{ "id": "epdvm87g9z", "slug": "the-spirit-of-st-louis", "title": "The Spirit of St. Louis", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1950s", "label": "Drama films 1950s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1950s" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000: Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Spirit of St. Louis is Billy Wilder's 1957 biographical film starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh, adapted from Lindbergh's 1953 Pulitzer-winning autobiography about the first solo nonstop New York to Paris flight; a $6 million Warner Bros. production that underperformed at the box office.", "snippet": "The Spirit of St. Louis is Billy Wilder's 1957 biographical film starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh, adapted from Lindbergh's 1953 Pulitzer-winning autobiography about the first solo nonstop New York to Paris flight; a $6 million Warner Bros. production that underperformed at the box office.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1950s", "markdown": "# The Spirit of St. Louis\n\n**The Spirit of St. Louis** is a 1957 American biographical film directed by [Billy Wilder](https://www.edgepedia.org/billy-wilder), starring [James Stewart](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-stewart) as the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and dramatizing the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris in May 1927.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) It is based on Lindbergh's 1953 autobiography of the same name, which won the [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/pulitzer-prize).[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) Despite a distinguished director and star, the film was a costly commercial failure on release; it has since been received as a solid if idiosyncratic biopic, and it is notable for the amount of screen time spent inside a cramped cockpit with a single performer.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | April 20, 1957, wide release; New York opening February 21, 1957; Los Angeles opening April 11, 1957[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) |\n| Director / writer | Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay with Wendell Mayes and Charles Lederer[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) |\n| Producer | Leland Hayward[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis) |\n| Lead role | James Stewart as Charles A. \"Slim\" Lindbergh, aged 48 playing the 25-year-old aviator[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) |\n| Format | WarnerColor, CinemaScope, RCA Sound; 135 or 138 minutes[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) |\n| Budget and gross | Budget over $6,000,000; initial-run gross of $2,600,000[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) |\n| Reception | 83% Tomatometer (23 reviews) and 75% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.1/10 on IMDb[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis) • [4](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051003/ratings/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Source material and story\n\nThe film adapts Lindbergh's autobiography *The Spirit of St. Louis*, published in 1953, more than two decades after the flight it describes.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) • [5](https://whitmorerarebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/images/upload/catalogue20wrbwebnp.pdf) Warner Bros. bought the film rights in 1954, reportedly after the property had been offered for $1,000,000 with rigid script control, and set [Leland Hayward](https://www.edgepedia.org/leland-hayward) to produce with Wilder writing and directing.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis)\n\nThe opening written prologue states the historical frame: in 1927 a young man alone in a single-engine airplane flew nonstop from Roosevelt Field in New York across the North Atlantic to Le Bourget Field in Paris, a distance of 3,610 miles, and the prologue puts the flight at 33 hours and 30 minutes.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) [Turner Classic Movies](https://www.edgepedia.org/turner-classic-movies)' essay gives the flight duration as 33 hours and 20 minutes; the two durations differ, and neither source reconciles them.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n\n**Structure.** The film opens near the end of the story, with Lindbergh sleepless at a hotel near Roosevelt Field waiting for rain to stop, then recalls his earlier career through flashbacks narrated largely in Stewart's voice-over: stints as a stunt pilot, flight instructor, and airmail pilot flying winter nights over the Midwest.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis) The historical background includes the [Orteig Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/orteig-prize), the $25,000 purse offered in 1919 by the New York hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris, which had gone unclaimed through its original five-year term.[6](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lindbergh-spirit-st-louis/) In the film, as in history, St. Louis businessmen financed the plane, and Lindbergh had it built by Ryan Airlines in San Diego, where company head B. F. \"Frank\" Mahoney and chief engineer [Donald Hall](https://www.edgepedia.org/donald-hall) appear as characters.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) Most of the running time follows the flight itself, with Lindbergh's only companion in the cockpit a fly, as he fights ice on the wings, fog, and his own fatigue before landing at Le Bourget.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n\n## Production\n\nThe film was shot between mid-July 1955 and March 3, 1956, with location and aerial work in New York, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Ireland, and Paris, as well as California sites including Platt Ranch in Canoga Park, Santa Monica airport, and four weeks at Santa Maria.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis) Wilder described the aerial shoot in later interviews: the crew could not communicate with a plane in the air, so each additional take required landing, taking new instructions, and taking off again, while weather changed minute to minute.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n\n**The airplane.** Full-scale replicas of the Ryan NYP monoplane were reconstructed for the film from the original blueprints at a cost of over $100,000, against the roughly $13,000 the original cost to build in the 1920s.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) The historical aircraft, designed around a 450-gallon fuel load, carried a 46-foot wing with a 7-foot chord, and placed the main fuel tank ahead of the cockpit so that the pilot had no forward windshield; the original was equipped with a periscope extending from the left side of the fuselage for forward vision in flight.[7](https://aeroresourcesinc.com/uploads/200205-1927%20Ryan%20NYP%20Spirit%20of%20St.%20Louis.pdf) The stunt pilot Frank Tallman, who flew a replica for the film, wrote that the lack of forward visibility did not bother him too much, though he elsewhere called the airplane \"as blind as a nuclear sub under a polar icepack.\"[8](https://engines.egr.uh.edu/PolapinkArticle.pdf) • [7](https://aeroresourcesinc.com/uploads/200205-1927%20Ryan%20NYP%20Spirit%20of%20St.%20Louis.pdf)\n\n**Casting.** The Lindbergh role was first offered to John Kerr, who declined it because of Lindbergh's sympathies toward the Nazi party, including his decoration by Hermann Goering with the Service Cross of the German Eagle. Warner then suggested that Hayward tell Stewart he was too fat for the part; Stewart took the role.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) The supporting cast included [Murray Hamilton](https://www.edgepedia.org/murray-hamilton) as Bud Gurney, Patricia Smith as the unnamed mirror girl, Bartlett Robinson as Mahoney, and Marc Connelly as Father Hussman.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis)\n\n## Reception and box office\n\nThe film grossed $2,600,000 in its initial run against a budget of over $6,000,000, and Jack Warner called it \"the most disastrous failure we ever had.\"[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis) Critics were divided rather than hostile. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times rated it 2.5 out of 5, writing that Wilder had handsomely staged a haunting recollection of the event. Variety called it \"a James Stewart one-man show,\" a description echoed negatively by the reviewer Mike Massie, who criticized a dragging, one-man show devoid of a love interest or consequential conflict, and positively by the Winnipeg Free Press, which credited Stewart's \"artless honesty.\"[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis) Time wrote that Stewart's performance suggested what the world sensed at the time: that the flight was not merely the adventure of a rash young \"flying fool\" but \"a journey of the spirit.\"[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n\n**The casting question.** Reviewers and audiences have repeatedly noted the age gap between star and subject: Stewart was about 48 in a role written for a 25-year-old. One later retrospective argued that because Lindbergh's flight predated television, there was no famous footage to recreate, which reduced the practical impact of the mismatch in an era before viewers knew the pilot's face.[9](https://www.franksmovielog.com/reviews/the-spirit-of-st-louis-1957/) Josh Larsen's review called the film \"a national myth for the Eisenhower era,\" and audience scores have remained relatively strong, at 75% on the Popcornmeter.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis)\n\n## Availability\n\nAs of late 2026, the film streams in the United States on [YouTube TV](https://www.edgepedia.org/youtube-tv) and can be rented or bought on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home; [JustWatch](https://www.edgepedia.org/justwatch) lists no free streaming options in the US.[10](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-spirit-of-st-louis) FlickFinder reports it on subscription in only one country on YouTube TV and on Filmin in one country, with no subscription availability in the UK or Canada.[11](https://www.flickfinder.net/movie/the-spirit-of-st-louis-1957-18776) The film is also listed in Netflix's catalog but is not currently available to watch there in the United States.[12](https://www.netflix.com/title/60011370)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52373-the-spiritofstlouis)\n2. [James Steffen, \"The Spirit of St. Louis,\" Turner Classic Movies (2003)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/62545/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n3. [The Spirit of St. Louis, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/spirit_of_st_louis)\n4. [The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) – Ratings, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051003/ratings/)\n5. [Catalogue description of Lindbergh's The Spirit of St. Louis, Whitmore Rare Books](https://whitmorerarebooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/images/upload/catalogue20wrbwebnp.pdf)\n6. [\"The Spirit of St. Louis,\" PBS American Experience](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lindbergh-spirit-st-louis/)\n7. [\"1927 Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis – 75th Anniversary,\" Aero Resources](https://aeroresourcesinc.com/uploads/200205-1927%20Ryan%20NYP%20Spirit%20of%20St.%20Louis.pdf)\n8. [Frank Tallman on flying the Spirit replica, University of Houston engines collection](https://engines.egr.uh.edu/PolapinkArticle.pdf)\n9. [Frank Showalter, The Spirit of St. Louis review, Frank's Movie Log (2007)](https://www.franksmovielog.com/reviews/the-spirit-of-st-louis-1957/)\n10. [The Spirit of St. Louis streaming, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\n11. [Where to watch The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), FlickFinder](https://www.flickfinder.net/movie/the-spirit-of-st-louis-1957-18776)\n12. [The Spirit of St. Louis, Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/60011370)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1950s*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Spirit of St. Louis\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Spirit of St. Louis](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Spirit of St. Louis\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-spirit-of-st-louis. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Spirit of St." }