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About the Other Comment


There are two comments of "The FBI Story". One is mine. But the other asks why the scene of an aircraft blowing up was cut prior to 9/11.

I believe I can shed some light on that. Starting in the 1970's, constant hijackings and plane explosions made people very uneasy. Dozens of planes were hijacked during this period, and that probably explains the editing of this film.

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I don't know about that. I'm watching the recently released DVD of The FBI Story right now, and the segment with the plane getting blown up is how the movie begins. So maybe there's an edited version floating around, but the officially released version has that sequence, just at the beginning.

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In the recently released DVD version the scene where the aircraft is blown up, the events leading up to it, and the FBI's investigation of it, appears in the prologue, right before the opening credits.

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It was on TCM this weekend intract

See some stars here
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... and the FBI's investigation of it, appears in the prologue, right before the opening credits.
I've seen the film a number of times over the years and this is how I always remember it beginning.🐭

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I've been watching this movie for 40-plus years and never once have I seen that opening cut out. I don't know what "other comment" the OP is referring to, but whoever claims to have seen the film with that sequence cut must have seen some one-shot local broadcast of it cut.

I did once come across an exceptionally weird cut that I noted on another thread that may still be kicking around here. It was a broadcast of this film on Cinemax in I think the 90s and was in the party scene in 1945 where the Hardestys get the telegram of their son's death in combat. At the party, when somebody compliments the cake, Chip (Stewart) tells his new son-in-law that since he's married to her (his daughter) it really should be devil's food. Believe it or not, this line was cut, and you could tell it wasn't just a transmission error or some glitch in the print because in order to bridge the gap where the line should have been they cut in a quick shot lifted from another part of the scene. This was plainly a deliberate cut -- but by whom? Some Christian fundamentalist on Cinemax's technical staff who found it a satanic reference? I mean, get a grip. But I never saw it again.

The only other difference I ever saw was that, also in the 90s, for a time they were using a print that substituted the modern WB logo for the original one in the film. Warner has a bad habit of doing this a lot. But the real one was eventually put back and is on VHS and DVD.

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I'm pleasantly surprised at the amazing attention to detail some people have regarding movies they've seen years ago. I'm watching it now on TCM and I would not be able to recall these small differences.

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