MovieChat Forums > The Dawn Patrol (1938) Discussion > von Richter, the Red Baron

von Richter, the Red Baron


It's clearly the Red Baron they mean to be talking about in the film, but they call him von Richter rather than his real name, von Richthofen. Why did they do this? Was it just because the real story of how the baron was shot down was too well known?

Funnily enough, at one point the Basil Rathbone character calls him something like "von Richthofer" -- there was definitely an "o" in there. Why was that? Was that scene filmed very early and they later changed their minds about it? Or did Rathbone just slip? Or did Rathbone disagree with the pronunciation and slip his preference in?

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[deleted]

That was the name used in the original version of this movie so it seems that they just carried it over to this version and there was no real decision making involved in this version. Not sure why the name was changed in the first version though. Could have just been a whim of the original story writer.

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I think Von Richter is supposed to be a composite of the whole strong unstoppable German forces. Yes, a definite lift off of Von Richthofen and I was puzzled during the whole film until the end....


(spoiler)......








He shoots Von Richter down. If they had shot Von Richthofen down it would've been inaccurate to his actual demise.

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Or it could be that there were more than one feared german ace, and one had a name similar to Von Richthofen.
Or else it's pure fiction and they can use whatever names they want.

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I wish they had made von Richter a bit less of a two-dimensional pantomime villain, sneering wickedly as he sends teenage Tommies to their fiery deaths.

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