Fate Is the Hunter (film)

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Fate Is the Hunter
Directed by	Ralph Nelson
Produced by	Aaron Rosenberg
Written by	Ernest K. Gann (book) Harold Medford
Starring	Glenn Ford Nancy Kwan Rod Taylor
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Release date(s)	1964
Running time	106 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Fate Is the Hunter is a 1964 film about the crash of an airliner and the subsequent investigation. It was nominally based on the bestselling 1961 novel of the same name by Ernest K. Gann, but the author was so disappointed with the result, he asked to have his name removed from the credits. In his 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.

Bosley Crowther's New York Times review called it "a stupid, annoying film."^[1]

1 Plot summary
2 Cultural References
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Pilot Jack Savage (Rod Taylor) is suspected of drinking and causing an airliner crash that leaves only a single survivor. His wartime buddy, airline executive Sam C. McBane (Glenn Ford) is convinced of his friend's innocence and investigates doggedly.

Eventually a test flight re-creating the actual flight shows that the crash was caused by a cup of coffee spilling and shorting out critical wiring.

[edit] Cultural References

An excerpt of this movie was used on 1980 comedy Airplane!.

The film "Fate is the Hunter" is mentioned several times in the 1995 television episode "JAG: Pilot Error"; it provides the protagonist with a clue in solving a fighter jet crash shown in this T.V. film.