Men Against the Sky

Men Against the Sky (1940)

A draftswoman, the sister of an aging, alcoholic pilot, secretly uses her brother's ideas to solve design problems for an experimental military plane in an attempt to save the company and salvage her brother's reputation.

Date of release
1940-09-06
TMDB
4.6 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 15m
Genres
Drama
Director
Leslie Goodwins

Casting

Interesting facts

Men Against the Sky is a 1940 drama starring Richard Dix, Kent Taylor, Edmund Lowe and Wendy Barrie. Directed by Leslie Goodwins, it is based on a story by John Twist about the challenges of aircraft development and the dangers of test piloting in the period before World War II.

Production

Novelist Nathanael West was involved in a number of B films in this period, including Men Against the Sky, but recognition of his work was short-lived. Along with his wife Eileen, he was killed in a car crash on December 22, 1940, when West (a notoriously bad driver) ran a stop sign in Southern California. Principal photography for Men Against the Sky took place from late May to June 15, 1940.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucille Ball, considered Hollywood's B movie queen, was to play the female lead before Wendy Barrie came on board. Paul Mantz, noted movie stunt pilot, was the aviation consultant. Models were used to simulate accidents, but takeoff and in-flight footage of the experimental Hughes H-1 Racer taken during its trials was used for realism as a substitute for the McLean test aircraft.

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

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