The Non-Stop Flight

The United States Navy launches a historic non-stop flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. A fatal miscalculation causes the plane to run out of fuel, forcing the brave airmen to put it down on an uncharted island in the Pacific. There they meet Marie, a beautiful young girl clad in leaves and animal skins. She was left there by her father, a crooked sea captain who has been using the island to smuggle captured Chinese immigrants as slaves. When his latest captives stage a violent uprising, the airmen and Marie must find a way off the island before their interrupted journey comes to a tragic end...

The Non-Stop Flight is the last of eight pictures director Emory Johnson made for the Film Booking Offices of America (or FBO), a small, low-budget distributor who focused on small towns and rural areas. As such, they often emphasized action and stunts more than the sophisticated fare produced by the big studios, though as historian William K. Everson once noted, Johnson's efforts for them were "decidedly non-assembly line." The Non-Stop Flight features intense, moody lighting and camera angles, an engaging storyline, and even some surprising bits of nudity in addition to the aerial acrobatics promised by the film's title. Unusually, all of Johnson's films were collaborations between him and his mother Emillie. Emory was originally a working actor in the teens and twenties, and started getting his mother jobs as a scenarist beginning with The Sea Lion (1921), in which he starred with Hobart Bosworth. She wrote the screenplays for all eight of his films for FBO. After The Non-Stop Flight, he signed a contract to make films for Universal, provided Emillie could continue to provide the storylines. This is probably the only instance of such a maternal collaboration in film history. Seen briefly in close-up during the concluding revolt sequence is a young, 14-year-old Toshia Mori in her first screen role. The exotic, Japanese-born Mori was the only non-Caucasian actress ever selected to be a WAMPAS Baby Star. She would receive great critical acclaim for her role in Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), playing a part originally intended for Anna May Wong.