Latecoere 25 3R LV-EAB in the markings of Aeroposta Argentina exhibited in the museum at Buenos Aires Aeroparque in 1975.
One Latécoère 25 was involved in a celebrated incident when it made a forced landing high in the Andes. Hitherto, flights between Buenos Aires and Santiago made a 1,000 km (620 mi) detour to avoid the mountains. On 2 March 1929, while searching for a safe route across the range, a Latécoère 25 piloted by Jean Mermoz was caught in a downdraft and forced down onto a plateau just 300 metres (1,000 ft) across at an altitude of 4,000 metres (12,000 ft). With his mechanic Alexandre Collenot and passenger, Count Henry de La Vaulx, Mermoz spent the next four days repairing and lightening the aircraft and making a clear path from it to the edge of the precipice. He then rolled it off the edge, diving to attain airspeed, and successfully reached Santiago. - WikipediaAntoine de Saint-Exupery was another French aviation pioneer, friend of Mermoz and author.
He wrote Night Flight [1], a best seller in 1931 described as "lyrical" by Wikipedia. A few years later it was made into a movie. After its initial run it was locked away in MGM's vault for 70 years. Antoine, the author, didn't like the movie. Turner Classic Movies finally obtained the rights to show it and broadcast it in 2011. Got all this from the introduction to the movie on Vimeo.
Antoine, being an aviation pioneer, had his own misadventures.
On 30 December 1935, at 2:45 a.m., after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his mechanic-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert. They were attempting to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race (called a raid) and win a prize of 150,000 francs. The crash site is thought to have been near the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.
Both Saint-Exupéry and Prévot miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous, leaving them with no idea of their location. Lost among the sand dunes, their sole supplies were strawberries, ten oranges, a thermos of sweet juice, chocolate, a handful of crackers, and a small ration of wine. The pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They both began to see mirages and experience auditory hallucinations, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives. The near brush with death would figure prominently in his 1939 memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, winner of several awards. Saint-Exupéry's classic novella The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is, in part, a reference to this experience. - WikipediaDavid O. Selznick, producer of Night Flight.
I recognized this name immediately, but after I looked him up I wonder why. He died in 1965 and the only film of his that I know I've seen is Gone With The Wind, and that was 50 years ago.
Clarence Brown, famous as a film director, director of Night Flight.
Brown moved to Universal in 1924, and then to MGM, where he stayed until the mid-1950s. At MGM he was one of the main directors of their female stars–he directed Joan Crawford six times and Greta Garbo seven.Shades of Quentin Tarantino.
He not only made the difficult transition from silent cinema to sound cinema, but thrived there, proving himself to be an "actor's director": listening to his actors, respecting their instincts, and often incorporating their suggestions into scenes. In doing so, Brown created believable, under-played, naturalistic dialogue scenes stripped of melodrama, pulsing with the honest rhythms of real-life conversation. - Wikipedia
[1] I think I inherited a copy of Night Flight, or maybe it was Wind, Sand and Stars, another one of his books. I tried to read it but it was too, I dunno, lyrical, maybe? In any case it wasn't my cup of tea.
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