Sole Survivor (1970 film)
| Sole Survivor | |
|---|---|
 Screen capture | |
| Genre |
Drama Fantasy |
| Written by | Guerdon Trueblood |
| Directed by | Paul Stanley |
| Starring |
Vince Edwards Richard Basehart William Shatner |
| Music by | Paul Glass |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Steve Shagan |
| Producer(s) | Wally Burr |
| Cinematography | James Crabe |
| Editor(s) | Renn Reynolds |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Cinema Center 100 Productions |
| Distributor | CBS |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Original release |
|
Sole Survivor is an ABC Movie of the Week starring Richard Basehart, William Shatner, and Vince Edwards. The film, written by Hollywood screenwriter Guerdon Trueblood and directed by Paul Stanley, was first aired on television in 1970. While the film follows the fate of the 6-man crew of a B-25 Mitchell bomber, it is loosely based on the 1958 discovery of the B-24 Liberator bomber Lady Be Good in the Libyan desert. The Lady Be Good and her 9-man crew had disappeared without a trace in 1943, following its first and only combat mission in World War II. The bodies of 8 of the crew were found in 1960.
Plot
While returning from a World War II bombing mission, a United States Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bomber sustains damage from action with German fighters. Without any order to abandon the aircraft, the navigator, Hamner, panics and bails out. The aircraft, now lost due to having no navigator, and the remaining crew overfly their base and continue on for another 300 miles before eventually crash landing in the Libyan desert.
The five remaining crewmen, believing they are still over water, bail out and survive their parachute landings, although one of the crew, Brandy is badly injured. Needing water and desert survival gear, one of the group, Tony, walks to the plane following the heading the plane would have flown, hoping to find the plane and bring back much needed supplies. Unfortunately, when he arrives at the bomber and crawls underneath the tail to escape the sun, the tail, which has been hanging precariously, falls on him, crushing him instantly. The remaining crewmen ultimately die of exposure after several days beneath the relentless African sun. Their ghosts make their way back to the wreckage of the aircraft where they spend the next seventeen years in a type of limbo state, playing baseball and longing for repatriation back to their home country, which can occur only if their bodies are recovered.
The plane is finally spotted by an oil surveying aircraft, which reports the discovery back to the United States Air Force. Seeing the survey plane and realizing that they are soon about to "have visitors", the five remaining crew members' ghosts begin returning the plane to its state at the time of the crash, putting objects and artifacts in their original positions in hopes of convincing their visitors they had stayed with the plane and hopefully inducing them to search for their bodies.
Having survived the crash, Hamner, who had remained in the military after the war and is now an Air Force brigadier general, is asked by investigators Lt. Col. Josef Gronke and Maj. Michael Devlin to accompany their team to the remains of the B-25. Fearing disciplinary action and the end of his military career should the truth of his cowardice be found out, he tries to convince Gronke and Devlin that the entire crew bailed out over the Mediterranean with him and that the pilotless plane somehow flew on by itself. Although the discovery of crewman Gant's harmonica indicates that the crew did not bail out over the sea, the bodies are nowhere to be seen.
Unable to find evidence to the contrary, the team has no choice but to accept Hamner's explanation, though Devlin is convinced that Hamner is lying, knowing first hand the guilt over his own bad judgment when he crashed his military plane in California, killing some school children. Devlin confronts an inebriated Hamner, who finally admits his actions, though he points out (as seen in flashback) that pilot Mac had turned down navigator Hamner's heading to a Nazi occupied landing point, and then believed that the others had probably (and "should have") bailed out rather than flying on in the damaged plane.
When Devlin returns to his tent the ghosts of the crew make their appearance to Hamner, leading him to flee in panic across the desert in a jeep. Followed by the investigators, the chase ends with them arriving at the scene of an abandoned life raft (the crew having abandoned the plane in the darkness and convinced they were still over open water), revealing to the entire team what Hamner has already admitted to Devlin.
The heading to the life raft and an estimate of how long they could survive on foot helps the team find the missing bodies. The ghost of each crewman vanishes as their bodies are recovered, their spirits accompanying their remains back to the United States - the exception being Tony, who had died under the tail of the airplane. The film ends with a solitary Tony at the plane, but also a glimmer of hope as diary is found near Mac's body, mentioning Tony's return to the plane. The team decides to make one final detailed search at the crash site.
Cast
- Vince Edwards as Maj Michael Devlin
- Richard Basehart as Brig Gen Russell Hamner
- William Shatner as Lt Col Josef Gronke
- Lou Antonio as Tony
- Lawrence P. Casey as Gant
- Dennis Cooney as Brandy
- Brad David as Elmo
- Patrick Wayne as Mac (credited as Pat Wayne)
- Alan Caillou as Corey
- Timur Bashtu as Beddo
- Noah Keen as MG Schurm
- Ian Abercrombie as British co-pilot
- David Cannon as Capt Patrick
- John Winston as British pilot
- Julie Bennett as Amanda
- Bart Burns as Older Senator
- Vin Scully as himself (voice of a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game heard on radio)
Production
It was broadcast on 9 January 1970. It was released in Region B/2 in a DVD/Blu-ray dual disk set on March 14, 2016.[1]
Historical background
In 1943, the actual plane - Lady Be Good - failed to find its airbase near the African coast after a bombing raid on Naples. Instead the crew mistakenly flew on hundreds of miles into the desert. This was because the plane's navigation system could not distinguish between a direct or reciprocal bearing contact. The same radio bearing would be returned whether the bomber was inbound or outbound from its base.
Eventually as the B-24's fuel ran out, the nine-man crew bailed out into the Libyan desert. The eight survivors tried to walk to safety; their remains were eventually found in 1960 some 80 to 100 miles north of the wreckage site. The aircraft broke into two pieces upon impact. When it was found in 1958 by an oil surveying team, the bomber remains were well-preserved with edible food and water still on board. Its machine guns and radio were also still in working order.
In the 1960s TV series The Twilight Zone, an episode entitled "King Nine Will Not Return" was also based on the discovery of the "Lady Be Good".
References
- McClendon, Dennis E. (1962). Lady Be Good, Mystery Bomber of World War II. Aero Publishers.