Tintin Forums

Tintin’s arrival in India, the Thompsons’ trophy-winning entry, and General Alcazar’s European purchase all share the same family connection with the most profitable movie of 1939. Identify (and explain!) the connection.

I think I got the answer. The movie is Gone with the Wind starring Olivia de Havilland and De Havilland is also a manufacturer of airplanes, as the Puss Moth which Tintin flies to India, the Tiger Moth the Thompsons crash and the Mosquitoes that Alcazar buys.

You're spot on labrador road 26. Well done!

Olivia de Haviland did indeed star in Gone With the Wind, which was the highest grossing film of 1939, and possibly of all time, if relative inflation is taken into account. (I've never seen it though!) Geoffrey de Havilland was the famous aviation pioneer whose de Haviland Aircraft Company designed and built those three aircraft you correctly identified. Olivia de Haviland's father and Geoffrey de Havilland's father were half-brothers, making Olivia and Geoffrey half-first cousins.

For those who like coincidental connections, the book Gone With the Wind was written by Margaret Mitchell, who shared her surname with another British aircraft designer, whose most famous plane is seen briefly in Land of Black Gold. As far as I know though, these two Mitchells weren't related!

Anyway, a well-earned point to labrador road 26, and the next question.

Balthazar
For those who like coincidental connections…
Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in GWTW, was on board a DC3 from Lisbon in 1943, when the Luftwaffe shot it down over the Bay of Biscay, killing him - the DC3 is the same type of ’plane which crashed in Tintin in Tibet…

Oh and that was a really good question, Balthazar - it sounded like something out of the BBC’s Round Britain Quiz!

Well done, labrador road 26!

Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in GWTW was on board a DC3

There is also a DC3 in Red sea sharks. The plane designed by R.J. Mitchell seen in LoBG is of course the famous Supermarine Spitfire.

Your excellent additional Gone With the Wind-Tintin aircraft connections have reminded me that Leslie Howard actually played RJ Mitchell in the biopic film First of the Few! So he has a double Mitchell connection (ie to RJ and Margaret).

You're right, jock 123, this has all the makings of a Round Britain Quiz question, if that ever comes back for another series.

Balthazar
Leslie Howard actually played RJ Mitchell in the biopic film First of the Few!
That’s getting spooky now!
The saddest coincidence related to the death of Howard was that he and his manager Alfred Chenhalls might have been mistaken for Winston Churchill and his bodyguard Walter H. Thompson, who the Germans knew to be on their way back to London from meetings N. Africa.
A spy might have seen the two English men, a small stocky middle-aged man (Chenhalls) and a tall thin companion (Howard), board the ’plane and incorrectly identified them as the Prime Minister and guard, leading to the attack on the DC3, which was clearly marked as a civil air-craft and thus not normally a target.

labrador road 26
The plane designed by R.J. Mitchell seen in LoBG is of course the famous Supermarine Spitfire.
I was going to say that one of the first people seen in GWTW is George “Superma(ri)n(e)” Reeves, but I felt that was stretching it a bit…!