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”The nearby town of Shipley on their way to bomb a concentration of German barges across the Channel in Calais.
The Way To The Stars, an original screenplay by Terrence Rattigan (from a story by him and the film’s producer Anatole de Grunwald), takes place between 1940 and 1944.
One third of a million British men & women were killed during WWII & this film hit a nerve with British audiences at the time, making “The Way to the Stars” the most popular film of 1945.
The Way to the Stars was released in the States under the title “Johnny in the Clouds” with a running time of 87 minutes. The full length British version ran for 109 minutes.
The playwright and author Terence Rattigan, who had come across the station whilst he was attached to the RAF during the war, based his script for the film ‘The Way to The Stars’ (known in the USA as ‘Johnny in the Clouds’) on entirely fictitious events at Halfpenny Green airfield Worcestershire, now Staffordshire, 7 miles West of Wolverhampton, which in the film he called ‘Halfpenny Field.’
Originally the intention was to shoot some of the externals at Halfpenny Green airfield but when Two Cities began to make the film in 1945 the station was still operational, so nearby Wolverhampton Municipal Airport (then at Pendeford to the north of the town, today covered by a housing estate) was used instead. In the latter half of the film ‘Halfpenny Field’ is an operational station for both British aircraft & American B-17 s, an impossibility for the real Halfpenny Green because the runways were too short. If squadron markings on the Flying Fortresses are any indication it would seem that the film footage of planes taking off and landing, apparently shot during April and May 1945, was made at the 348 BG base at Grafton-Underwood, in Northamptonshire, which was an actual combat unit at the time.
With the end of the war in Europe Halfpenny Green’s role as a beam-landing training school came to an end and on a cold grey afternoon in December 1945 the last Bedford five-ton lorry rumbled out of the gates. No. 3
(Observer) Advanced Flying Unit was officially disbanded on December 11th.”
http://www.plane-crazy.net/movies/31.htm
”Filming Locations:
Halfpenny field
LOCATION:
RAF Catterick (now Marne barracks) –
Catterick,
North Yorkshire
Market square with cross
LOCATION:
The market place –
Bedale,
North Yorkshire
The local pub
LOCATION:
Golden Lion Hotel
114 High Street,
Northallerton,
North Yorkshire
The US Army Air Force base
LOCATION:
Constable Burton Hall –
Constable Burton,
North Yorkshire
http://www.ukonscreen.com/jedjebb-The-Way-To-The-Stars-(1945).html