Q Planes

Q Planes
Directed byTim Whelan
Arthur B. Woods
Written byBrock Williams
Jack Whittingham
Ian Dalrymple
Produced byIrving Asher
Executive producer:
Alexander Korda
StarringRalph Richardson
Laurence Olivier
Valerie Hobson
CinematographyHarry Stradling Sr.
Edited byHugh Stewart
Music byMuir Mathieson
Color processBlack and white
Production
company
Irving Asher Productions[1]
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
(UK, US)
Release date
  • 2 March 1939 (1939-03-02)
Running time
82 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£67,502[2]

Q Planes (known as Clouds Over Europe in the United States) is a 1939 British comedy spy film starring Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier and Valerie Hobson. Olivier and Richardson were a decade into their fifty-year friendship and were in the process of staging a theatrical version of Othello, with Richardson in the title role and Olivier as Iago, when this film was made.[3]

Q Planes was produced by Irving Asher, an American, with British film impresario Alexander Korda as executive producer.[4] The film was directed by an American, Tim Whelan (Sidewalks of London, and later in 1940, co-director of The Thief of Bagdad), who had lived in Britain since 1932, working for Korda at Denham Studios.

  1. ^ Morley 1977, p. 76.
  2. ^ Chapman 2022, p. 477.
  3. ^ Olivier 1982, p. 68.
  4. ^ Aldgate & Richards 1994, p. 79.