The War After the War

A new documentary tells the story of the volunteer American fly boys in the Israeli War for Independence

What compelled me to make a film about military pilots? It’s not my norm. I’m not the person who reads historical accounts of different wars, and I don’t know a lot about planes. I am an animal lover; I would have been the person wanting to do a film about a lost puppy. So why this one?

I had just finished executive producing a documentary called Elusive Justice and received an email with an article attached and a note saying, “This should be your next film.” The article was an obituary, titled “Father of the Israeli Air Force Dies at 94.”

I don’t usually go around reading obituaries, and that title didn’t do anything for me, but as I started reading I discovered they were talking about an American.

His name was Al Schwimmer, a Trans World Airlines flight engineer who got involved in Israel’s War for Independence by recruiting his buddies to smuggle planes into the area, just as it had been voted into statehood. Israel had been under British rule for nearly 30 years, and when they decided to pull out, in 1948, all of the surrounding areas knew there would be a war. It would be a land grab, and Israel had no way to defend itself; they didn’t have bullets, let alone planes, which was where Schwimmer and his friends came in.

As I read on, the story got wilder: the FBI was chasing them because they’d broken a U.S. embargo; they had a secret underground operation in the States and around the world to collect money and arms; they formed fake airlines and offices, and held secret meetings in hotels.

It sounded like a cool espionage piece, like a Hollywood picture! It sounded like a Spielberg film, to be honest. But it was true.

It was a real-life combo of Catch Me If You Can, Indiana Jones — because the guys had tons of swagger, in their leather jackets, with women swooning over them — and Band of Brothers.

I had never gone out on my own before to be a producer in a big way. I’d worked on little things, consulted, and executive produced, which is more about raising money, but I’d never said, “I’m taking the bull by the balls and am going to make this happen.” But this seemed like the perfect project, so I decided to take it on.

I often say just because my name is Spielberg doesn’t mean I know everything,
but I do know some people!

And those people guided me through this process. The first guy I went to James Moll, who is an Academy, Emmy, and Grammy Award-winning filmmaker. James went to the “Steven Spielberg School of Filmmaking,” so I asked asked for a quick crash course in the “James Moll School of Filmmaking.”

After I picked his brain, I started to look for a director. Roberta Grossman’s (Hava Nagila, Independent Lens) name came to me from three different sources. I heard how collaborative she was, and I saw her work, and I knew I wanted to reach out to her. But when I tried, she didn’t answer my emails or my calls. I thought, damn, I thought I would be able to get through here! But apparently Roberta thought it was a joke. She had some line going, “If Spielberg calls, tell him I’ll have to call him back.” Finally I got through to her, after she checked me out to see if Steven really had a sister. And when we sat down to talk, she was hooked.

With no script and not a lot of our shit together, we knew the first step was to talk to the guys themselves. They are between the ages of 89 and 95, so we were so lucky to even be able to sit down with them, to hear the story from them directly. They made for such incredible characters, with such vivid memories of this time in their lives. Sitting with them, hearing them recall every detail, was fascinating. Apparently there was a lot of skirt chasing. Especially Giddy Lichtman, he told us a lot of details we couldn’t put in the film unless we wanted it rated X. We had to tone him down just a tad. But truly, the guys wrote the movie.

Mostly we were surprised. For guys who ended up playing a very key role in Israeli history, they were totally not connected to Israel or to their Jewish heritage.

They were not raised with strong Jewish identities; in fact, their Jewishness got them beat up on a regular basis on the way home from school. They had completely different reasons for getting into this fray. When they got back from World War II, they were decorated pilots who couldn’t get jobs, because commercial airlines wouldn’t hire Jewish pilots at the time. It was hard for these heroes to come back to the United States and sell shoes. Between being unsettled in that way, feeling a sense of duty to the Jewish people (knowing there would be another war, and that newly liberated people would face another genocide), and missing the action, the guys decided to step in.

Filming was incredible, and surprising in the best way. We shot at different aviation museums all around the country, like the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California, and the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, New York. We wanted to make it easy for these guys to get to. Once we had them there, you’d be looking at this 90-year-old man, and you’d take an elbow so they didn’t trip over a cord, and they’d pull away, like, “I’m perfectly capable of getting there on my own!” There was a lot of spunk there.

When the questions started, I was amazed by the emotion, and the sensitivity.

I didn’t expect that, and I think a lot of it was because we were a female team, and the machismo fell to the wayside. They talked about their moms and cried about making their fathers proud. They reached a level of depth that we didn’t expect.

The interviews themselves were a lot about preserving their strength; talking for three to four hours when you’re in in your 90s can be exhausting. And we wanted to be accurate. We knew we were creating a visual testimony, and we wanted it to hold water for years to come.

The title, Above and Beyond, was a complete accident. I had called the project Above It All originally, but I knew that could be interpreted as pompous. So we had a running list of titles, including The Fly Boys of 48 and The Volunteers. We’d made a little reel for fundraising and it needed a title, and I said, “Just for now, let’s call it Above and Beyond.” It was supposed to be a password-protected video, only for donors and not on social media, but somehow everyone sent it to every person they knew!

A million views later, I thought, “Damn, if I change the name now, people will get lost,” so Above and Beyond stuck.

It is the perfect title, because it is exactly what they did. They didn’t have to take this risk. They did their duty for the United States in World War II, and then went beyond that call. They risked everything unnecessarily, in a war that wasn’t theirs, to help a fellow man. Their role was much more significant in the context of the War of Independence than it was in World War II; in World War II, they were little pieces of giant machine, and in Israel, they were a much larger componet. They had a profound impact on the outcome of the war, and on Israel’s ability to save lives and establish a nation.

All of them said it was the most important thing they did in their entire lives.

Above and Beyond: The Untold True Story is available through iTunes, with extended features, on April 28, 2015.

Produced by Nancy Spielberg
Directed by Roberta Grossman
Written by Sophie Sartan