No Highway in the Sky
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No Highway in the Sky | |
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Directed by | Henry Koster |
Produced by | Louis D. Lighton |
Written by | Alec Coppel Oscar Millard R.C. Sherriff |
Starring | James Stewart Marlene Dietrich Glynis Johns Jack Hawkins |
Music by | Malcolm Arnold |
Cinematography | Georges Périnal |
Editing by | Manuel del Campo |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date(s) | June 28, 1951 September 21, 1951 |
Running time | 98 min. |
Country | UK |
Language | English |
Allmovie profile | |
IMDb profile |
No Highway in the Sky is a 1951 British disaster film directed by Henry Koster and starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. The film is based on the novel No Highway by Nevil Shute, and was one of the first films that involved a potential airplane crash.
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[edit] Plot
The film follows Theodore Honey (James Stewart), an aeronautical engineer leaving London to investigate a plane crash in Labrador, which he theorizes occurs because of a structural flaw in the plane's design caused by the number of flight cycles and weaknesses around the rivets which held the plane's skin together. It isn't until Honey is aboard the Reindeer class plane that he realizes he himself is flying one such plane, and that it is due to crash in a matter of hours. Honey decides to warn the passengers and crew, including actress Monica Teasdale (Marlene Dietrich), despite not being sure of his theory. After the plane lands at Gander Airport he takes drastic action to stop the plane continuing when he raises the landing gear whilst the plane is still on the ground.
Back in the hanger just as the plane is about to take off the tail of the test plane falls off. So Mr. Honey rather than being arrested truns out to be a hero.
[edit] Life imitating the Movies
Over the next several years there were repeated crashes of the World's first jet passenger airliner the De Havilland Comet.
The first fatal accident involving passengers was on 2 May 1953, when a BOAC Comet 1 (G-ALYV) crashed in a severe tropical storm six minutes after taking off from Calcutta/Dum Dum (now Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport.
The next Comet crashed off the Italian island of Elba (BOAC Flight 781, 10 January 1954) with the loss of everyone on board. The fleet Comets was grounded during this investigation. The Royal Navy conducted recovery operations, including the first use of underwater television cameras.
On 8 April 1954, a Comet on charter to South African Airways, was on a leg from Rome to Cairo (of a longer flight from London to Johannesburg), when it crashed near Naples. The fleet was immediately grounded once again and a large investigation board was formed under the direction of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). Winston Churchill tasked the Royal Navy with helping find and retrieve the wreckage so that the cause of the accident could be found.
Engineers then subjected an identical airframe, G-ALYU ("Yoke Uncle"), to repeated repressurisation and overpressurisation and after 3057 flight cycles (1221 actual and 1836 simulated), Yoke Uncle failed due to metal fatigue near the front port-side escape hatch.[13] Investigators began considering fatigue as the most likely cause of both accidents and further research into measurable strain on the skin began.
Mr. Honey had been doing metal fatigue tests as well in the movie's flight. Jimmy Stewart who rose to the rank of General in the U.S. Airforce Reserves had served as a flight trainer, then flight commander and Squadron commander throughtout WWII. As a highly successful actor he was at first limited to training other pilots. After struggling against considerable resistance, he was finally allowed to fly combat missions over Europe.
[edit] Cast
- James Stewart as Theodore Honey
- Marlene Dietrich as Monica Teasdale
- Glynis Johns as Marjorie Corder
- Jack Hawkins as Dennis Scott
- Janette Scott as Elspeth Honey
- Elizabeth Allan as Shirley Scott
- Ronald Squire as Sir John, Director
- Jill Clifford as Peggy, Stewardess
[edit] External links
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