Above and Beyond (film)

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Above and Beyond
Directed by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Produced by	Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Written by	Beirne Lay, Jr. Melvin Frank Norman Panama
Starring	Robert Taylor Eleanor Parker James Whitmore
Music by	Hugo Friedhofer
Cinematography	Ray June
Editing by	Cotton Warburton
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	November 21, 1952
Running time	122 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Above and Beyond is a 1952 film about Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb, Enola Gay. It starred Robert Taylor as Tibbets, and Eleanor Parker as his wife. James Whitmore played security officer Major Bill Uanna.

The film was suggested by screenwriter Beirne Lay, Jr., a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, to Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command, who had discussed with Lay the problem of the high rate of divorce among flight crews. A film depicting the problems might help raise morale.

Lay suggested a film based on the experiences of Colonel Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group during World War II. LeMay approved, and after writing an outline Lay handed over scriptwriting duties to Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. Though Tibbets gave his full approval and support to the film he felt too closely involved to be objective, and suggested Charley Begg, commander of the nuclear ordnance squadron, and Charles Sweeney, pilot of "The Great Artiste" on the Nagasaki mission as technical advisers.

For dramatic effect some incidents were somewhat exaggerated, such as the scene in which the Hiroshima bomb is armed in mid-flight. The film-makers added some turbulence to increase tension, though in fact the flight was perfectly smooth throughout. However the scene in which Tibbet's wife calls over one of the men in white coats that she was told by her husband were "sanitary engineers", but were in fact nuclear scientists from Los Alamos, to help her unblock a drain was true.

Robert Taylor and Paul Tibbets appeared together on Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the Town" show in order to promote the film, an unusual step at a time when the major Hollywood studios disapproved of its stars appearing on television, which they saw as a threat.

The film received generally favourable reviews,^[1].