Paul Mantz

A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.

A selection of excerpts from the first Cinerama films.

Tortured into a false confession while a POW in Korea, Major Lincoln Bond returns to active service as a test pilot. Determined to clear his name, Bond battles a hard-nosed base commander, prejudiced officers and his own insecurities.

In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.

The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.

Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers.

Young America is a 1942 American drama film directed by Louis King and written by Samuel G. Engel. The film stars Jane Withers, Jane Darwell, Lynne Roberts, Robert Cornell, William Tracy and Roman Bohnen. The film was released on February 6, 1942, by 20th Century Fox.

Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. Back home in Underwood, Maryland, however, his uncle Hiram F. Jenkins, owner and editor of the local newspaper, refuses to print the story. Nicholas quits and continues to work on his own airplane, with the devoted help of his little daughter Peggy. Peggy is actually the first in her family to fly when her friends, Patrick Falconer and Scott Barnes, induce her to get inside a large kite they have made, and run with it in a field until she is airborne. The kite is caught in a tree, however, and Peggy gets a black eye. Later, Nicholas dies when his experimental airplane crashes, leaving his wife and children alone. By Peggy's adulthood, planes are capable of flying at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h. Peggy continues her father's obsession with flight by helping Scott and Pat to build a plane.

In World War I France, a pilot falls in love with the wife of his friend and superior officer.

When a border patrolman catches their spoiled daughter smoking in a no-smoking area, parents hire him to watch over her. She then runs over to Mexico and gets involved with jewel thieves and he has to go save her.

Frances Farmer's second film is a typical B-programmer from the Paramount lot of 1936--up and coming stars (John Howard, Robert Cummings, Grant Withers, Farmer) in a concerning the Coast Guard and smugglers. The chief points of interest are the truly exceptional aerial sequences and Farmer's early performance.

A gambling ring run out of the Mogul Taxi company is intent on fixing college football games. Football star Harold "Red" Grange is a target for the gamblers, whose thugs try to eliminate Grange from playing. Grange's buddy Buddy is himself vulnerable to blackmail, since he has broken team rules by marrying. The crooks use all their wiles to keep Grange and Buddy from leading their team to victory.