Relevant Film Previews Written by or About Frank “Spig” Wead, the Aviation Pioneer & Hollywood Screenwriter Who Wrote “Beyond the Blue Sky”, Which Evolved into “Dive Bomber”
For further information, see: www.theerrolflynnblog.com…
1938 – Test Pilot
1941 – Dive Bomber
1951 – The Wings of Eagles
— Tim
Frank “Spig” Wead: The Legend Behind Dive Bomber
From “The Moguls and the Dictators: Hollywood and the Coming of World War II”
Further information and research assistance is available from the following sources:
From Gale CenGage Primary Resource Research Libraries:
From “Warner Brothers Screenplays, 1930-1950”
Screenplay: Frank Wead, Robert Buckner.
Dive Bomber.
(1941)
Producer: Hal B. Wallis; Director: Michael Curtiz; Principal Cast: Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray; Source: Original story, “Beyond the Blue Sky,” by Frank Wead; Script: Treatment. Beyond the Blue Sky, by Frank Wead. ND. 102 pp. [100/6]; Final. By Wead and Robert Buckner. 11 Mar. with revisions to 30 Apr. 1941. c 145 pp. [101/2].
Reel: 49
From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences:
§ Manuscripts Biography/History
The Frank “Spig” Wead papers span the years 1851-1994 (bulk 1929-1947) and encompass 5.1 linear feet. The collection consists of production files, stage files, subject files, photographs, and scrapbook pages. The production files include scripts, clippings, and reviews for films on which Wead served as a writer. Of interest are the files for the stage production and film version of “Ceiling Zero” (1936). Other notable production files include those for “Dirigible” (1931) and “The Wings of Eagles” (1957), the latter based on Wead’s life. The subject files contain information on Wead’s naval career and family genealogy, as well as correspondence. There is no correspondence from John Ford, who directed “The Wings of Eagles.” The collection also includes unpublished aviation-related manuscripts by Wead.
News report of the accident that changed Frank Wead’s life, famously depicted in “On Wings of Eagles”, with John Wayne & Maureen O’Hara:
“Lieut. Frank Wead Slips on Stairway of Coronado Home; Operated Upon. Lieut. Frank Wead, one of the best known aviators in the naval service, was operated on for a fractured neck at the naval hospital yesterday morning. Wead sustained the injury which came near costing his life when he slipped and fell from the top of the stairway of his home in Coronado late Wednesday night. The aviator had just moved into the home and was unfamiliar with the staircase. Physicians, following the operation yesterday, said that Wead will recover but it is doubtful if he will be able to fly again. Wead’s outstanding exploit since entering the naval flying corps was his flight against British pilots in the international seaplane races off the Isle of Wight in 1923, when American naval fliers took all the honors.”
— Tim
Errol with the Stars & Angels
Scroll down to the fifth clip, from the WPA Film Library, titled “Celebs at PCL Baseball Game”.
See Errol “playing baseball”, looking better at the plate than DiMaggio.*
Despite Errol’s best efforts and magnificent batting stance, this is just not cricket.
* Joltin’ Joe’s wife once wowed the crowd at this very same venue, long gone Gilmore Field,along with one of EF’s best friends, the great Mickey Rooney.
** It’s a close call, but Chuck Connors may have been in the pre-game show and playing for the Angels at this event with Errol, before he himself became a Hollywood star of the cinematic type, though not nearly as incandescent as either Errol or Marilyn.
— Tim
Star Wars Took Charge of Errol’s Elephants
We all know the Star Wars movies are a feast for the eyeballs, but when you think about it, they are also a special treat for the ears, too. According to Mentalfloss, legendary sound designer Ben Burtt got his star on Star Wars fresh out of the University of Southern California’s film school and “was tasked with coming up with a completely new and organic soundscape for the movie.”
Burtt created Chewbacca’s iconic voice by blending the vocalizations of a bear, a lion, a walrus and a badger. The beloved pint-sized droid R2-D2’s endearing chirps were made using loops on a synthesizer matched with beeps and boops modelled after baby coos performed by Burtt. The infamous deep breathing of the evil Darth Vader was created by putting a microphone inside the regulator on a scuba tank.
But our favourite iconic sound, the swooshing shriek of the film’s TIE fighter engines, are — brace yourselves for a shock — the sound of an elephant call mixed with the sounds of a car driving on wet pavement. According to the blog Unidentified Sound Object, Lucas had seen a documentary about the Battle of Stalingrad and told Burtt the sound of the Nazi rockets would make a great laser-gun noise.
That’s when Burtt stumbled on recordings of some stampeding elephants from an old Errol Flynn movie, which he mixed with recordings of cars speeding through puddles in a rainstorm. He slipped the sound in for a screening at the last moment, and everyone went wild. “I’d really put it in because I had no other alternative, but it got great reviews, so naturally it became the sound of the TIE fighters,” the sound legend said.
— Tim
Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Qld. June 18, 1930
OFF TO NEW GUINEA.
____________
FOUR ADVENTURERS.
_______
The Sirocco Calls In.
_______
ONE TIME CRACK YACHT.
Long, narrow-waisted, black-hulled,with towering stick scowing above the wharf decking, but bearing little signs of the buffeting she has received on her voyage, the Sirocco, late of Royal Sydney Yacht Club, now bound for New Guinea and the beche de mer and trochus shell, nine days up from Sydney, lies at the old town wharf.
Fifty years old, but as staunch as the day she slipped into the water for the first time at the Circular Quay slips, the Sirocco will know a different atmosphere now from the one she has been accustomed to so long. Her youthful crew know where they are going. First there is Captain Errol Flynn, late Cambridge undergrad, now planter on a lonely island 40 miles from mysterious Madang, the island of the “White Kanakas,” where he dispenses high and low justice to his 40 odd natives and bears his share of the white man’s burden.
“This is our navigator,” said Captain Errol Flynn, from under his blankets when a “Bulletin” man stepped aboard. “You’ll have to excuse me. Just a touch of malaria. But meet the crew.” Mr. T. Adams, another young Englishman, is the navigator. Close clipped moustache, accent, and physique brand him unmistakably the product of University. Mr. C. Burt, another member of the crew, is also an Englishman, and Australia is represented by Mr. Rex Long-Innes, son of Judge Long-Innes, who is going forth with the others to seek his fortune in the South Seas.
When they talked it was mostly about their argosy.
‘”She’s old, but she’s good,” says the skipper, with pride in his voice, and he told the “Bulletin” man how she logged 14 for three hours in a howling south-easter that piled them up in Coff’s Harbour with a foot of water in the cabin.
“Forty-four feet over all, with a Swedish oil engine, we’re not worrying about the weather,” they add. Already they have had their share of adventure on the trip. They made their names and took their baptismswhen they crossed the bars in northern New South Wales in howling gales. They went ashore in Great Sandy Straits, and had more than their share of rough weather but builders builded well 50 years ago, and lean-waisted as she is the Sirocco has ten tons of lead under her keel.
In the cabin, where the captain lies with malaria, where the “crew” sit round in shorts, and where two business-like rifles are fast in clips above the bunks, one might have thought yesterday that the Sirocco had reached to sea to seek their fortunes.
— Tim
