There’s also some great gags like Pete being dragged through a church steeple and then to the ground, having the church bells wrapped around him as he clanks his way into a mail bag to be captured. I think The Mail Pilot might be my new favorite of 1933. Disney found a formula that works with Mickey in the 1932-33 era, and it makes me pretty happy just to be watching the greatness.While working various jobs, Saint-Exupéry began to write stories inspired by his experiences as a pilot.Ĭonsidering I’ve said that about three times now, it shows you how high the quality of these shorts is. He published his first work, “The Aviator,” in 1926, the same year that he returned to flying as a mail pilot with the aviation company Aéropostale in Toulouse, covering routes between France, Spain and North Africa. The remainder of Saint-Exupéry’s life would be defined by the intertwining of his dual occupations as aviator and author, with the former providing the inspiration for his literary work. In 1927, Saint-Exupéry was placed in charge of an airfield in the Sahara. His experiences there informed his first novel, Southern Mail, which celebrated the courage of pilots, and was published in 1929. His similarly themed Night Flight was published in 1931 after he returned from a two-year posting in Argentina, where he had helped to establish an air mail system. Night Flight would become his first true literary success, receiving the Prix Femina literary prize and later being adapted into a 1933 Hollywood film starring John Barrymore, Helen Hayes and Clark Gable. However, from a literary perspective, his most important work during this period was the children’s fable for adults, The Little Prince. The poetic and mystical tale of a pilot stranded in the desert and his conversation with a young prince from another planet, it was written and illustrated by Saint-Exupéry and published in both French and English in the United States in 1943, and later in more than 200 other languages. #The mail pilot 1933 original titles full#.