Flight
About Flight
Lefty Phelps loses a college football game by running the wrong way after a tackle. Marine sergeant Panama Williams, who watched, later trains him at Pensacola. Lefty crashes on his first solo, is washed out, and goes to Nicaragua as Panama’s mechanic when the squadron is sent after General Lobo. Both men want the nurse Elinor Murray. After Steve Roberts’s plane is shot down in a swamp, Panama flies in alone, and Lefty brings the wounded sergeant back and marries Elinor.
Cast & crew
More about Flight
Frank Capra directed. Ralph Graves wrote the story and Capra the dialogue, with Howard J. Green uncredited. Harry Cohn produced. The picture is dedicated to the Marine Corps, which supplied people and bases. It opened in New York on 13 September 1929. It is a pre-Code sound film.
Themes
Background
The squadron is sent to Nicaragua against a bandit general, the setting Columbia used for a 1929 Marine picture.
Making
The Marines let Columbia use Pensacola, San Diego, and North Island. The Nicaragua fighting was staged with that help.
Look
Elmer Dyer shot the flying. Joseph Walker and Paul Perry are the other cameramen, including the Pensacola training.
Music
Sound film. Capra wrote the dialogue to Graves’s story.
Notes
- Jack Holt plays Panama Williams. Ralph Graves plays Lefty. Lila Lee plays Elinor. Alan Roscoe, Harold Goodwin, and Walter Brennan are in the cast.
- Major Rowell washes Lefty out. General Lobo is the bandit the squadron is sent to fight.
- On the way home in a new car, Lefty pulls away in reverse.
- Gene Milford edited.
- Joseph Walker, Paul Perry, and Elmer Dyer are the cameramen. Dyer shot the aerial work.
Scenes
- Lefty runs the wrong way and loses the game.
- Roberts’s plane is shot down in the swamp.
- Lefty drives the new car off in reverse after he marries Elinor.
