Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies, 1912 - 2012

Newly revised and updated 2nd Edition.

Airplanes and motion pictures were born within a year of one another. After the first century, they both rose from uncertain infancy through growing adolescence to robust maturity. While Hollywood's actors and directors learned the art of making movies, the aircraft industry and pilots learned how to conquer the sky. In peace and war, prosperity and depression, airplanes and motion pictures have become a part of American culture; the relationship was symbiotic. While airplane movies helped sell box office tickets, the movies helped promote aviation.

In Flying on Film, movie fans and aviation buffs can find their common bond. From wooden biplanes to armadas of warplanes, from majestic China Clippers to huge 747s, from slow monoplanes to swift jets, the movies told the story of the airplane. William A. Wellman's Academy Award-winning masterpiece, Wings (1927), starring Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers, was the first of the breed, the standard to be emulated.

Flying on Film is the history behind the films. Veterans and aviators from past and present tell the real story of one of the most fascinating genres of motion pictures in Hollywood.

About the Author: Mark Carlson is an aviation historian, writer, classic film buff, and student of filmmaking. He has written articles for several national aviation magazines and organizations. As a docent and researcher at the San Diego Air & Space Museum and member of many aviation-related organizations, Carlson has gained an insight into the people who lived the world of airplanes and the movies. He and his wife live in San Diego.

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