From the days of silent films to the massive studio hits of today, aviation has played a big part in our on-screen entertainment. With this in mind, we will look back at some movies and television shows that helped bring aviation to the small and big screen.
The first aviation-themed film to win an Oscar for best picture was a 1927 silent movie called "Wings." The film was about World War One fighter pilots competing over the affections of a woman played by Clara Bow. While he only played a small role in the movie, it helped launch Gary Cooper to stardom.
Various genres from the 1930s through the 1950s featured airplanes
The next time aircraft were featured in a major production was the 1933 movie King Kong; when the ape climbed the Empire State Building in New York, Curtiss F8C Helldiver fighter-biplane was seen trying to kill him.
As fledging airlines carrying mail began carrying passengers, they soon played a more significant part in movies. In the 1942 movie Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, a mock-up of a Lockheed Model 12 symbolizes Bergman's escape to the safety of Lisbon.
Of all postwar films, Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest was one of the most exciting to feature a plane. In the movie, the hero, played by Cary Grant, gets off a bus in the middle of nowhere and is immediately attacked by a crop duster.
Aircraft became increasingly popular for films during the 1960s
By the late 1960s, air travel was no longer reserved for the wealthy, and as more people began to fly, filmmakers and tv producers began featuring more planes. Arthur Hailey's 1968 air disaster–drama book was made into a film starring Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.
As you will know, the 1970s was a prolific decade for aircraft hijackings which led to several films that included Raid on Entebbe, Black Sunday, and Skyjacked. The first mega-hit movie based on aviation was Paramount Pictures' film about ace fighter pilots called "Top Gun." The 1990s saw the release of two epic aviation films, "Air Force One" starring Harrison Ford, and "Conair" starring Nicolas Cage.
The most successful aviation-based television show was the comedy Wings, which ran for eight seasons in the 1990s. Created by the same writers who created Cheers and Frazier Wings, the airline features two small fictional airlines called "Sandpiper" and "Aeromass." Supposedly located at a small airfield in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the show tells how the two airlines competed for passengers.
From 2000 to today
The first big aviation hit of the 2000s was Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, a movie about Howard Hughes that stared Leonardo DiCaprio in the leading role.
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson River shortly after taking off from LaGuardia Airport (LGA). Unable to return to the airport, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed the Airbus A320 on the river. A movie about the incident was released in 2016, starring Tom Hanks as the heroic captain. In 2022 a sequel to Top Gun called "TopGun: Maverick" was released and was not surprisingly an instant hit. What comes next? We will have to wait and see.