Old Gander Airport in the movies 

Have you ever seen or heard of the film from the early Fifties called " No Highway in the Sky" which "starred"  the old terminal?

No Highway in the Sky was a 1951 British air disaster film (aka: No Highway) directed by Henry Koster and starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich.

The 20th Century Fox  film is based on the novel No Highway by Nevil Shute, and was one of the first films that involved a potential aircraft crash.

The official film publicity tells the story of Theodore Honey (James Stewart), an eccentric  with the British Royal Aircraft Establishment. He is a widower with a precocious young daughter, Elspeth (Janette Scott),

Honey is sent from Farnborough, England, to investigate the crash of a "Reindeer" airliner in Labrador, which he figures occurred because of a structural failure in the tail, caused by sudden metal fatigue. To test his theory in his laboratory, an airframe is continuously shaken in eight-hour daily cycles.

It isn't until Honey is already aboard a Reindeer that he realizes he himself is flying on one such aircraft and that it may be close to the number of hours his theory projects for the fatal failure. Despite the fact that his theory is not yet proven, Honey decides to warn the passengers and crew, including actress Monica Teasdale (Marlene Dietrich).

After the Reindeer lands at Gander Airport, an inspection clears it to continue on. He takes drastic action to stop the flight by raising the undercarriage while the aircraft is still on the ground. The ensuing dispute includes demands that he be declared insane to discredit his theory.

Teasdale and flight attendant Marjorie Corder (Glynis Johns) both take a liking for Honey and his daughter Elspeth, who is lonely and isolated from her schoolmates. Teasdale speaks on his behalf to his superiors, while Corder, seeing that he is decent but disorganized, decides to marry him.

During a hearing in which his sanity is questioned, Honey resigns but continues trying to prove that his mathematics are sound. In the laboratory, the time he predicted for failure passes without failure. However, the Reindeer he disabled in Gander is repaired, but after landing from a test flight the tail falls off. Shortly afterwards, the same thing happens to the test frame in the lab, and Honey discovers that he failed to include temperature as a factor in his calculations.

I have been unable to find anything showing the plane on the tarmac at Gander.  I did however manage to buy a "movie still" numbered 51 of 340 showing the interior used to model the airplane cockpit.  It almost seem to be forward section of a World War II bomber, so many of which went through Gander some years before.

Jack Pinsent, who has seen the movie, says that there were indeed shots of Gander. "The scene at the airport lasted for about 15 mins. The stage shots of inside the terminal were of course not the old terminal but whoever made the sets had been in Gander before. You could easily be fooled. The ramp shots were all at night but the sign displaying Gander Airport gave no doubt it was the old ramp. In fact it was in view for quite some time. I would estimate about 10 %."

Campbell Pritchett says that his father played a part in it as well as Clayton Lock, both of whom at the time worked for Imperial Oil. They drove the fuelling truck up to the aircraft, and set up the fuelling process during the filming.  It was a 5 second part. He remembers "going to the Globe theater with dad to see the movie, and you could clearly see the tanker truck, but you couldn't pick out the Imperial Oil employees faces, just them moving around the ladders and hoses".

Jack Pinsent also says that if you haven't seen the movie go to  http://rapidlibrary.com/  and search for "No Highway In The Sky". It is downloadable for free and comes in 10 x 100mb parts. You have to use a RAR program to join it. Normally for free as well. Use google to find where to get it. The RAR or Winrar for Windows viewers is very easy to use. You just load it and then forget about it.  He says that when you want to join the parts all you do is double click on the first part of your downloaded movie and it joins the parts automatically.

Also, I have found myself that if you go to Youtube and search the movie title, you will find a six-section sound track with that  all-star cast. I listened through it and it was worth it.  Kinda gives a great look into that wonderful, easier period!

Robert G Pelley