A Southern Yankee is a 1948 American comedy western film directed by Edward Sedgwick and starring Red Skelton, Brian Donlevy and Arlene Dahl. The film is loosely based on Buster Keaton's The General (1926). Skelton plays a Union soldier who spies on the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Keaton served as a technical advisor for the film. Plot In 1865, Aubrey Filmore works as a bellboy at the Palmer Hotel in St. Louis. Aubrey wants to work as a spy for the federal government and contacts Colonel Clifford M. Baker at the Secret Service to ask if he can help their elite spy unit, but Baker refuses the request. Posters are distributed warning the public of a cunning spy named the Grey Spider. When Major Jack Drumman comes to stay at the hotel, Aubrey discovers that he is the Grey Spider, but the major catches Aubrey and tries to force him to wear Confederate clothes to look like the Grey Spider so that he can shoot him as a spy. Before the major's plan is realized, Aubrey accidentally knocks him unconscious. Major Drumman's alluring accomplice Sallyann Weatharby enters and Aubrey falls in love with her. Aubrey agrees to join Sallyann, posing as the Drumman, to a meeting with important Confederate spies. Before Aubrey leaves the hotel, he leaves a message for Baker telling him of his plans. Aubrey is then involved in a complicated scheme to intercept the Union forces and is given the important task of delivering the Union battle plans to the Confederate General Watkins. He is ordered to meet up with Sallyann at Morgan's Landing, a hospital near the battlefront. Upon returning to Colonel Baker with the plans, Aubrey helps to make fake plans to replace the real ones, and is reluctantly ordered by the colonel to continue posing as Drumman and also to deliver instructions to a Union spy. Aubrey mixes up the plans and instructions and because he is wearing Confederate and Union uniforms at the same time, both armies shoot at him and he is knocked unconscious. He is carried to Morgan's Landing and Sallyann is there waiting for him as planned. Sallyann's fiancé Kurt Devlynn, who is also a spy, is there. As Sallyann has fallen in love with Aubrey, she tells Kurt that she now loves Drumman. Aubrey wakes, finds the lost instructions and escapes the hospital. Kurt tells his men