Q Planes

Q Planes (1939)

DRAMA OF THE WAR ON SPIES!

In England, an eccentric police inspector, an earnest test pilot and a spunky female reporter team up to solve the mystery of a series of test aircraft which have disappeared without a trace while over the ocean on their maiden flights; unaware, as they are, that a spy ring has been shooting the planes down with a ray machine hidden aboard a salvage vessel which is on hand to haul the downed aircraft aboard, crews and all.

Date of release
1939-02-21
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (41)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Thriller, Mystery
Director
Tim Whelan, Arthur B. Woods

Casting

Interesting facts

Q Planes is a 1939 British comedy spy film starring Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier and Valerie Hobson. Olivier and Richardson were a decade into their fifty-year friendship and were in the process of staging a theatrical version of Othello, with Richardson in the title role and Olivier as Iago, when this film was made.

Production

The film's working title was Foreign Sabotage. Period airports and aircraft including the Airspeed Envoy, de Havilland Dragon Rapide and de Havilland Tiger Moth are featured in the aerial scenes. The Brooklands racetrack, which was also an important airfield, was used as a backdrop for the sequences on the ground.

Written and produced in September 1938, Q Planes was a quick project for Olivier, already bound for America and the filming of Wuthering Heights (1939). Richardson, who had encouraged Olivier to take the role of Heathcliff with his famous advice, "Bit of fame. Good.", was always better at comedy and dominates much of the screen, with a sardonic performance as a spy, either working for Scotland Yard or British Military Intelligence.

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

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