The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) on Netflix
Approved19572h 15mAdventureBiographyDrama
In 1927, Charles A. "Slim" Lindbergh wants the Orteig Prize, put up for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. A small San Diego manufacturer agrees to build his plane.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.1/109,419 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
On Long Island in May 1927, Charles A. "Slim" Lindbergh waits out a week of rain in a hotel near Roosevelt Field while his friend Frank Mahoney holds reporters off at his door, and he thinks back on his years carrying the mail by air. He wants the Orteig Prize, put up for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris, and he persuades St. Louis backers to finance a stripped-down, single-engine monoplane. When Columbia Aircraft insists on choosing the pilot, that deal falls apart, and Lindbergh turns to Ryan Airlines in San Diego. There Donald Hall works out the design, and the crew races a tight deadline, leaving off a radio and a parachute to save weight. Without an autopilot, Lindbergh expects to stay awake for the whole flight and to navigate by dead reckoning.
Cast
- Frances Allenas Mother from Oklahoma (uncredited)
- Walter Baconas Crowd Member in France (uncredited)
- Gordon Barnesas Reporter (uncredited)
Show all 20 cast
- Jimmy Batesas Farm Boy (uncredited)
- Brandon Beachas Train Passenger (uncredited)
- Eumenio Blancoas Crowd Member in France (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Billy Wilder wanted a writing partner and had not found one, then read a newspaper column on bridge by Colin Goring and saw, printed next to it, a review of one of Wendell Mayes' television plays; that led to Mayes being hired to work on the script.
- Producer Leland Hayward offered the role of Lindbergh to John Kerr, star of Tea and Sympathy, who turned it down; Stewart had been lobbying Warner Bros. executives for the role as early as 1954 and took no salary for it, in return for a share of the gross.
- Stewart was 47 when the film was shot and underwent a strenuous diet and regimen, with his hair bleached blond, to resemble the 25-year-old Lindbergh of 1927; his age was still pointedly an issue in post-production reviews.
- Three replicas of the Spirit of St. Louis were built at a cost of $1.3 million for the filming units stateside, in Europe and in the studio; the second was donated to the San Diego Aerospace Museum and destroyed in 1978 when a fire gutted the Electric Building in Balboa Park.
- Aerial sequences planned with Stewart actually flying one of the replicas over European locales were abandoned because of his schedule, and staged scenes using a mock-up on a sound stage had to suffice; the original 64-day schedule ballooned into a 115-day marathon.
- Test screenings found that people under the age of 40 tended to be unaware of Lindbergh, so Warner sent contract player Tab Hunter, who was popular with teenagers, on a tour of schools and colleges in 12 cities; the film still became one of Warner's biggest financial failures to that point.
