Flight into Danger is a 1956 Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 film starring Corinne Conley, James Doohan

James Doohan

James Montgomery "Jimmy" Doohan was a Canadian character and voice actor best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the television and film series Star Trek...

 (who became famous later as Scotty in Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...

), Kate Reid

Kate Reid

Kate Reid, OC was a Canadian stage, film and television actress.-Life and career:Daphne Kate Reid was born in London, England, the daughter of Canadian parents, Helen Isabel and Walter Clarke Reid, who was a former Bengal Lancer in the Indian army and a retired colonel...

, Zachary Scott

Zachary Scott

Zachary Scott was an American actor, most notable for his roles as villains and "mystery men".-Life and career:...

 and Philip Gilbert

Philip Gilbert

Philip Gilbert was a Canadian actor.He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and educated at Vancouver College...

. The 60-minute teleplay was written by Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey was a British/Canadian novelist.- Biography :Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, Hailey served in the Royal Air Force from the start of World War II during 1939 until 1947, when he went to live in Canada. Hailey's last novel, Detective , is a mystery told from the perspective of a...

, produced and screened by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

, and broadcast on August 20 1956 in the General Motors Theatre

General Motors Theatre

General Motors Theatre was a Canadian television anthology series, which ran on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation under its various titles from 1953 until 1961. First transmitted under the sponsored title on October 5 1954, a new 60-minute drama would be presented each week...

strand. In 1957, it was adapted into the feature film

Feature film

In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

 Zero Hour!

Zero Hour!

Zero Hour! is a 1957 movie whose screenplay was written by Arthur Hailey, starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden, and released by Paramount Pictures. Zero Hour! was an adaptation of Hailey's 1956 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation play Flight into Danger...

and, more famously, parodied in the 1980 comedy, Airplane!

Airplane!

Airplane! is a 1980 American satirical comedy film directed and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker and released by Paramount Pictures...

. Hailey and John Castle novelised

Novelization

A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...

 the story as Flight Into Danger: Runway Zero-Eight (1958), which was dramatized in 1971 as a Movie of the Week, Terror in the Sky

Terror in the Sky

Terror in the Sky is a low budget 1971 television movie remake of 1957's Zero Hour!, which itself was based on the 1956 television play Flight into Danger. Arthur Hailey recycled the premise in his book Runway Zero-Eight which was co-written with John Castle in 1958...

.

In the play, a small-plane pilot

Aviator

An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...

 is forced to take the controls of a large passenger plane when the pilots fall victim to food poisoning.

The original play was purchased for screening by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and was a major factor in its producer Sydney Newman

Sydney Newman

Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s...

 being brought across to work in the UK. There he made a significant impact on the British television drama industry.

In 1964 a German version of the television film was produced under the translated German title Flug in Gefahr.

External links

• Flight into Danger at the Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
  
  .