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The Flight of the Phoenix Overview:

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) was a Adventure - Drama Film directed by Robert Aldrich and produced by Robert Aldrich and Walter Blake.

Academy Awards 1965 --- Ceremony Number 38 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best Supporting ActorIan BannenNominated
Best Film EditingMichael LucianoNominated
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The Flight of the Phoenix BlogHub Articles:

"The Flight of the Phoenix" Soars

By Rick29 on Sep 14, 2013 From Classic Film & TV Cafe

Director Robert Aldrich bookends The Flight of the Phoenix with a wild airplane crash and an exhilarating climax. But it’s the drama in-between that makes the film so engrossing: the friction among the survivors, their audacious plan to reach civilization again, and a brilliant plot twist tha... Read full article

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The Flight of the Phoenix Quotes:

Frank Towns: I've lost five men, Lew. Gabriel in there, he's on the way, that'll be six. Are you asking me to try to kill the rest of them trying to get a deathtrap off the ground. I don't know... I don't know, Lew. It won't work... it just can't work.
Lew Moran: All right, then, it can't. Maybe it can't and we'll all be killed. But if there's just one chance in a thousand that he's got something, boy, I'd rather take it than just sit around here waiting to die.
Lew Moran: [of an alternate destination] Three stinkin' mud huts and a poisoned well. That's not a place, it's a disease.
Lew Moran: I don't know what your practical navigation's like, but mine's not bad. I wouldn't march ten paces from here. In the daytime it's hitting a hundred and twenty in the shade, and out there, there is no shade.
Lew Moran: Maybe Frank Towns, who's flown every crate they've ever built and could fly in and out of a tennis court if he had to, maybe that great hell-for-leather trailblazer's nothing more than a back number now. And maybe men like Dorfmann can build machines that can do Frank Towns's job for him, and do it better
Lew Moran: You told Towns he was behaving as if stupidity was a virtue. If he's making it into a virtue, YOU'RE MAKING IT INTO A BLOODY SCIENCE!
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The Flight of the Phoenix Facts
At least one of the aircraft used once flew for the US Marine Corps. The passenger information board inside the fuselage shows VMR-253, a USMC transport squadron, and R4Q-1, the military type designation, and the military serial, BuNo, 126580.
The Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 was designed by Otto Timm and built by Tallmantz Aviation Inc. for the film. It had the following characteristics:
  • Length: 45'
  • Wingspan: 42'
  • Engine: a like-new Pratt & Whitney R-1340 nine cylinder radial engine of 650 hp, taken from a T-6, as were the wheels and various other parts.
  • Wings: wing panels taken from a T-11 (civilian conversion of an AT-11 which is a Beechcraft 18 type )
  • The apparent wing, tail, and undercarriage wire bracing was made out of clothesline, and was intentionally made to look flimsy.
  • The fuselage and empennage were all hand-built from scratch - plywood over a wood frame.
  • The cockpit was shallow and makeshift. The pilot sat down. Another person stood behind the pilot and was strapped to a stringer.

Robert Aldrich wanted Barrie Chase to do her exotic dance topless, but she refused.
Director Robert Aldrich's son (William Aldrich) and son-in-law (Peter Bravos) are the first two casualties in the film, killed by falling cargo during the opening credits as the disabled plane is descending for its crash-landing.
The plane they leave on at the end of the film was to be a C-82 Boom. The stunt of taking off was too dangerous, so legendary stunt pilot Paul Mantz was asked to merely come in low, run his landing gear along the ground, then take off again, simulating a take-off. On the second take the plane crashed and was destroyed, killing Mantz. As all main footage had already been shot, a North American O-47A observation plane from the Air Museum was substituted for the remaining close-ups.
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