Warbird Information Exchange

The folks at US aircraft dot com are reporting that the MARC B-17 is headed to Georgia and has been leased to the Liberty Foundation. Stay tuned...

As announced by Warbird Radio the Liberty Foundation will be touring the Movie Memphis Belle with their P-40.

Just read the awesome news

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Updated twice a week!!

Cool! Can't wait to see some dates posted.

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Matt

[Rant]God I hate that ****ing name.

Why can't they just call it 'Memphis Belle' and have done?

Does each and every P-51 painted in a non-original scheme get afflicted with this nonsense? Do we have dozens of 'Not the original Lou IV's? Of course not!

Get over it, guys.[/Rant]

Anyway, good news that the Liberty Foundation folks have another B-17 to play with while the rebuild of 'Liberty Belle II' progresses.

Just when you've sorta convinced yourself that you've done taking warbird rides .......

Something comes along that grabs you're attention and says Wow ! You've gotta go and seem them on tour this summer !

I'm looking forward to seeing a tour schedule appear on their website so I can start planning a little trans-atlantic trip.

Well done to all those involved in coming to this leasing arrangement

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Blue Skies .....

Peter

Consolidated by US state ~ see if there's a heavy bomber tour stop coming to an airport near you ...... http://www.bomberflight.info

Warbirdapps on facebook ~ every day a new image from my personal journey thru the world of warbirds ..... https://www.facebook.com/Warbirdapps

It's their own doing.

Here is the real story one more time. When the movie was being made the title of the film was to be "Southern Belle". When Mrs. Wyler got involved they decided it would be better to tip the hat to her father's movie and the real crew and call the movie "Memphis Belle".
Now in the mean time Tallichet had already gone to the Memphis Belle Memorial Association and asked to paint his aircraft as the Belle for a while including the possible upcoming film. The MBMA agreed to allow him to do so with the agreement that,

1)The nose art would always remain different from the real Memphis Belle

2)That the aircraft would be allowed to remain painted as the Memphis Belle for 30 days after the filming was complete

3)The aircraft would at no time be presented as the real Memphis Belle

Basically after the aircraft was in the movie and it was noticed that money could be had on displaying the plane in those markings ALL three terms of the agreement were violated. The MBMA got blown off.
That was until the Belle got moved to the NMUSAF, after the MBMA asked Wright Pat to take it by the way (another not well known fact), and they asked Wright pat if they could help with this whole problem as the Belle was then flying with markings almost exact to the real one. That is when the the NMUSAF enforced the deal that MARC was supposed to hold up to.
MARC and the gang didn't like that and ran stories of the "Big Brass General" telling people how they could paint their plane. Of course they left out the parts about their agreement.
So there you have, as they say, the rest of the story.
If you hate the name that is fine, be sure to point the gun in the right direction.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

When Mrs. Wyler got involved they decided it would be better to tip the hat to her father's movie and the real crew and call the with movie "Memphis Belle". Now in the mean time Tallichet had already gone to the Memphis Belle Memorial Association and asked to paint his aircraft as the Belle for a while including the possible upcoming film.

Chris--

"Mrs Wyler", the producer of the movie, was Dave T's niece....William Wyler, the director of the original movie, her father was married to Dave's sister. (She actually wasn't Mrs. Wyler---she was Miss Wyler) Anyway when you sign on to produce a B-17 movie it's nice to know your uncle has a B-17 in the garage!

My group did several shows with Dave and his plane following the release of the movie. One of his quotable quotes was, "More stuff happened to those guys in an hour-and-a-half than happened to me in 50 missions!"

Not hugely important, but neither the sequence nor the reasoning is correct. Catherine Wyler was involved with the production started by David Putnam pretty early on. His original idea was a Bomber Command movie (unfilmable for various reasons) she suggested redoing her father's film, and the 'nameboard' 'Southern Belle' was used while waiting for the lawyers got the rights to 'Memphis Belle'. Once done, Memphis Belle was used.

Source - statement by David Putnam and Catherine Wyler at a British Film Institute screening of the film, publicity material for the film in my collection and notes.

(Note also that Catherine Wyler was daughter of William Wyler who made the original Memphis Belle film, and her mother was Margaret Tallichet, sister of David Tallichet, making David, Catherine's uncle.)

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

A Belle is a Belle (Movie, Memphis, Liberty, whatever ), another touring B-17 is good news! Very happy to hear that the Liberty Foundation will be touring again.

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Share your story: Rutgers Oral History Archive http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/

Me, too!

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Steve Turner, USAF aircraft refueler 54+ years ago.

JDK Southern Belle was the original name. Then they decided to go with Memphis Belle as long as none of the crew or the MBMA had problems with it. It actually came down to the wire as to which name it would be because the MBMA did not sign off on it right away.-Source the MBMA.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I agree 100%. I just want to clear up the story.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

That doesn't contradict what I wrote, Chris, have another look. The point remains that 'Southern Belle' was a working new title over a re-use of the Memphis Belle idea (frankly they'd have done better to have use the 'Southern Belle' new name, IMHO, as the new film had little to do with the real Memphis Belle or the 1940s film.)

I don't know if Putnam had a name for his RAF project film, but that'd have been 'the original'...

Regards,

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

Let's just change the name of the plane to The New Jersey Belle. I think that will make everyone happy.

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."