Robert Preston appears in very similar roles in 2 films, both with very similar plots: Union Pacific (1939) and Whispering Smith (1948) .Both movies center around railroading; Preston plays a likable but misguided "heavy" in both; in Union Pacific, Joel McCRea plays a lawman to Alan Ladd's title character, Whispering Smith; in Union Pacific, Barbara Stanwyck plays the love interest, married to one, romantically attracted to the other male leads - in Whispering Smith, Brenda Marshal plays a very similar character; in his film, Ladd has William Demarest as his sidekick, while in Union Pacific, McCrea has Akim Tamiroff and Lynne Overman; in both films, the likable but misguided Robert Preston characters die at the end; both films take place in roughly the same era; in both films the heavy (Preston) was a good friend of the leading good guy (McCrea or Ladd) from way back when; in both films the lead (McCrea or Ladd) tries to get their old friend, Preston, back on the track to decency by reasoning with him; in Union Pacific, the arch demon is played by Brian Donlevy, while in Whispering Smith, he's played by Donald Crisp; there are train wrecks galore in both films; both the McCrea and Ladd character work for the railroads. There are other parallels, as well, so many that it would seem that Union Pacific served as a rough template for Whispering Smith to a large extent, with Preston playing essentially the same, or very similar, character roles in both films.
Review of Union Pacific
