Gary Coleman’s Movie That Took the Train: The Curious Case of On the Right Track (1981)

“Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, box office?”

When Gary Coleman stepped off television and into a locker at Chicago’s Union Station, Hollywood thought it had a sure bet. The pint-sized superstar of Diff’rent Strokes was, for a few years, the most bankable child actor in America — a quick-witted, bright-eyed phenomenon with the charm of Chaplin and the confidence of someone twice his age.

So when 20th Century Fox announced On the Right Track in 1981 — a family film about a homeless shoeshine boy who lives inside a train-station locker and can magically pick winning horses — the premise sounded just crazy enough to work.

On the Right Track was built entirely around Coleman’s charm. A $3 million production shot largely on location in Chicago, it doubled as both a modern fairy tale and a warmhearted showcase for its young star. The result was a film that’s equal parts sweet, strange, and strangely forgotten.

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A Star Vehicle on Rails

The story of On the Right Track begins less with a script than with a brand. Coleman’s agents and production team wanted a project that would let him make the leap from small screen to movie star — the kind of move that had worked for Shirley Temple and would later work for Macaulay Culkin.

The movie’s premise — a boy genius living in a train station — was chosen partly for its visual novelty and partly because Gary loved trains. The production shot for several weeks inside Chicago’s Union Station, which lent a surprising cinematic grandeur to a modest family film.

Producers surrounded him with reliable character actors — Maureen Stapleton, Norman Fell, Lisa Eilbacher — and let the kid do what he did best: smile, scheme, and disarm every adult in sight.

The tagline said it all: “Meet the richest orphan since Oliver!”

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“A charming motion picture,” wrote Gene Siskel, praising Coleman’s screen presence but lamenting the “unnecessary adult subplots.”

— Chicago Tribune, 1981

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Critical Reactions: High Praise and Side-Eye

When On the Right Track opened in March 1981, critics were torn between affection and skepticism.

Roger Ebert found the movie “a little too padded” but admitted that Coleman “can act — he’s not just mugging for the camera.” He gave the film two and a half stars, enough to call it pleasant but forgettable.

Siskel was kinder, saying it was “a charming motion picture” but bemoaning scenes that took focus away from Coleman. The consensus: the movie worked best when it simply let Gary be Gary.

Janet Maslin at The New York Times took a harder line, calling it a “vehicle that relies entirely on Coleman’s lovability” and suggesting that without his television fame, the movie might never have been made.

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“A vehicle that relies entirely on Coleman’s lovability.”

— Janet Maslin, The New York Times (1981)

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Box Office and Backlash

Despite lukewarm reviews, On the Right Track pulled in an estimated $13 million at the U.S. box office — more than quadrupling its budget. By early ’80s family-film standards, that was a modest success.

And yet, the aftertaste was odd. The movie received a Razzie nomination — one of the first — aimed squarely at Coleman. It wasn’t mean-spirited so much as patronizing, part of a larger tendency in 1980s pop culture to sneer at “TV stars gone Hollywood.”

The Razzie didn’t faze Gary publicly. He was still one of the most recognizable faces in America, appearing on cereal boxes and talk shows, and he continued to defend the movie in interviews as a “funny, feel-good story.”

Still, you can sense the pivot point: Coleman, for all his talent, was entering a Hollywood world that didn’t know what to do with a child star who wasn’t a cartoon or a gimmick.

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Strange Little Legacy

In hindsight, On the Right Track is a time capsule. It’s a portrait of early-’80s optimism, with just a touch of melancholy: a lonely boy, surrounded by grown-ups, finding a family in the crowd.

There are fun little curiosities too:

• The movie’s horse-racing subplot gave it a small cult following among racing fans who still reference it as a “campy, horsey oddity.”

• The locker imagery — Coleman literally living inside a train-station locker — became one of the decade’s strangest poster visuals. Original one-sheets now sell for hundreds on eBay.

• And though it’s not streaming anywhere officially, the movie lives on in VHS rips and bootleg YouTube uploads, shared mostly by nostalgia channels and curious film bloggers.

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“If you love the visual gag of a boy living inside a locker with dollar bills flying out — this is your movie.”

— A fan review on Letterboxd, 2020s

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Reflection: A Train That Left the Station

Looking back, On the Right Track feels like the beginning and the end of something. Coleman was so clearly talented — natural, funny, and unforced — yet the movie around him never quite matched his energy.

It’s easy to laugh at the concept now, or to see the film as a product of overzealous studio optimism. But there’s also something haunting about it. A movie that wanted to give a child star a Hollywood home instead built him a locker.

Still, for a generation that grew up watching Diff’rent Strokes, On the Right Track remains a warm, weird artifact — the cinematic equivalent of a train that ran on charm, stalled at the station, and somehow still made it to the heart.

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