Flight for Freedom

Never one to stay typecast, Rosalind Russell followed three years of prime comedy roles (The Women, His Girl Friday, My sister Eileen and more) into the wild blue yonder of Flight for Freedom, an ambitious drama reverberating with world war II-era heroism and inspired by a real-life legend. Playing flyer's flyer Tonie Carter, a competitive aviatrix loosely modeled after Amelia Earhart, she indomitably pushes the aerial envelope, winging from cross-country pilot and champion racer to distance record-breaker with the ambitious goal of around-the-world solo flight. Fred MacMurray (Russell's Take a Letter, Darling costar) and Herbert Marshall play the men whose devotion to Tonie is overshadowed by her love of the skies. That love will lead to perilous espionage and a then-timely scenario to explain one of history's most mysterious vanishings.