Post by london777 on Apr 19, 2017 22:44:32 GMT
Great call on Calleia in Five Came Back.
On looking up Five Came Back I saw a note that the plane involved was a Capelis XC-12. Now it is over sixty years since I was a keen plane-spotter, but I know I had never heard of that type or that company. Following up on Wikipedia I found it had an interesting history.
It was the designer's only project and its construction was funded by Greek restaurateurs (and all my life I have been spelling that word with an "n"). Only one prototype was built and it was found to be unsafe. It never saw service but was sold as a prop to RKO. It appeared in around a dozen movies, and a model built for flying sequences in a further eight. You could say that having failed in its primary mission it found redemption helping to entertain folks.
John Farrow also directed the remake 17 years later. How often does that happen?
I know Leo McCarey directed both Love Affair (1939) and its remake An Affair to Remember (1957). Any other examples?