Rock Island Trail takes audiences through the journey of the advent of the railroad through the Illinois territory. In the decades before the Civil War, when cowboys and Indians still battled, and stagecoach passengers were still scared of "new train cars", Forrest Tucker is a railroad man with a vision. There's a pretty exciting scene towards the beginning where a stagecoach and a train race; it's obvious to us who will win, but back in the day, people actually took bets on it!
Costumer Adele Palmer clad her leading actress Adele Mara in countless gorgeous gowns. In every scene but one, she dons a new outfit with ornate material, great detail, and jaw-dropping style. This movie is worth watching just for the fashion eye candy! There was also a strong blue theme present in the Technicolor landscape, an interesting choice. I'm not sure if Palmer, director Joseph Kane, or art director Frank Arrigo were responsible, but it certainly made an impression. Amidst the brown dirt and golden rolling hill landscape, the cornflower blue really showed the influence of progress and civilization.
The romance started off being cute, but it grew almost upsetting. Forrest and Adele had a spunky banter together, and it only took one scene for him to steal her away from her fiancé Bruce Cabot and make a lifelong enemy of him. But once they fell in love, Forrest flatly refused to marry her. He insisted that because she had money and he didn't, she could boss him around in the marriage; he wanted it the other way around. So, he planned on keeping her hanging until he made his fortune. She would always smile sweetly at him and say, "I'll wait," but in that day and age (or any for that matter), it was insulting to take her for granted and steal away years of her youth with an empty promise. She kept waiting and waiting and waiting! Someone else with more respect for her and less pride in his pocketbook could have swept her off her feet and made an honest woman out of her.
In another scene, Forrest gets so angry that his workforce imbibes on a barrel of whiskey after a long day's work, he pours alcohol on a man's back and lights it on fire. Is he really supposed to be a good guy? Granted, Bruce was no Prince Charming either, but this definitely wasn't a Randolph Scott type of western. If you don't mind having the hero being a bit of an antihero, you can check it out. For me, the costumes were far and away the highlight. A close second was an adorable cameo by character actor Jeff Corey, playing a tall, lanky small-town Illinois lawyer with a top hat. . .
