Atlantic Flight

Atlantic Flight (1937)

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Famous pioneer aviator Dick Merrill was front-page news in the 1930s, so it's understandable that he was summoned to Hollywood to star in his own film. In "Atlantic Flight" he's top-billed as a pilot who undertakes a dangerous mission to transport medicine to an ailing friend. Monogram.

Date of release
1937-08-25
TMDB
4.5 / 10 (6)
Runtime
59m
Genres
Drama, Action
Director
William Nigh

Casting

Interesting facts

Atlantic Flight is a 1937 American film made by Monogram Pictures chiefs Trem Carr and W. Ray Johnston who had just reformed the studio after having had a troubled merger for two years with Herbert J. Yates and Republic Pictures. This film was conceived as a low-budget feature meant to capitalize on Dick Merrill's and Jack Lambie's historic "Coronation Flight", which made them world-famous. Recreating the flight that made him famous, Dick Merrill, along with co-pilot Jack Lambie reprise their real-life roles as pilots.

Production

In 1937 Merrill was hired by Hearst Publishing to repeat the "Ping-Pong Flight", co-piloted by 27-year-old Jack Lambie in a Lockheed Model 10E Electra dubbed "Daily Express". Hearst wanted to scoop other American newspapers by acquiring photos of the May 10, 1937 coronation of King George VI after the abdication of his brother, King Edward VIII.

Both Dick Merrill and Jack Lambie, his real-life "Coronation Flight" co-pilot and co-star in the film, received $2,500 for their roles in this movie. Dick had not taken the filming seriously but gladly accepted the windfall. He was a teetotaler in an age when the "hard-drinking" "fun-loving" aerial adventurer was seen as the norm.

Merrill made two more transatlantic flights, the last of these, on May 14, 1937, set the new record at 24 hours, 25 seconds.

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

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