Jack Kelly's "The Edge of Anarchy," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America by Jack Kelly.

The entry begins:

How would I adapt The Edge of Anarchy into a movie? The book details the greatest labor disturbance in U.S. history, the 1894 Pullman Strike, which shut down rail service to much of the nation and brought rioting and food shortages to major cities.

Labor history has not attracted many feature film makers. Norma Rae, Matewan, On the Waterfront ... the list runs out pretty quickly. To succeed the movie needs a strong protagonist. The Edge of Anarchy has this in Eugene Debs, the dynamic leader of the American Railway Union. A good villain is essential – George Pullman and U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney, who called in the army, will both serve nicely. A female lead: Jennie Curtis, a seamstress who electrified the union delegates and became a voice for the strike. A narrator: Debs’s younger brother Theodore, always at his side.

Christian Bale would be able to handle the role of Debs, as proven particularly by...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Jack Kelly's website.

The Page 99 Test: Band of Giants.

My Book, The Movie: The Edge of Anarchy.

--Marshal Zeringue