Fate Is the Hunter
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Fate Is the Hunter was a 1961 bestseller by aviation author Ernest K. Gann. Autobiographical, though reading at times like an adventure novel, it describes his years working as a commercial airline pilot when civilian air transport was in its infancy.
Reviewing the book on its appearance, Martin Caidin wrote that his reminiscences "stand excitingly as individual chapter-stories, but the author has woven them superbly into a lifetime of flight." Roger Bilstein, in a history of flight, says that of books that discuss airline operations from the pilot's point of view, "few works of this genre equal E. K. Gann's Fate Is the Hunter, which strikingly evokes the atmosphere of air transport flying during the 1930s."
The plot of the 1964 movie of the same name had no relation to the book. Gann had written some early drafts of the script, but was so unhappy with the final result that he asked to have his name removed from it (in his later autobiography A Hostage to Fortune Gann wrote, "They obliged and as a result I deprived myself of the TV residuals, a medium in which the film played interminably.")
The movie starred Glenn Ford and Nancy Kwan and included performances by Suzanne Pleshette, Rod Taylor, Jane Russell (playing herself entertaining for the USO in a flashback sequence), and Wally Cox. A pilot is suspected of drinking and causing an airliner crash; his wartime buddy is convinced of the pilot's innocence and investigates doggedly.
[edit] Spoilers
Eventually a test flight re-creating the actual flight shows that the pilot was innocent and that the crash was caused by a cup of coffee spilling and shorting out critical wiring.
[edit] End Spoilers
Bosley Crowther's New York Times review called it "a stupid, annoying film."
An excerpt of this movie was used on 1980 comedy Airplane!.
[edit] References
- ↑ Caidin, Martin (1961) "Lady Luck Is Co-Pilot," The New York Times, February 12, 1961 p. BR10
- ↑ Bilstein, Roger E. (2001) Flight in America, p. 378, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-6685-5
- ↑ Fate Is the Hunter IMDB movie listing
- ↑ Crowther, Bosley (1964) "'Fate Is the Hunter' Opens: Film of Plane Crash at Local Theaters; Glenn Ford Is Starred With Nancy Kwan." The New York Times, December 10, 1964. [5]
