The Last Flight

The Last Flight (1931)

IMPORTANT! "The Last Flight," excepting for the few opening scenes, IS NOT A WAR PICTURE!

WWI pilots Cary, Shep, Bill, and Francis, traumatized by the devastation of the war, head to Paris instead of home, where they meet the eccentric and wealthy Nikki, who is drawn to Cary. The five friends, tagged by boorish reporter Frink, drink their way from Paris to Lisbon.

Date of release
1931-08-29
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (14)
Runtime
1h 16m
Genres
Drama
Director
William Dieterle

Casting

Interesting facts

The Last Flight is a 1931 American pre-Code ensemble cast film, starring Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler. It was directed by German filmmaker William Dieterle in his debut as an English-language film director.

Production

The film's pre-release titles were Spent Bullets and Single Lady. The novel, Single Lady by John Monk Saunders is based on a series of stories featuring the character "Nikki," which were published in Liberty Weekly (November 15, 1930 – January 17, 1931) as Nikki and Her War Birds.

This was German-born director William Dieterle's first English language picture. Since the late 1920s, he had worked in Hollywood directing several German-language versions of American features. Variety indicates that William Wellman was originally scheduled to direct The Last Flight.

Pre-code files indicate that censors objected to sexual innuendo and skimpy clothing in some scenes in the film. Modern sources add Yola d'Avril and Luis Alberni to the cast.

The aircraft scenes in The Last Flight were taken from The Dawn Patrol (1930).

Elliott Nugent recalled, " We all had a lot of fun making the picture, and it did not occur to me that this was to be my last job as a motionpicture actor."

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

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