The Hindenburg

Plot

In April 1937 Kathie Rauch from Milwaukee, Wisconsin sends a letter to the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., claiming the German zeppelin Hindenburg will explode while flying over New York City during its first flight of the season. In the meantime, Luftwaffe Colonel Franz Ritter has been named the security officer to protect the Hindenburg as various threats have been made to sabotage the airship, which some see as a symbol of Nazi Germany.

Ritter is assisted by a Nazi government official, SS/Gestapo Hauptsturmführer Martin Vogel, who poses as the "official photographer" aboard the Hindenburg. However, both operate independently in investigating the background of all passengers and crew on the voyage. Ritter has reason to suspect everyone, even his old friend, Countess Ursula von Reugen, whose Baltic estate in Peenemünde had been taken over by the Nazis for weapons testing and appears to be escaping Germany while visiting her young hearing-impaired daughter in Boston.

Other prime suspects include Edward Douglas, a suspicious German-American advertising executive, card sharps Emilio Pajetta and Major Napier, as well as several crew members and even the Hindenburg captains Max Pruss and Ernst Lehmann. Many possible clues turn out to be red herrings, such as Joe Spah sketching the ship's interior as an idea for a vaudeville show and mysterious names which later turned out to be the name of race horses two of the passengers are making bets on. Two other code names, for carnivorous air and sea animals, turn out to refer to the Hindenburg itself and the Queen Mary, where Douglas's competitor is in a race to beat him to port to secure a business deal in New York.

As the Hindenburg continues to Lakehurst Naval Air Station, events conspire against Ritter and Vogel. Although Rauch turns out to be a self-proclaimed clairvoyant upon investigation by the FBI, they soon suspect crewman Karl Boerth, a former Hitler Youth leader who has become disillusioned with the Nazi regime. Ritter attempts to arrest Boerth but he resists and requests help from Ritter, who sympathizes with him because Ritter's son was killed in an accident the previous year while in the Hitler Youth. Ritter later receives news that Boerth's girlfriend, Freda Halle, was killed while trying to escape the Gestapo, who had arrested her for questioning after she was seen asking too many pointed questions about the ship's exact position and arrival time at Lakehurst. Boerth, upon hearing the news of Halle's death, plans to commit suicide by staying aboard the airship as the bomb goes off, to show that there is a resistance against the Nazi regime. Ritter reluctantly agrees with Boerth to set the bomb to 7:30, when the airship should have landed and passengers disembarked, Boerth insisting an explosion which kills passengers is the "last thing he wants".

Characters

Colonel Franz Ritter — A Luftwaffe Colonel assigned by Joseph Goebbels to board the Hindenburg as a security officer in response to the bomb threat. Ritter won the Knight's Cross as the chief of intelligence during the Bombing of Guernica. His son Alfred was in the Hitler Youth and died the previous year falling from a synagogue after vandalizing it with slogans. In early versions of the screenplay, the character was known as "Fritz Kessler." Ritter is based upon Colonel Fritz Erdmann who was aboard the final flight, though there is no evidence that he nor the other two Luftwaffe officers were aboard as a security officer to investigate a bomb threat.

Ursula von Reugen — Ursula is a Baltic German countess and old friend of Ritter, who lived in her estate in Peenemünde. After it had been taken over by the Nazis, she boards the Hindenburg to fly to America. She previously became acquainted to Ritter through her deceased husband who was in the same flying club with him; she went to live on her estate after he died in a plane crash. Her young daughter, Trudi, is deaf and goes to a school in Boston, living with her friends.

Karl Boerth — A rigger, and the saboteur of the airship. Boerth was a former Hitler Youth leader, but claims he became inactive because he helped build the Hindenburg. His girlfriend, Freda Halle, worked with foreigners in a French bank in Frankfurt, and her ex-lover was killed fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, leading the Gestapo to investigate.

SS/Gestapo Hauptsturmführer Martin Vogel — The antagonist of the film. Vogel is an undercover Gestapo agent posing as the official photographer for the airship. Initially, Vogel works cooperatively with Ritter, but after Ritter dismisses the suspicious behavior of some of the passengers and has apparent sympathies for Boerth and the Countess, Vogel begins to work behind Ritter's back. He also has a romantic interest in a young American passenger, Valerie Breslau, referring to her as a "Jewish model." Vogel is loosely based on Karl Otto Clemens, who was a semi-official photographer for the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei (a passenger list shown in the film lists him as "Otto Vogel") as well as Luftwaffe Major Hans-Hugo Witt, but there is no evidence that either Clemens or Witt were connected with the Gestapo.

Rigger Ludecke — A rigger who also works for the Gestapo, helping Vogel catch Boerth.

Cast

Many of the fictional characters are based on actual people. For example: Franz Ritter is based on Fritz Erdmann, Karl Boerth is based on Eric Spehl.

(*) Beside name indicates actual historical person

This was the second film released in 1975 to feature the actors William Atherton, Burgess Meredith and Richard Dysart after The Day of the Locust.

Production notes

Director Robert Wise, known for an attention to detail and background research, began to collect documents and film footage on the real-life Hindenburg for over a year at the National Archives in London, the National Air and Space Museum Library and Archives in Washington, D.C. as well as in Germany. In 1974, while casting took place in United States, pre-production photography was undertaken in Munich (doubling for Frankfurt), Milwaukee, New York and Washington, D.C. Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey would also be a primary location, but Marine Corps Air Station Tustin near Los Angeles (and the Universal Studios sound stages), where two 1,000 feet (300 m) hangars constructed for airships still existed, doubled for the original Hindenburg mooring station (MCAS Tustin officially was closed by BRAC action in 1999). Additional locations in Southern California were also chosen.

Wise also intended to shoot the entire film in black and white and not just the disaster sequence. When Universal objected, he and production designer Edward Carfagno incorporated black and dark colors in the sets to "give an impression of black-and-white in a color film."

Studio and special effects work was carried out at Sound Stage 12 in the Universal Studios complex. Wise's research was used to advantage, since the bulk of Zeppelin blueprints were destroyed in World War II. Using photographs, a recreated passenger area, gondola and superstructure of the giant airship was constructed to create a realistic exterior and interior set for the actors. A team of 80 artists and technicians working double shifts for four months, assembled a "giant Erector Set" consisting of eight tons of aluminum, 11,000 yards (10,000 m) of muslin, 24,000 feet (7,300 m) of sash cord and 2,000,000 rivets.

The Hindenburg made extensive use of matte paintings to bring the Zeppelin to life. A highly detailed 25-foot-long (7.6 m) model of the airship was "flown" via an elaborate setup where the stationary model was photographed by a mobile platform consisting of a camera and dolly on a track on Universal Studios' largest and tallest sound stage, Stage 12. For the scene where the airship drops water ballast, a matte painting was used, and sugar was dropped through a hole in the windows as water. To recreate the initial explosion of the airship, which was missed by the newsreel cameras, matte paintings and animation were used to make a superimposed explosion of the airship beside its mooring mast. The model of the Hindenburg was hung on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. along with the gondola as part of its Balloons and Airships gallery. (photo at right). When the gallery closed in 1990, the model was relocated to the outside of the museum's gift shop, while the gondola was sold to NAS Lakehurst. In 2022, the Hindenburg model was moved a second time to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center following the Smithsonian's renovation.

Newsreel footage

An interesting aspect was the film's transition from black and white to technicolor and back to grayscale, beginning with a simulated Universal Newsreel that gave an educated view to the history of the lighter-than-air craft. While a narrator talks about the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, footage of the LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II being christened in 1938 is erroneously shown, indicating the newsreel was not from 1936. This ends with images of the Hindenburg's construction, immediately transitioning to a color matte painting of the Hindenburg shown outside its hangar, and along with the opening credits the airship flies by before disappearing into the clouds.

Historical accuracy

Although the film is largely accurate to its setting, there were numerous differences between the film and reality. Some aspects were added for dramatic purposes. The scene when the fabric rips on the port fin did not happen to the Hindenburg, but a similar event occurred on the Graf Zeppelin during its maiden flight to the United States in 1928. Additionally, although the Hindenburg did have a specially constructed aluminum Blüthner baby grand piano aboard for the 1936 season, it was not aboard the final flight in 1937. While the interior of the ship was accurately recreated utilizing original blueprints and photographs, a stairway was added to the interior of the lower fin for dramatic purposes; in the real Hindenburg, access to the fin was provided by a ladder which dropped from the inside of the ship for crew members to use. Several aspects of the airship's takeoff and landing procedures were also inaccurate.

The zeppelin hangar seen when the Hindenburg departs Germany for the United States was actually one of two World War II US Navy blimp hangars located at Tustin, California, the architecture of which is quite different from the actual German zeppelin hangars (the same Tustin hangar is also used in the scenes at Lakehurst; two similar blimp hangars were constructed at Lakehurst in 1943, but did not exist in 1937).

The mooring mast used in the landing sequence is black, while the real mooring mast was red and white. During the landing sequence the ship drops water ballast through windows near the nose instead of at the tail section, as it did during the final approach.

A few anachronisms occur as well: At the beginning of the story, two senior Luftwaffe Generals discuss the possibility of Colonel Franz Ritter receiving the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for actions in the Spanish Civil War. The Knight's Cross did not exist in 1937 (when the film is set), first being created at the start of World War II in 1939.

Also, at one point, Edward Douglas refers to the fact that the German car manufacturer Opel is to be taken over by General Motors "the next day." In fact, Opel had been taken over completely by General Motors during the Great Depression in 1931, six years previously. When Col. Ritter empties the fountain pen in the sink, it is clearly a modern stainless steel design with modern taps. At Berlin, there are French Citroën HY delivery vans which were built in the late 1940s. And Ursula is seen reading a paperback version of Gone With The Wind, which did not exist in paperback form in 1937.

Reception

Although well received by the public as typical "disaster movie" fare, critical reception of The Hindenburg was generally unfavorable. Roger Ebert's one-star review from the Chicago Sun-Times dismissed it as a failed project, writing: "The Hindenburg is a disaster picture, all right. How else can you describe a movie that cost $12 million and makes people laugh out loud at all the wrong times?" Vincent Canby of The New York Times described the film as "brainless" and "pricelessly funny at the wrong moments ... Yet I wouldn't have missed a single foolish frame of it. I sort of like disaster movies, even bad ones, for reasons that have to do with the special effects and with other things that probably go back to the prenatal state." Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote "Dull and formula scripting, a lack of real empathy and phoned-in acting shoot down some good though unspectacular special effects." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four, faulting it for "really dumb dialog" and a "fake story" but finding it redeemed somewhat by "terrific" special effects and David Shire's music. He concluded, "As it stands, the only way to enjoy the film is to get in the mood for trash and to laugh a lot." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote "Technically, the film is a triumph; dramaturgically, it is somewhat less than that. Its climax is terrifyingly, horrendously spectacular, but the two hours getting there are not as gripping as they might have been." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote "The film has begun to drag by the time the climactic explosion occurs, and the climax itself is somewhat less than thrilling. Wise has tried to integrate the newsreel footage of the disaster with vignettes of the fictional characters inside attempting to escape, but there's an impossible esthetic gulf between the documentary and staged scenes." Pauline Kael voiced her disapproval of the film and Wise's direction with the phrase "One gasbag meets another." Similar reactions were recounted, and when the film eventually made it to television screens, the TV Guide summed up a near-universal review: "This insipid, boring, implausible, senseless, deliciously funny, and expensively mounted film... There's no tension whatsoever and none of the characters is remotely interesting, let alone sympathetic."

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 31% based on 16 reviews.

The Hindenburg opened on Christmas Day 1975 (Thursday) and in its opening four-day weekend (Thursday to Sunday) grossed $3,729,907 from 289 theatres in the United States.

Awards

The Hindenburg was noted for its use of special effects and won two Special Achievement Academy Awards in 1976:

Peter Berkos for Sound Effects Editing

Albert Whitlock and Glen Robinson for Visual Effects

The film was also nominated for Best Art Direction (Art Direction: Edward Carfagno; Set Decoration: Frank R. McKelvy), Best Cinematography and Best Sound (Leonard Peterson, John A. Bolger Jr., John L. Mack and Don Sharpless).

In the same year, The Hindenburg was nominated for an "Eddie" in the category of Best Edited Feature Film in the American Cinema Editors Awards.

Home media

The Hindenburg has been released on a number of home video formats, including VHS, Betamax, Laser Disc, and DVD. On February 7, 2017, the film was released on Blu-ray in a bare bones edition as a Wal-Mart exclusive, and a wide release followed on May 2, 2017.