Films Directed by Irvin Willat (Study Guide) - The Air Mail, Wanderer of the Wasteland, the Grim Game, the Cavalier, the False Faces (Paperback)

This is nonfiction commentary. Chapters: The Air Mail, Wanderer of the Wasteland, the Grim Game, the Cavalier, the False Faces. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 18. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Air Mail is a silent film directed by Irvin Willat and starring Warner Baxter, Billie Dove, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Filmed in Death Valley National Park and the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, it was released in the United States on March 16, 1925. To make the film, the movie company, Famous Players-Lasky, traveled by train to Beatty, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Rhyolite, where it set up temporary headquarters on January 10, 1925. Airplanes used in the film arrived from Reno via Tonopah. The filming was completed by the end of January. During the filming, Famous Players-Lasky restored the Bottle House, one of the deteriorating buildings in the ghost town. The plot involves a crook named Russ Kane (Warner Baxter), who gets a job as a pilot in order to steal cargo. However, after making a forced landing at a "Ghost City" in the desert, he falls in love with Alice Rendon (Billie Dove) and decides to become law-abiding. When her father (George Irving) needs medicine, he flies to get it but on the way back is chased by ruffians in other airplanes. As a result, Kane's friend, Sandy (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), parachutes from Kane's plane with the medicine. Meanwhile, escaped prisoners have invaded Alice's home. All is resolved when a sheriff's posse confronts the invaders, Kane destroys the bandit planes, and Sandy becomes a pilot. Reviewer Mordaunt Hall, writing for The New York Times in 1925, said that although Dove and Baxter "deliver creditable performances," the story is "only mildly interesting and often quite tedious." While he thought the scenes of planes taking off from the ground we...http: //booksllc.net/?id=25000302