X-15 (film) - Production

Production

Originally planned around the earlier NASA Bell X-2 program, writer/producer and later screenwriter, Tony Lazzarino shopped the project around Hollywood in 1958, appearing under several titles: Exit, Time of Departure and Beyond the Unknown. Lazzarino was successful in teaming with Bob Hope, who wanted to produce the film. After approaching the USAF for stock footage of the X-2 flights, the Pentagon made a recommendation that the newly introduced X-15 aircraft held out much more promise as a film subject. With $350,000 assigned for primary shooting, with an additional $72,500 for post-production work, by August 1960, pre-production had moved from Hope Enterprises (Hope’s film company) to Frank Sinatra’s Essex Productions. After reviewing the initial draft screenplay, Pentagon suggestions clarified that the X-15 test program would be the focus for the upcoming production.

Pentagon assistance was largely responsible for the attention to detail and accurate portrayal of the NASA program. Much of the principal photography for the film was undertaken at Edwards Air Force Base and the NASA High-Speed Flight Station (now the Dryden Flight Research Center) in California, with the direct assistance of NASA, United States Air Force and North American Aviation. The film featured carefully edited NASA footage of X-15 flights intercut with original photography, with a minimum of special effects work using animation. In a pivotal scene of the chase plane crashing, X-15 used US Air Force archival footage of the "Sabre dance" crash of a North American F-100 Super Sabre. Another critical scene involved the X-15-3 destroyed on the test stand when the rocket engine exploded, using stock footage of the accident.