’s physically smaller than most of the other men enlisting in the army, and when he tells Annabelle Lee that they wouldn’t take him, she assumes he’s lying to hide his cowardice.  In truth, though, just as Johnnie does try to join up, his size isn’t the reason he’s rejected.  It’s actually that he’s considered more valuable to the Southern cause as an engineer than a soldier (not that the army tells him that, of course.)

Once the main story gets started and Johnnie goes after the Yankee soldiers who stole his train, he certainly slips up and does some clumsy things, but his overall progression is always toward getting the job done.  There’s no scene where, despite his best efforts, he makes a mess of everything, like Willie’s first attempt to drive the boat in Steamboat Bill Jr. or Friendless’ effort to milk the cow in Go West.  Instead, Johnnie consistently works through his missteps and manages to stay afloat.  When he accidentally knocks the cannon loose so it points at him instead of the Yankees, he avoids blowing himself up, and when the train takes off without him, he (eventually) catches up to it.  I like this, that he’s simultaneously klutzy and effective.

There’s also the fact that he’s a civilian singlehandedly taking on a group of Union soldiers.  They have weapons that he doesn’t, not to mention training that he’s never had, but he never backs down.  He keeps at it, continually coming up with creative ideas to gain the upper hand and using whatever’s on hand to his advantage.  Plus, he’s recently been hit with the misplaced revelation that the army doesn’t want him and been jilted by his girl, so he’s not exactly coming at this from a place of confidence.  Does that inform his determination, a need to prove the doubters wrong?  It certainly helps to bring things around full circle in the end, but the narrative doesn’t really sell it that way.  More than anything, it shows us a guy whose self-esteem has taken a few knocks but who steps up to be a hero without any real thought of himself.  Very cool.

For whatever reason, I find it so endearing that he originally goes on this mission because the Yankees have stolen his train, the General.  True, they’ve kidnapped Annabelle Lee as well, but Johnnie doesn’t actually realize that until the second half of the film – at which point, of course, he sets out to rescue her.  Similarly, when he overhears the Union plan to sabotage Southern rail and telegraph lines, he hatches a plan to stop them.  But the whole thing starts with the theft of the General.  That’s the reason he risks his life, why he initially chases after them in a handcar, and why he doesn’t give up.  That’s his train, and he’s not letting anyone else take her; bless.