Boeing 307 Stratoliner (B-17 Based Airliner) in “Fashion Horizons” 1940 TWA & Paramount, Mary Martin04:33

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Published on February 19, 2017

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The Boeing 307 Stratoliner is featured in this film. Based on the B-17, the Boeing Stratoliner was the first airliner with a pressurized cabin. Only 10 were built, five of which were converted into a military cargo version was called the C-75 for the duration of WWII, then converted back into TWA airliners.

“Southwestern U.S. travelogue flies around in modern 1930s airplanes, stopping off at Albuquerque and an Arizona dude ranch, all the time focusing on fashions worn by its cargo of aspiring Paramount starlets. Excellent pre-World War II fashion footage in Kodachrome, plus documentation of affluent tourist destinations. Produced and directed by Harry D. Donahue. With Mary Martin.” Other actress-models featured: Margaret Hayes, Virginia Dale, Martha O’Driscoll, Esther Fernandez.

Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.

Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

The Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner was the first commercial transport aircraft to enter service with a pressurized cabin. This feature allowed the aircraft to cruise at an altitude of 20,000 ft (6,000 m), well above many weather disturbances. The pressure differential was 2.5 psi (17 kPa), so at 14,700 ft (4,480 m) the cabin air pressure was equivalent to an altitude of 8,000 ft (2,440 m). The Model 307 had capacity for a crew of six and 33 passengers. The cabin was nearly 12 ft (3.6 m) across. It was the first land-based aircraft to include a flight engineer as a crew member (several flying boats had included a flight engineer position earlier). In addition to its civilian service it was also flown as the Boeing C-75 Stratoliner by the United States Army Air Forces, who used it as a long-range cargolift aircraft…

Trans World Airlines (TWA) was an American airline that existed from 1925 until it was bought out by and merged with American Airlines in 2001. It was a major domestic airline in the United States and the main U.S.-based competitor of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) on intercontinental routes from 1946 until deregulation in the late 1970s. TWA had hubs in St. Louis and New York City (JFK) for much of its history, with focus cities in Kansas City, Los Angeles, and San Juan, Puerto Rico at times. In the 1980s it built up a hub in Atlanta, an operation which was reduced in the 1990s…

TWA’s corporate history dates from the July 16, 1930, forced merger of Transcontinental Air Transport (T-A-T) and Western Air Express to form Transcontinental & Western Air (T&WA). The companies merged at the urging of Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown, who was looking for bigger airlines to give airmail contracts.

…Transcontinental, the bigger of the two, had the marquee expertise of Charles Lindbergh and was already offering a 48-hour combination of plane and train trip across the United States. Western, which was slightly older having been founded in 1925, had the expertise of Jack Frye.

On October 25, 1930, the airline offered one of the first all-plane scheduled service from coast to coast: the Lindbergh Route. The route took 36 hours and initially called for overnights in Kansas City. In summer 1931, TWA moved its headquarters from New York to Kansas City, Missouri…

In 1934… Lehman Brothers and John D. Hertz took over ownership of the company…

In 1938, Lehman and Hertz began selling their interest and General Motors began buying stock. Frye then approached another flying enthusiast, Howard Hughes, to buy stock. According to John Keats’s biography of Hughes, he grumbled, “$15 million! That’s a small fortune!” before he agreed and initially bought 25 percent of the airline.

On June 22, 1939 Hughes Tool Co. ordered 40 Lockheed Constellations. On July 8, 1940, TWA inaugurated Boeing 307 Stratoliner service; in summer 1941 a Stratoliner was scheduled to leave La Guardia at 2030 EST and arrive Burbank at 0838 PST after three stops…

Hughes gained a controlling interest in 1941 and eventually controlled 78 percent of TWA…

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