Movies with Models

[Tone]

I wondered why Abegnale was shown soaking the decals off completed models in the bath tub when he could've used them just from the sheets initially.

Yes - G Lopez' TV show shows some interesting plane models in the workplace. The new Pan Am TV show set in 1963 sometimes shows a recent model of a Stratocruiser, seen in an airport display, but I've yet to see a "period" 707 model - perhaps I'm not looking hard enough?

[Tone]

Last night I was watching an episode of The Twilight Zone called "Night of the Meek." You can briefly see Santa, played by Art Carney, reach into his sack to give a kid a plane, a nice shiny Yonezawa multi-action DC-7C. (The show's creator Rod Serling had a brother named Robert who wrote a famous book called The Electra Story so I guess he wouldn't want to use that plane)

[MichaelB]

Bob Serling died just this past year and wrote a goodly number of books on aviation over the past 50 years. With Ron Davies' passing this last July we are missing two of our most well known aviation authors, and for me a good friend in Ron Davies.
Here they both are at the AI 2008 in Dallas.

...and couldn't that DC-7C actually be posing as an Electra - just as the toy did?!

[Tone]

Wonderful photo! You were lucky to have known them, they must've provided lifetimes worth of information ! ! ! ! !
While we're on the subject of DC-7s my favorite current TV comedy The Big Bang Theory often has a nice, large, wingless see-through DC-7 fuselage from the 50s - on the top of Leonard's bookshelf when they show his apartment bedroom. The apartment, and Wolowitz's bedroom at his mother's house, are chock full of model rockets (Apollo, Atlas, Vostok etc) and space shuttles.

[MichaelB]

Of course they are! ...just like your room, yes? ...and like mine!

[Tone]

I spotted another battery toy plane on TV. This time, a jet liner. The show was The Bob Newhart Show and dates from the early '70s so the bottom - the only part of the toy visible - was plastic. The plane was either a 727 or a DC-9 with a wing span of about a foot.

In this episode, Bob's neighbor and friend, who is a navigator (formerly, the actor played Major Healey, Major Nelson's side kick on I Dream of Jeannie) is with his young son, who is playing hide-and-seek with Bob and his wife. He is shown holding this plane briefly.

[GCarsen]

One of the best ones in my book, the 1955 "The Mc Connell Story", tons of desk models in this one, Probably this one movie is what brought me to collecting them actually!
Grant

[Tone]

There is a scale model C-47 with approx 10" wing span in the 1957 movie The Deadly Mantis. A news caster holds it against a drawing of the giant praying mantis to show the comparative size.

There are lots of old real planes in this movie including: Cessna 190, Douglas C-47 and C-124, Lockheed RC-121, F-94 Starfire, N American F-86 Sabre both with and without the nose radome, and Grumman Panther jets. Some of the Sabre jets are shot in reverse, as you can see the "FU" markings on the fuselages printed backwards! In fact a Sabre jet crashes into the giant mantis, causing it to fall to earth, wounded. However, the pilot is shown bailing from a straight-winged jet.

[soslipstream]

I received a note from a collector about an Allyn P-51 chrome ashtray model in a movie... It is titled, "Thick as Thieves" starring a younger Alec Baldwin. And, sure enough, there it is and in my mind should have received some kind of billing in the credits. The story is kinda funky and even watchable but you have to wait until the last couple of scenes to see it on an end table in his living room. It is amusing that it is not a pristine piece but there is no mistaking what it is.

You can find the movie on Netflicks for the next few months.

Tom

[MichaelB]

This thread can open up lots of cans...
In SAC we see all sorts of great models on all the USAF desks.

I remember watching all these films and wanting the models! I just watched Black Scorpion and watched a train clearly marked Lionel Lines get eaten by the subject!