''The Mysterious Airman'' (a.k.a. ''Mysterious Airman'' and ''The Mystery Airman'' ) is a 1928 American

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

10-chapter silent

film serial A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, gene ...

from Weiss Brothers Artclass Pictures. The serial involves a mysterious airman who is after the aviation inventions from a new aircraft company.''The Mysterious Airman'' was one of the last

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

silent film serials and, until recently, thought to be a

lost film A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection, public archive or the U.S. Library of Congress. Conditions During most of the 20th century, U.S. copyright law required at least one copy o ...

Plot

Jack Baker ( Walter Miller) is an

aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

engineer, pilot, and president of the Baker Aircraft Company. He has invented new aviation innovations to be mounted on his company's aircraft. The owners of Globe Air Corporation, a rival aviation company, are after these new inventions. Their president, William Craft (Robert Walker), hires a masked and mysterious airman, known only as "Pilot X", who also makes plans to steal those inventions for his own use. He uses a trained monkey to steal one of them, a radio-controlled "flying torpedo", that was in engineer Baker's workshop. In the air, his gang of "Air Hawks" pose serious peril to the Baker Aircraft Company. The attacks are largely aimed at stealing Baker's exclusive rights to the "Aerometer", invented by James B. Joyce (C. H. Allen), a new navigational instrument that makes flying safer in all sorts of weather, even at night. The inventor's daughter, Shirley (

Eugenia Gilbert Eugenia Gilbert (November 18, 1902 – December 9, 1978) was an American film actress of the silent era. She appeared as a leading lady in a number of westerns. In at least three films, she was billed as Eugenie Gilbert. Biography Gilbert was ...

), is an

aviatrix An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

who is Baker's fiancée. "World-famous aviatrix" Fawn Nesbitt (Dorothy Talcott), who hopes to become the first female pilot to fly around the world, becomes concerned when Baker's aircraft begin crashing. She is to be married to Albert Orren (Eugene Burr), the owner of a rival aircraft company. As the air attacks mount, Baker and Shirley are in constant danger, both on the ground and above the clouds. Their efforts always seem to be known to the mysterious Pilot X, and suspicion falls on Perkins (Arthur Morrison), Joyce's butler, who is always nearby when plans are being discussed.

Chapter titles

# The Winged Avenger (16 minutes) # The Sky Writer (20 minutes) # The Girl Who Flew Alone (20 minutes) # The Smoke Screen (20 minutes) # Test Flight (20 minutes) # The Hawk's Nest (20 minutes) # The Faker Pilot (20 minutes) # The Air Raft (20 minutes) # The Hidden Hangar (20 minutes) # Mystery Pilot X (20 minutes)

Cast

* Walter Miller as Jack Baker *

as Shirley Joyce * Robert Walker as William Craft * Eugene Burr as Albert Orren * Dorothy Tallcot as Fawn Nesbitt * James A. Fitzgerald as Barney Madden * C.H. Allen as James Joyce * Ray Childs as Henry Knight * Hugh Blair as Detective Mullens * Arthur Morrison as Perkins * Hamilton Morse as Mardos Kartoff

Production

''The Mysterious Airman'' was written by famed mystery novelist Arthur B. Reeve of ''Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective'' fame. The serial was the last silent serial produced by

poverty row Poverty Row is a slang term used to refer to Hollywood films produced from the 1920s to the 1950s by small (and mostly short-lived) B movie studios. Although many of them were based on (or near) today's Gower Street in Hollywood, the term did n ...

producers, the Weiss Brothers, and came at the end of the silent film era. Although production values were modest, a number of aircraft were featured, both on the ground and in the air. These aircraft included a

Waco ATO The Waco 10/GXE/Waco O series was a range of three-seat open-cockpit biplanes built by the Advance Aircraft Company, later the Waco Aircraft Company. Design and development The Waco 10 was a larger span development of the Waco 9, both single-eng ...

, fitted with a machine gun and was flown by Pilot X.

Reception

A modern appraisal of ''The Mysterious Airman'' was published in the ''Schenectady (NY) Gazette'' and notes that it is "Superior to the usual run of serials ... full of thrills ...”

Preservation status

''The Mysterious Airman'' was thought to be a “lost” silent film. In 2004, after producer Kit Parker (of Kit Parker Films) purchased the holdings of Weiss Global International, Parker was approached by film archivist Jeff Joseph of SabuCat Productions. Joseph offered to loan Parker his near-complete original 35mm tinted

nitrate film Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...

print of the serial. His print was missing only the first reel of Chapter Nine, due to reel's decomposition. Once restored (including recreating the missing reel from film stills and plot synopses) and digitally restored,Parker, Kit
"Press release: 'The Mysterious Airman' (1928)."
''kitparkerfilms'', April 19, 2017. Retrieved: July 15, 2019. ''The Mysterious Airman'' was released October 17, 2017 on DVD by VCI Video (Sprocket Vault). Additional features include a commentary track by historian Richard M. Roberts, ''Flying Cadets'' (1928), a 2-reel

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...

, and a gallery of original ''The Mysterious Airman'' posters and lobby cards.Sinnott, John
"Review: 'The Mysterious Airman'."
''dvdtalk.com'', May 3, 2017. Retrieved: July 15, 2019.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* Farmer, James H. ''Celluloid Wings: The Impact of Movies on Aviation''. Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania: Tab Books Inc., 1984. . * Rainey, Buck. ''Serials and Series: A World Filmography, 1912–1956''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010. .

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mysterious Airman, The 1928 films 1928 crime films American black-and-white films American aviation films American crime films 1920s English-language films 1920s American films