The Flying Ace

The Flying Ace (1926)

A veteran World War I fighter pilot returns home a war hero and immediately regains his former job as a railroad company detective. His first case: recover a stolen satchel filled with $25,000 of company payroll, locate a missing employee, and capture a gang of railroad thieves.

Data di uscita
1926-11-05
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (13)
Durata
1 h 5 min
Generi
Crime, Azione, Dramma
Regista
Richard E. Norman

Cast

Curiosità

The Flying Ace is a 1926 American black-and-white silent drama film directed by Richard E. Norman with an all-African-American cast. The story was inspired by Bessie Coleman and the six-reel film, made by Norman Studios in Jacksonville, Florida, utilized an all star cast of professional actors.

Production

With principal photography in Jacksonville, Florida, The Flying Ace was an example of producer Norman's "home talent" films, in which he would travel to various towns with stock footage and a basic script. After recruiting local celebrities for minor roles, they would film a small portion of footage (approximately 200 feet of new material) over the course of a few days. The films were processed at Norman's laboratory in Chicago.

Norman cast J. Laurence Criner, a veteran of Harlem's prestigious all-black theater troupe the Lafayette Players, in the leading role of Captain Billy Stokes, a black pilot who fought in France during World War I. While Eugene Bullard was a black pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille, African-Americans were not allowed to serve as pilots in the United States Army Air Corps until 1940.

The role of pilot Ruth Sawtelle, played by Kathryn Boyd, is loosely based on African-American aviator Bessie Coleman. Coleman had sent a letter to the Norman Studios expressing a wish to be in a film based on her life. Only a day before she was to appear in an exhibition in Jacksonville, she lost her life on April 30, 1926, when she fell from her aircraft. It is unclear whether Norman and Coleman had met.

The Flying Ace was advertised as "the greatest airplane thriller ever filmed"; however, save for one brief sequence, the film was filmed entirely on the ground, using camera tricks, such as the creative use of the camera to create the upside down sequences to imply movement and altitude for the stationary aircraft. A full-scale mock-up of a Curtiss JN-4 biplane was also constructed.

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