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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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Quotes from The Flight of the Phoenix:

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
Frank Towns: If you hadn't made a career out of being a drunk you might not have been a second-rate navigator in a firth-rate outfit. And if you'd not stayed in your bunk to kill that last bottle, maybe you might have checked that engineer's report on the radio and we might not be here now. All right!
Frank Towns: Your theory's fine, but you get this mister... that engine's rated at two thousand horsepower and if I was ever fool enough to let it get started up it'd shake your patched-up pile of junk into a thousand pieces, and cut us up into mincemeat with the propeller.
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: 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.
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Facts from The Flight of the Phoenix
Dummies on the wings were found to blank the control surfaces, so silhouettes of the wing-passengers were used instead.
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.
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.

Three Fairchild C-82 Packet cargo planes were required for filming and were located at Long Beach Airport, CA. They were all operated by Steward-Davis Inc., and were registered as N6887C, N4833V and N53228.
Robert Aldrich wanted Barrie Chase to do her exotic dance topless, but she refused.
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