The first-ever feature-length in-flight movie, that is.
The Big Picture
- In-flight entertainment is becoming obsolete as passengers prefer to watch their own movies on personal devices.
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The Lost World
is the first-ever feature-length in-flight movie, debuting in 1925. - The in-flight movie experience has evolved over time, from live orchestras and converted military planes to seatback screens and personal devices.
In-flight entertainment is slowly but surely on its way out, with people opting to download and watch their own movie selections on their own devices. Major U.S. airlines like American Airlines, United Airlines, and Alaska Air have already removed seatback screens from their aircraft, and the benefits of doing so — less maintenance, thinner seats, and lighter planes, among others — are evidence that most other airlines will follow suit if they haven’t already done so. What’s funny is that while the practice of showing films on flights may be going the way of the dinosaur, films on flights actually began with the dinosaur. To be more precise, the dinosaurs found in the iconic 1925 film The Lost World.
The Lost World
The first film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic novel about a land where prehistoric creatures still roam.
- Actors
- Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Lloyd Hughes
- Director
- Harry O. Hoyt
- Run Time
- 106 mins
- Release Date
- February 2, 1925
- Studio
- First National Pictures
‘The Lost World’ Is the First Feature-Length In-Flight Movie
The Lost World is an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s 1912 novel of the same name and is perhaps best known for its historic stop-motion animation that brought the monsters of Doyle’s novel to vivid life, thanks to special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien. In it, Paula (Bessie Love) brings the journal of her missing explorer father to Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery), who is convinced by its contents that dinosaurs still exist. Ridiculed, Challenger assembles a group to find Paula’s father and, in turn, bring back evidence of his bold claim. The group arrives at a South American plateau and sets up camp. It doesn’t take long before the primitive beasts of the area make their presence known, with the group encountering an apeman, a pteranodon, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, an allosaurus, and a triceratops. A volcano eruption forces the group to flee, but not empty-handed: Challenger manages to bring a brontosaurus back to London. Great idea if you want to prove you’re not crazy, bad idea if said beast escapes and wreaks havoc in London. Which it does. The film ends with the brontosaurus swimming down the Thames, to Challenger’s dismay.
13 Must-Watch Dinosaur Movies That Aren’t ‘Jurassic Park’
There’s a huge world of dino movies out there!
Now, The Lost World‘s status as the first in-flight movie comes with a caveat: it is the first feature-length in-flight movie. Technically, the title of the very first belongs to a silent short extolling the virtues of Chicago, appropriately titled Howdy Chicago!, that was aired for 11 passengers on an Aeromarine Airways Model 75 amphibian plane as it circled the city in August 1921. It would be another four years until The Lost World‘s history-making debut on board an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris on April 6, 1925, with signs on the aircraft heralding the moment. The 12 people on board watched as staff brought the giant reels and other equipment on board, caught for posterity on film, and ready to play on the large projection screen at the front of the cabin. Playing the film wasn’t a problem, but other logistics had to be figured out. The music that accompanied the film was played by a live Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, sent to the plane by radio from the Berlin Broadcasting Station to a single loudspeaker on board the plane. It was also a daytime flight, so for the passengers to see the projection, the pilot flew through the dense clouds so that the interior of the aircraft would be darker.
The In-Flight Movie Goes From Novelty to Universal Success
The Lost World‘s debut in the sky went off without a hitch but certainly had the potential to be disastrous. Literally. The plane was a converted WWI bomber, the Handley-Page O 400, made of wood and lined with fabric. Not a problem normally, but since film stock of the period was made of nitrate — highly flammable nitrate — it wouldn’t have taken much for the film to go up in flames, taking the plane and passengers with it. Safety wasn’t necessarily first and foremost, though, as The Lost World screening and others that would follow were gimmicks to sell tickets, not an altruistic move to entertain passengers. One such gimmick, according to Key.Aero, had Pan Am promoting its New York to London route in 1948 by advertising that John Ford‘s Stagecoach would be shown on the flight, and upped the spectacle of it by having a team of horses pull a stagecoach up to the Boeing Stratocruiser to deliver the 16mm print of the movie.
There was at least one serious attempt at making the in-flight movie part of the luxury flying experience: the Bristol Brabazon. The prototype plane was built in 1949, with a fuselage wider than that of a 747. Although it could have fit 300 passengers comfortably, the Brabazon was designed for the upper class and had only 39 seats. There was a separate dining room, a lounge, a cocktail bar, and, yes, a theater at the back with 23 seats. Nice, yes, but not economical by any stretch, and only one was ever built. In 1961, David Flexer revolutionized the in-flight movie experience by creating a lightweight, compact, and easy-to-use projector, a passion project which, according to the Telegraph, was four years and one million dollars in the making. The projector met FAA approval, and Trans World Airlines committed to using Flexer’s projector on regularly scheduled flights. The new era began with a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles on July 19, 1961, with By Love Possessed, a drama starring Lana Turner and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. The innovation would end up posing new problems, as frequent travelers ended up switching reservations to avoid seeing the same movie twice, and the lack of variety and family-appropriate fare became a common concern among others. That lack of variety would famously plague Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in Season 8 of Seinfeld when her in-flight movie is revealed to be the movie she hates, The English Patient.
Technological advances in screens and media have continued to change the dynamic of the in-flight movie ever since, with the seatback screen, introduced in 1988, being the most recognizable means of in-flight viewing. It’s a far cry from the days when dinosaurs roamed the screen in a converted WWII bomber. A Lost World, indeed.
The Lost World is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEO
This article was originally published on collider.com