After following the train, they crash-landed in the school's Whomping Willow tree, but finally arrived for their second year of studies in witchcraft.This film was best known for its crisply-edited, non-stop car action and amazing stuntwork in its dazzling climax, as well as its stark, naturalistic cinematic depiction of a post-apocalyptic future (after WW III) and other visual and stylistic designs that many other films have imitated ever since (i.George: Maybe it was just as well.President: Don't worry about it.We understand each other perfectly...The Herald Tribune says that you make a better president inI'd Rather Be Rightthan I am.George: Don't forget, that's a Republican newspaper.President: I can remember you and your family very well - the Four Cohans.George: Do you really, Mr.President? That was a long time ago.President: Yes, it was while I was attending school near Boston.George: (smiling to himself) I was a pretty cocky kid in those days - a pretty cocky kid.A regular Yankee Doodle Dandy, always carrying a flag in a parade or following one.President: I hope you haven't outgrown the habit.George: Not a chance.President: Well that's one thing I've always admired about you Irish-Americans.You carry your love of country like a flag, right out in the open.It's a great quality.George: I inherited that - I got that from my father.He ran away o the Civil War when he was thirteen - the proudest kid in the whole state of Massachusetts.Three of the characters would become involved in a love triangle.Befitting the film's satirical heme of admiring or fantasizing about film idols on-screen while struggling in the real world, one might hypothesize that the Boy idolized current film star John Barrymore (who starred inSherlock Holmes (1922), wo years earlier), while the Girl resembled and aspired to be like cinema's curly-locked sweetheart Mary Pickford, and the Sheik was an aspiring wanna-be Rudolph Valentino (who starred as the itle character inThe Sheik (1921).An image of Africans being brought to America and sold at auction in the South follows the title.The rise of the abolitionist movement of the 19th century demands the freeing of the slaves.Then, in pre-Civil War 1860, the film dramatically focuses on two families.The Northern Stoneman family (of Washington D.C., with a country home in Pennsylvania) is led by imposing parliamentary leader, the Hon.Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), an abolitionist leader in the National House of representatives [in a role patterned after Pennsylvanian Senator Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican leader and anti-slavery crusader].