Juan Trippe and the Growth of International Air Travel

Less than 10 years after Pan Am had to charter a plane to save itself from potential ruin by almost failing to fulfill its contract to deliver mail to Cuba, the company was playing a starring role in a major Hollywood movie.1 China Clipper (1936)—starring, among others, Humphrey Bogart—portrayed the hard-driving Dave Logan, a pilot inspired to start his own airline after Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic. After failing to launch a domestic airline that would serve Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, Logan establishes an airline company to service the Caribbean and then sets his sights on an even bigger prize: transpacific air service from the United States to the Far East. His dreams are fulfilled by the use of a new, powerful airplane called, of course, the “China Clipper.” The film was made with Juan Trippe’s cooperation and eventually received his blessing. His associates at Pan Am were quite surprised that Trippe did not object to the final cut of the movie because the portrait of Dave Logan was not very flattering.2 A film review in the New York Times provided an apt description of the character based on Pan Am’s president: “he goads himself and his aides mercilessly toward the realization of his vision. Marriage, friendship, consideration of himself—these are sacrificed upon the altar of his ambition.”3