Across the Atlantic

Across the Atlantic
Film Poster
Directed by	Howard Bretherton
Written by	Harvey Gates
Story by	John Ransom
Starring	Monte Blue
Cinematography	Barney McGill
Production company	Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	February 25, 1928 (1928-02-25) (US)
Running time	60 minutes; 7 reels
Country	United States
Languages	Sound (Synchronized) (English Intertitles)

Across the Atlantic is a 1928 lost^[1] American synchronized sound romantic drama produced and distributed by Warner Bros. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-disc Vitaphone process. Influenced by the "Lindy craze", generated by Charles Lindbergh's famous ocean crossing flight, Across the Atlantic was rushed into production.^[2]

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Plot

Two brothers, Hugh (Monte Blue) and Dan Clayton (Robert Ober), love their father's secretary, Phyllis Jones (Edna Murphy). She chooses Hugh, and they marry before he goes to war as a pilot. Shot down in France, he loses his memory and becomes a drifter. Eight years later, Phyllis, resigned to her fate, promises to marry Dan after a visit to the place in France where Hugh was last seen.

Meanwhile, Hugh, back in America, is working for his father (Burr McIntosh) at the Clayton aircraft company. While he is test-flying an aircraft, his memory returns. He crashes and is taken to an asylum because of his insistence that he is John Clayton's son.

Hugh escapes the asylum, steals an experimental trans-Atlantic aircraft, and flies it to Paris to be reunited with his family.

Cast

Monte Blue as Hugh Clayton
Edna Murphy as Phyllis Jones
Burr McIntosh as John Clayton
Robert Ober as Dan Clayton
Irene Rich as unknown role

Production

Aviation historian Michael Paris in From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun: Aviation, Nationalism, and Popular Cinema (1995) described the frenzy of trying to woo Lindbergh to do a film. Hollywood resorted to a spate of aviation-related features including Publicity Madness (1927), Flying Romeos (1928) and A Hero for a Night, even the Walt Disney Studios' Plane Crazy (1928), all comedy spoofs of the Lindbergh transatlantic flight.^[2]^[N 1]

Across the Atlantic was a silent film but Warner Bros. added the Vitaphone process with musical score and sound effects, but no dialogue.^[4]

Reception

H. Hugh Wynne in The Motion Picture Stunt Pilots and Hollywood's Classic Aviation Movies (1987) wrote "Lindbergh's flight influenced the story of 'Across the Atlantic'."^[3]

References

Notes

^ Lindbergh was right in refusing Hollywood entries as most of the proposals were "slapstick" comedies.^[3]

Citations

^ "Catalog: 'Across the Atlantic'." The Library of Congress/FIAF American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog, 2019. Retrieved: July 4, 2019.
^ ^a ^b Paris 1995, p. 58.
^ ^a ^b Wynne 1987, p. 59.
^ White Munden 1997, p. 4.

Bibliography

Paris, Michael. From the Wright Brothers to Top Gun: Aviation, Nationalism, and Popular Cinema. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-7190-4074-0.
White Munden, Kenneth, ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1921–1930. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-52020-969-5.
Wynne, H. Hugh. The Motion Picture Stunt Pilots and Hollywood's Classic Aviation Movies. Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1987. ISBN 978-0-93312-685-5.