Battle to win the skies

Press, 2 September 1989, Page 22

Battle to win the skies

Near the turn of the century, two uneducated bicycle mechanics, Wilbur and Orville Wright, begin tinkering with gliders on the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk.

The story of their mad dash to win the skies and the beginnings of modem aviation is told in Sunday night’s film, “The Winds of Kitty Hawk” (7.45 on Two).

After more than three years and dozens of crashes, the Wright brothers solve the technical problems that have stumped the best engineers in America and make the world’s first powered flight. Ironically their success at flying marks only the beginning and not the end of their struggle, and they encounter new competitors avid to conquer the skies.

The American Army, to whom they had hoped to sell the aeroplane, had no faith in it and refused to test it.

Another technological heavyweight, Alexander Graham Bell, the creator of the telephone, steps into the arena and decides to try to beat the Wright brothers at their own game. Bell hires daredevil Glenn Curtiss (Scott Hylands) to pirate the key secrets of their aeroplane, and soon he is winging his own version of the Wrights’ invention.

In a final dramatic confrontation, Wilbur challenges Curtiss to a difficult flying competition, proving to the entire world which man is the true master of the winds of Kitty Hawk. Michael Moriarty, who plays Wilbur Wright, is a talented actor of both stage and screen. He won a Tony Award for his supporting role opposite Katherine Hepburn in the TV production of “The Glass Menagerie.” He also won an Emmy in 1978 for his performance as a Nazi in “Holocaust.”

He stars with David Huffman as Orville Wright and John Randolph as Alexander Graham Bell.