Frank Capra's wistful 1937 fantasy, Lost Horizon, begins dramatically with a chaotic mob scene at an airfield in war-torn Baskul, China, highlighted by a spectacular explosion and fire. In the midst of the fray, British diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) is managing the evacuation of 90 Westerners from the melee. But time is running out; he and a disparate party of five barely escape on the last plane to take flight. Struggling to board and flee with Conway are his younger brother, George (John Howard), Lovett (Edward Everett Horton), a paleontologist, Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), a businessman, and Gloria (Isabel Jewell), a floozy. Unbeknownst to the passengers, their European pilot, a crony of Conway's, was forcibly removed from the cockpit just before take-off and replaced by an Asian flyer.
