One of the movies I was most looking forward to in our study of flight in the early 20th Century, was The Spirit of St. Louis.
Amazing 30th Anniversary Movie Production
Technically a costume movie, the designers did a great job creating an authentic look for this movie produced thirty years after Lindbergh’s famous flight.
Based on Lindbergh’s autobiographical pulitzer prize book published in 1953, The Spirit of St. Louis, the movie kept us on the edge of our seats with humor and fascinating details.
This great movie stars Jimmy Stewart, who sought this part!
Originally inspired at the age of 19 as he monitored Charles Lindbergh’s successful flight, Stewart became a pilot himself.
Already an experienced pilot, Stewart became the first American movie star to enlist in the US Army in the early days of WWII, on March 22, 1941.
Entering as a private in the US Army Air Corps, eventually earned his commission as second lieutenant on January 1, 1942.
After a year of training new pilots, Stewart requested an overseas assignment in the thick of WWII action.
Sent to England in November 1943, Stewart flew bombers.
By the end of the war he was promoted to full colonel, while ultimately earning the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve in 1959, becoming the highest ranking actor in American military history.
Lindbergh’s Life as a Biwing Mail Man
Since we’re Texans from San Antonio, we especially enjoy the opening scene of Charles Lindbergh’s arrival to Brook’s Field in San Antonio, Texas, after WWI in a beat up biwing airplane.
Although he successfully landed the junker, he did so in front of a training instructor who prided himself, as all Training Instructo’s do, on everything being spit and polish.
(My dad used to be a USAF Training Instructor so I know a lot about spit and polish!)
Lindbergh seeks the $25,000 prize for the first solo flight across the Atlantic
While Lindbergh continued life as a mail man in a beat up biwing, Raymond Orteig, a famous hotel owner from New York City, promised $25,000 to the first pilot to fly between New York City and Paris, France nonstop.
The race was on!
The movie shows how Lindbergh was financed, how the the plane was named Spirit of St. Louis, and how the plane was made from scratch.
The plane needed to be as light as possible so it could hold as much fuel as possible to endure flight across the massive ocean.
Taking off from New York’s Roosevelt Field on Long Island on March 20, 1927, his flight was an edge of the seat experience, as Lindbergh fought sleep deprivation and climate elements over the rough Atlantic.
His arrival in Paris the next day, the city of lights (because of Napoleon III who had to keep his uncle’s reputation), was a beauty to behold.
His 33.5 hour flight over 3600 miles culminating in jubilation!
An estimated crowd of 150,000 enthusiastic French people was fun to watch, as they carried him out of the cockpit and over their heads for over half an hour.
Unfortunately their exuberance unintentionally wrecked his plane.
Closing the film is the original newsreel (before there was audio) of the ticker-tape parade in New York City honoring Charles Lindbergh. (link includes take off, flight path, and ticker tape parade)
Now restored, The Spirit of St. Louis plane is currently displayed in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC!
We were surprised to see it at the Smithsonian when we visited from Texas last summer!
Lafayette connection to Lindbergh
While watching the movie we had another Lafayette sighting! Read the fascinating story below of how a $25,000 prize connected the 1777 General Lafayette to the 1927 American aviator, Charles Lindbergh.
Popular French Hotel in New York City
In 1883, Jean-Baptiste Martin brought his hotel experience from Panama to New York City.
Purchasing a small building, he opened Hotel de Panama, which in 1886 he renamed to Hotel Martin.
Panama gave people a bad impression. They associated it with fever and Spaniards, neither of which were popular. -Jean-Baptiste Martin
Enlarging the small building, his 1880s advertisement announced it as: the only first-class French hotel in New York.
Many French guests included artists, writers, opera singers, painters, musicians, and a French statesman.
Hotel rebranded after French General Lafayette
Opening restaurant Café Martin, he sold the hotel in 1902 to the head waiter, Raymond Orteig.
Immediately Orteig rebranded his new business Hotel Lafayette, after America’s favorite Frenchman.
Orteig also renamed the hotel’s French restaurant Café Lafayette, which was beautifully decorated in Gilded Age style: tile floor and marble-topped tables, with the space amply supplied with foreign newspapers, and board games.
While guests enjoyed the café by day, they enjoyed Orteig’s more formal restaurant on the premises by night with an orchestra and private dining spaces.
The Lafayette especially prided itself on its hors d’oeuvres varies, squab en casserole, filet mignon a la bearnaise, and pears flamed in a secret blend of liqueurs. -(On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution by Michael and Ariane Batterberry, 1998)
Named after General Lafayette who helped America glean independence from Great Britain, the hotel prominently displayed a bust of Lafayette, created by the famous French sculptor named Houdon, in the lobby.
Infamous Orteig $25,000 prize
On May 22, 1919, Orteig made a huge announcement (below quote from The Big Jump: Lindbergh and the Great Atlantic Air Race by Richard Bak, 2011)
Gentlemen: As a stimulus to the courageous aviators, I desire to offer, through the auspices and regulations of the Aero Club of America, a prize of $25,000 to the first aviator of any Allied Country crossing the Atlantic in one flight, from Paris to New York or New York to Paris, all other details in your care.
Yours very sincerely,
Raymond Orteig
Winning the Orteig prize, memorabilia from Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight in the Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in 1927 decorated the lobby.
Famed hotel’s sad demise
After Orteig’s death in 1939, his son’s ran the restaurant for ten more years.
Unable to keep the beautiful Gilded Age hotel open, the sons closed the doors on March 31, 1949 and allowed fans to purchase furnishings and artifacts.
Items not purchased by fans sold at auction on April 26, 1949.
(I’m wondering…who purchased the Lafayette Houdon?)
The New York University Law School leased the empty building in October 1949 to use as apartments for an apartment they were converting to a new law school.
In 1957 the Lafayette building was destroyed for a new apartment building in an area now known as University Place.
