Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Plot

A brief narration outlines man's first attempts to fly since the Stone Age, seen with footage from the silent film era, and man being represented by a "test pilot" encountering periodic misfortune in his attempts.

In 1910, British newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley forbids his would-be aviatrix daughter, ardent suffragette Patricia, to fly. Richard Mays, a young officer in the Coldstream Guards and Patricia's fiancé, conceives the idea of an air race from London to Paris to advance the cause of British aviation and his career. With Patricia's support, he persuades Lord Rawnsley to sponsor the race as a publicity stunt for his newspaper.

Rawnsley announces the event to the press, and invitations are sent to leading aviators all over the world. Dozens of participants arrive at the airfield at the Brookley Motor Racing Track, where the fliers make practice runs in the days before the race. A wildly disparate international assembly of aviators begins rubbing shoulders with each other: Prussian officer Colonel Manfred von Holstein, who becomes the victim of Frenchman Pierre Dubois' various pranks; the impetuous Italian Count Emilio Ponticelli; the unscrupulous British baronet Sir Percy Ware-Armitage, aided by his bullied servant, Courtney; Japanese naval officer Yamamoto; and the rugged American cowboy Orvil Newton.

As the teams test their aircraft in the days before the race, Newton and Patricia meet and become romantically interested in each other. Mays becomes jealous, sparking a fierce rivalry between Newton and Mays for Patricia's hand. At a celebration in Dover, Patricia convinces Newton to take her flying, and they race back to the airfield, followed by Mays and her father, who are intent on stopping them. Not long after taking off, one of the struts on the plane breaks, and Patricia has to fly while Newton repairs it with his belt. When Newton lands, Rawnsley throws him out of the race. Patricia apologises to Newton, and Rawnsley gives in after she threatens to start an international incident. Meanwhile, insulted by the French team's mockery, Holstein challenges Dubois to a duel. Dubois agrees and opts for gas balloons and blunderbusses. Both balloons and their pilots end up in the filthy waters of the adjacent sewage farm.

At the party the night before the race, Sir Percy sabotages Yamamoto's and Newton's planes, and Rumpelstrosse, the German pilot, is incapacitated by a laxative meant for Yamamoto. After the competitors take off the next day, with Holstein standing in for Rumpelstrosse, Sir Percy's sabotage and technical mishaps hamper the fliers until most of them safely arrive at Dover, their checkpoint before the final flight across the English Channel.

Production

Origins

Director Ken Annakin had been interested in aviation from his early years, when pioneering aviator Sir Alan Cobham took him up in a flight in a biplane. Later in the Second World War, Annakin had served in the RAF when he had begun his career in film documentaries. In 1963, with co-writer Jack Davies, Annakin had been working on an adventure film about transatlantic flights when the producer's bankruptcy aborted the production. Fresh from his role as director of the British exterior segments in The Longest Day (1962), Annakin suggested an event from early aviation to Darryl F. Zanuck, his producer on The Longest Day.

Zanuck financed an epic faithful to the era, with a £100,000 stake, deciding on the name, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines after Elmo Williams, managing director of 20th Century Fox in Europe, told him his wife Lorraine Williams had written an opening for a song that Annakin complained would "seal the fate of the movie":Those magnificent men in their flying machines,They go up, Tiddley up, up,They go down, Tiddley down, down. After being put to music by Ron Goodwin, the "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" song was released as a single in 1965 on the Stateside label (SS 422), together with an accompanying soundtrack album (SL 10136).

An international cast plays the array of contestants, with the film opening with a brief, comic prologue on the history of flight, narrated by James Robertson Justice and featuring American comedian Red Skelton. In a series of silent blackout vignettes that incorporate stock footage of unsuccessful attempts at early aircraft, Skelton depicted a recurring character whose adventures span the centuries. The early aviation history sequence that begins the film is followed by a whimsical animated opening credit sequence drawn by caricaturist Ronald Searle, accompanied by the title song.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines ... concludes with an epilogue in a fogbound 1960s London airport when cancellation of flights to Paris is announced. The narrator remarks that today a jet makes the trip in seven minutes, but "it can take longer". One frustrated passenger (Skelton, again) starts wing-flapping motions with his arms, and the scene morphs into the animation from the title sequence for the closing credits. This was Skelton's final feature-film appearance; he was in Europe filming the 1964–65 season of his television series, The Red Skelton Show.

Casting

20th Century Fox contract star Stuart Whitman, the American lead, was selected over the first choice, Dick Van Dyke, whose agents never contacted him about the offer. Irina Demick was rumoured to be romantically involved with Darryl F. Zanuck, who had campaigned for her casting. Jean-Pierre Cassel was cast as the French pilot Pierre Dubois, his first role in an English-language film. Character actor Michael Trubshawe and David Niven served together in the Highland Light Infantry during the Second World War; they made it a point to refer to uncredited characters in their films as "Trubshawe" or "Niven" as an inside joke.

Japanese actor Yūjirō Ishihara was dubbed by James Villiers due to his accent.

Locations

The film used period-accurate, life-sized working aeroplane models and replicas to create an early-20th-century airfield, the Brookley Motor Racing Track (fashioned after Brooklands, where early automotive racing and aviators shared the facilities for testing). All of Brookley's associated trappings of structures, aircraft, and vehicles (including a rare 1907 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, subsequently estimated to be worth US$50 million) were part of the exterior set at Booker Airfield, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England.

The completed set featured a windmill as a lookout tower, as well as serving as a restaurant (the "Old Mill Cafe"). A circular, banked track was also built and featured in a runaway motorcycle sequence in the film. In addition, the field adjacent to the windmill was used as the location for a number of aerial close-up shots of the pilots. Hangars were constructed in rows, bearing the names of real and fictional manufacturers: A.V. Roe & Co., Bristol: The British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, Humber, three Sopwith hangars, Vickers, and Ware-Armitage Manufacturing Co (a British in-joke, as Armitage Ware was the UK's largest manufacturer of toilets and urinals). A grandstand was added for spectators.

When the production was unable to obtain rights to film main sequences over Paris, models of the aircraft and a miniature Parisian set played a prominent role in sequences depicting Paris. A mock-up of Calais was also constructed. Interior and studio sets at Pinewood Studios were used for bluescreen and special effects, while exterior and interior footage of Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley)'s Manor House were shot at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. Other principal photography used location shooting in Kent at Dover Castle, along with the White Cliffs of Dover and Dover beach. In the scene where the aircraft start near Dover to pursue the race, modern ferries were visible in one harbour.

The location where Sir Percy's aircraft lands on a train is the now-closed line from Bedford to Hitchin. The tunnel into which they fly is the Old Warden Tunnel near the village of the same name in Bedfordshire; the tunnel had only recently been closed, and in the panning shot through the railway cutting, the cooling towers of the now-demolished Goldington Power Station can be seen. The locomotive is former Highland Railway Jones Goods Class No 103. About 1910, French Railways built duplicates of a Highland Railway Class "The Castles" which were a passenger version of the Jones Goods.

Principal photography

The film was photographed in 65 mm Todd-AO (which produces a 70 mm print once the sound tracks are added) by Christopher Challis. The head technical consultant during planning was Air Commodore Allen H. Wheeler from the Royal Air Force. Wheeler had previously restored a 1910-era Blériot with his son, and provided invaluable assistance in the restoration and recreation of period aircraft for the film.

The camera platforms included a modified Citroën sedan, camera trucks, helicopters, and a flying rig constructed by Dick Parker. Parker had built it for model sequences in Strategic Air Command (1955). The rig consisted of two construction cranes and a hydraulically operated device to tilt and position a model, along with 200 ft (61 m) of cables. Parker's rig allowed actors to sit inside full-scale models suspended 50 ft (15 m) above the ground, yet provide safety and realism for staged flying sequences, with the sky realistically in the background. A further hydraulic platform did away with matte shots of aircraft in flight. The platform was large enough to mount an aircraft and Parker or stunt pilots could manipulate its controls for realistic bluescreen sequences. Composite photography was used when scenes called for difficult shots; these were completed at Pinewood Studios. Some shots were created with rudimentary cockpits and noses grafted to an Alouette helicopter. One scene over Paris was staged with small models when Paris refused an overflight. However, for the majority of flying scenes, full-scale flying aircraft were employed.

Editor Gordon Stone died in a car crash during post production and had to be replaced by Anne Cotes.

Title

At 85 characters, Those Magnificent Men ... was the longest-titled film to be nominated for an Academy Award until the 2021 nominations of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Most cinemas abbreviated the full title, and it was eventually re-released with the shorter title.

Aircraft

The film includes reproductions of 1910-era aircraft, including a triplane, monoplanes, biplanes, and Horatio Phillips's 20-winged multiplane from 1904. Wheeler insisted on authentic materials, but allowed the use of modern engines and modifications necessary to ensure safety. Of 20 types built in 1964 at £5,000 each, six could fly, flown by six stunt pilots and maintained by 14 mechanics. The race take-off scene where seven aircraft are in the air at once included a composite addition of one aircraft. Flying conditions were monitored carefully, with aerial scenes filmed before 10 am or in early evening when the air was least turbulent, as the replicas, true to the originals, were flimsy, and control, especially in the lateral plane, tended to be marginal. When weather conditions were poor, interiors or other incidental sequences were shot, instead. Wheeler eventually served not only as the technical adviser, but also as the aerial supervisor throughout the production, and later wrote a comprehensive background account of the film and the replicas that were constructed to portray period aircraft.

These competitors were listed (as seen in the list onscreen 1 hour and 31 minutes in):

Richard Mays: Antoinette IV (Aircraft number 8: flying replica)

Sir Percy Ware-Armitage: Avro Triplane IV (Aircraft number 12: flying replica)

Orvil Newton: Bristol Boxkite, nicknamed "The Phoenix Flyer" and inaccurately referred to as a Curtiss (Aircraft number 7: flying replica)

Lieutenant Parsons: Picat Dubreuil nicknamed "HMS Victory" (Aircraft number 4)

Harry Popperwell: Dixon Nipper "Little Fiddler" (Aircraft number 5)

Colonel Manfred von Holstein and Captain Rumpelstrosse: Eardley Billing Tractor Biplane (Aircraft number 11: flying replica)

Mr Wallace: Edwards Rhomboidal (Aircraft number 14)

Reception

Critical

Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ... had its Royal World Premiere on 3 June 1965 at the Astoria Theatre in the West End of London in the presence of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Contemporary reviews judged Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ... as "good fun." In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther thought it "a funny picture, highly colorful, and it does move". Variety felt similarly: "As fanciful and nostalgic a piece of clever picture-making as has hit the screen in recent years, this backward look into the pioneer days of aviation, when most planes were built with spit and bailing wire, is a warming entertainment experience." When the film turned up on television for the first time in 1969, TV Guide summed up most critical reviews: "Good, clean fun, with fast and furious action, good cinematography, crisp dialogue, wonderful planes, and a host of some of the funniest people in movies in the cast."

In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter listed Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines as having the best stunts of 1965.

Box office

At over two hours, Those Magnificent Men In their Flying Machines ... was treated as a major production, one of three full-length 70 mm Todd-AO Fox releases in 1965 with an intermission and musical interlude part of the original screenings. The film was initially an exclusive roadshow presentation where customers needed reserved seats purchased ahead of time. It was an immediate box-office success, out-grossing the similar car-race comedy The Great Race (1965). It stood up well against the slightly earlier It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $15,300,000 in worldwide rentals to break even and made $29,950,000. In the United States, the film earned $14,000,000 in rentals, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 1965. By September 1970, it had earned Fox an estimated profit of $10,683,000.

Sequel

The success of the film prompted Annakin to write (again with Jack Davies) and direct another race film, Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969), this time involving vintage cars, with the story set around the Monte Carlo Rally. Ron Goodwin composed the music for both films.