Airport '77 | 1977
Surely the sight alone of Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) would send the crew, never mind the passengers, into a panic. To add variety to the midair crisis plot, the plane in Airport ’77 plummets to the bottom of the ocean (remember when the Bermuda Triangle was fashionable?).
A cast of Hollywood stalwarts gamely bounce about on a jet set mounted on cantilevers in the Universal Studio, Hollywood.
The museum-home of millionaire Philip Stevens (James Stewart) is in Florida. It’s Villa Vizcaya, 3251 South Miami Avenue at 32nd Road in Coconut Grove on the coast of South Miami.
A familiar location, you can also see this Italianate mansion in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, Iron Man 3, Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday, and its grounds in Absence of Malice.
More scenes were filmed at Burbank Airport – now Burbank Bob Hope Airport, 2627 North Hollywood Way, Burbank; Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), One World Way (again); and Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
The offshore filming was, as is often the case, around the San Diego area, while underwater scenes were filmed on the Universal backlot and at Wakulla Springs State Park, 465 Wakulla Park Drive, Wakulla Springs, near Tallahassee, Florida (a regular subaqua location – seen in Creature From the Black Lagoon), where a 70-foot mockup of the 747 jet was placed into the spring basin.
In 1993, sinceAirport '77 was filmed here, Wakulla Springs State Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
