The Spirit of St. Louis (film)

The Spirit of St. Louis is a 1957 biographical film directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh. The screenplay was adapted by Charles Lederer, Wendell Mayes, and Billy Wilder from Lindberghs 1953 autobiographical account of his historic flight, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. Along with reminiscences of his early days in aviation, the film depicts Lindberghs historic 33hour transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis monoplane from his take off at Roosevelt Field to his landing at Le Bourget Field in Paris on May 21, 1927.

Flying to Chicago in winter, Lindbergh lands his old de Havilland biplane in a small airfield to refuel. Despite the bad weather, he takes off, unaware the Chicago landing field has closed due to snow. After running out of fuel, Lindbergh bails out. Recovering mail from the crashed DH4, he continues his journey by train and meets a suspender salesman who tells Lindbergh that two airmen just died competing for the Orteig Prize awarded to the first to fly nonstop from New York City to Paris. NFrom a diner, Lindbergh calls Columbia Aircraft Corporation in New York, pretending to represent a group of prominent businessmen. Quoted the price of 15,000 equal to 204,339 today for a Bellanca aircraft, Lindbergh lobbies St. Louis financiers, with a plan to flyhours in a strippeddown, singleengine aircraft. Excited by his vision, the backers dub it Spirit of St. Louis. ........

Source: Wikipedia