Speed

Speed (1936)

A Mile a minute of fun and thrills!

Terry is the chief car tester for Emery Motors and Frank is an Engineer. Jane has just been hired to work in publicity. Frank and Terry both want Jane to be their girl. Terry has designed a new carburetor that should bring him fame and money, but he cannot get it to work correctly. Terry and Gadget have tested it for over a year, but it still is not perfected. Emery Motors assigns Frank to help Terry with the carburetor, but Terry is not happy because Frank is an Engineer and is also vying for Jane. They finish the carburetor, and to test it, they enter a car in the Indianapolis 500 race. Terry is not yet satisfied with the carburetor before the big race even though it has passed all the tests.

Date of release
1936-05-08
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (11)
Runtime
1h 10m
Genres
Action, Drama, Romance
Director
Edwin L. Marin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Detroit

Speed is a 1936 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer action film directed by Edwin L. Marin. It starred James Stewart, in his first starring role, and Wendy Barrie. Although only a low-budget "B" movie, the film was notable for its realistic cinematography by Lester White, incorporating scenes from the Indianapolis 500 race and on-location shooting at the Muroc dry lake bed, used for high-speed racing by "hot rodders" in the 1930s. Advance publicity trumpeted that Stewart drove the specially-prepared "Falcon" to 140 mph (230 km/h).

Production

Principal photography took place at the MGM studio, its Culver City, California, backlot, and on location from March 20 to April 7, 1936. MGM had wanted to develop a film with a speed-racing theme to capitalize on worldwide headlines about Malcolm Campbell breaking the world's speed record for an automobile in his "Blue Bird", on September 3, 1935 at the Bonneville Salt Flats.For the sake of convenience and with a limited budget, Speed instead us…

Scenes of the actual Indianapolis 500 were used from an earlier era when riding mechanics had to be incorporated in the race cars. The Emery "Falcon" world speed record race car transposed to the similar testing area, the Muroc dry lake bed, was designed and built by Harlan Fengler, a retired racer and riding mechanic. He built the car to make an attempt at the land speed record but, after investing $100,000, ran out of money.

For Stewart, in his first starring role, he later recalled, "The only way to learn to act is to act ... For instance, I would have a tiny part in a big picture with stars like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow and others, and then I would have a big part in a tiny picture [Speed] and so on." During a hectic period, from 1935 to 1939, Stewart appeared in 29 motion pictures.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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