Buster Keaton comedy at the Apollo Saturday, Sept. 8th

One of Hollywood’s top humorists and filmmakers based what he considered his best movie on an often-overlooked Civil War incident known as the Great Locomotive Chase, and downtown Peoria’s nonprofit Apollo Theater will show it on Saturday, Sept. 8.

“The General,” written and directed by Buster Keaton, is a 1926 comedy considered a major classic of the silent era.

Also starring the deadpan Keaton as a Southern-loyalist train engineer who loves his locomotive (The General) and the lovely Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), the film follows Keaton’s character trying to win back his loves. His girl mistakenly thinks he’s a coward because the Confederate army refused to let him enlist so he could continue to work on the railroad; his beloved locomotive is hijacked by Union troops, and must be pursued as it heads North – with Annabelle onboard.

A similar chase really occurred in 1862 when Union soldiers stole a locomotive named The General in Atlanta and tried to take it to Chattanooga.

“The General” in 1989 was picked by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant,” along with motion pictures including “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” “Gone with the Wind” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

In a 2002 poll of critics and filmmakers on the best films ever made, Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Roger Ebert listed “The General” in his top 10.

Show times at the Apollo are at 7:00 p.m. Donations are $5 and $4 for kids, students and seniors. For details call (309) 673-4343.