58 minutes – Drama – Black and White
Language: English
Release date: 1946
US release date: June 7, 1947
UK release date: February 2, 1948 (London)
Production company: Dominion Productions Limited
Distributor: Screen Guild Productions
Bush Pilot is a long forgotten, low-level melodrama and the only film produced by Dominion Productions Limited, a company co-owned by director Sterling Campbell, producer Larry Cromien, costar Austin Willis and Geoffrey Wood. One of a very few Canadian features made outside of Quebec during the 1940s, Bush Pilot was filmed in the Muskoka region of Ontario and tells the story of two quarrelling pilot brothers (Jack La Rue and Willis) – one good, the other bad – who fight over both the affections of a pretty girl (Rochelle Hudson) and the territory for their separate charter operations. Austin Willis was billed as “Introducing Austin Willis noted Canadian stage and radio actor to the American screen.”
Trivia: Actor John Drainie served as Dialogue Director on this film.
While many sources state the year of this film as 1947, when the Northernstars Collection acquired a reproduction of the original poster that was produced for a screening of the restored film, the date clearly shown on the poster is 1946.
Larry L. Cromien
Jack W. Ogilvie
W. Scott Darling
Gordon Burwash (additional dialogue)
Edward Hyland
Jack W. Ogilvie
Samuel Hersenhoren
Rochelle Hudson
Jack La Rue
Austin Willis
Frank Perry
Joe Carr
Florence Kennedy
Gordon Adam
Michael Lambert
Louise Campbell
Charles Emerson
Robert Christie
Gerald Rowan
Eric Clavering
James Peddie
Nancy Graham
Denis Murphy
Alene Kamins
Hilary Ward
Paul Girard
Red North
Chuck Ward
Andy Moodie
Mrs. Ward
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First published as Northernstars.net February 1, 1998
ISSN 2563 4895