Power Dive

Power Dive (1941)

ON WINGS OF GLORY!

The story concentrated on a group of test pilots, busily experimenting with a revolutionary all-plastic airplane. Ace flyboy Brad Farrell (Richard Arlen) is determined to prove the practicality of the new aircraft, designed by Professor Blake (Thomas Ross), father of Brad's sweetheart Carol (Jean Parker). Back on solid ground, Brad must vie for Carol's attentions with his own brother, engineer Doug Farrell (Don Castle).

Date of release
1941-06-04
TMDB
4.5 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 8m
Genres
Action, Drama
Director
James P. Hogan

Casting

Interesting facts

Power Dive is a 1941 American film directed by James P. Hogan. The film stars Richard Arlen, Jean Parker and Helen Mack.

Production

Power Dive was the first release by Picture Corp. of America, an independent production company formed in December 1940 headed by William Pine and William C. Thomas, former press agents and then associate producers at Paramount.

Pine and Thomas both worked in publicity—Pine was head of publicity for Paramount and Thomas was his assistant. They teamed with another publicist, Maxwell Shane, who was a writer. They decided to make lower budgeted films that did not have the overhead of the studios.

They talked with Richard Arlen, who had joined Paramount. Arlen became famous with Wings and suggested an aviation film. Arlen owned several planes and ran an aviation school; he offered himself and his aircraft for a movie. Pine and Thomas selected three titles, Power Dive, Forced Landing and Flying Blind, and wrote scripts around them. They went to Paramount and said they had a star and three scripts and asked for a distribution deal.

Power Drive was made in ten days at a cost of $86,000 and earned almost a million dollars. They saved money by shooting on location. Thomas produced the first film while Pine was an associate—he worked for Cecil B. De Mille. All three films cost under $90,000 and returned six times its negative cost. Paramount was so pleased with these results that it offered to finance the duo's films from then on.

Principal photography took place from January 23 to mid-February 1941 with some scenes shot on location at the Metropolitan Airport in Van Nuys, California.

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

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