A rail-car is pushed out of a mine, where young McTeague (Gibson Gowland), a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine, works with a candle in one hand.BackgroundThe Scarlet Empress (1934)is director Josef von Sternberg""s startling, dark, visually opulent, hauntingly expressionistic, semi-erotic and mostly fictional biopic of one of 18th century Russia""s most illustrious historical figures - Catherine II (the Great), during the years 1744 to 1762.Pierson), and Best Original Music Score (Lalo Schifrin) and won only for Best Supporting Actor.The StoryIn the opening scene, set in the South in 1948 [the film was shot on location in Stockton, California], Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested for the minor offenses of being drunk and destroying two long rows of parking meters in a defiant act of rebellion.To his surprise, he decapitated a knitting grandmother robot - later identified by Cochran as a "rare piece.The story is set in early December 1941 in a city (and cafe), in a dangerous, far-off locale that is a microcosm of the wartime world.