The Lost Zeppelin

A crew of daring adventurers braves the pitiless white wasteland of Antarctica in a bid to be the first explorers to reach the South Pole by zeppelin. Led by intrepid Commander Donald Hall and his best friend and first mate, Lt. Tom Armstrong, the expedition's progress is broadcast to the world by radio. The anxious public is riveted by news of the initial success in reaching the Pole, then horrified by news of a freak blizzard that ices the doomed airship out of the sky. No one follows the reports more desperately than Commander Hall's wife, Miriam, whose secret love affair with Lt. Armstrong was discovered by her husband the night before the two men cast off. When news of a single survivor reaches her, she must search her heart for her true love.

The Lost Zeppelin (1929) is an epic spectacle from the very earliest days of sound pictures, and the primitiveness of its audio track is more than compensated for by the amazingly realistic visual effects. Produced while Admiral Byrd was making his first expeditions to the South Pole, and only two years after Lindberg's transatlantic flight, this film captures the earliest days of the globalization of media, when radio brought these triumphs to the eager ears of millions of people around the world.

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