Jane Anderson on Jackie Cochran

Credits

Director: Julie Hébert
DP: Johanna Coelho
Sound Recordist: Nancy Kwon
Producer: Courtney Graham
Assoc. Producer: Cara Harrington
Production Assistant: Jasmine Swift
Editor: Farrel Levy
Dialogue Editor: Daniel Raphael

Topics

“She wanted to get other women up in the air.”

Pilot Jackie Cochran broke every aviation record she could find, speed, altitude, you-name-it. Jackie was a wit and a powerful personality, soaring from the humblest of beginnings to the upper echelons of American society and politics. Emmy Award winning writer/director Jane Anderson tells the story of the complicated soul of Jackie Cochran, a take-no-prisoners woman who busted through every barrier in her way but in the end of her life erected barriers for other women. A thrilling woman, a cautionary tale.

Our storytellers share these astonishing women with us conversationally and unscripted; we fact-check afterwards and note any major discrepancies for accuracy. In this film, it's stated that Jackie Cochran "broke the sound barrier." While Jackie is said to be the first woman to fly supersonic, the sound barrier was “broken” in flight on October 14th, 1947, when a Bell X-1 jet piloted by Chuck Yeager went supersonic for the first time.

Storyteller

Jane Anderson

Jane Anderson’s most recently wrote the screenplay film for The Wife, starring Glenn Close. Her other feature films include The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio which she also directed. Television credits include: Olive Kitteridge, starring Frances McDormand for which she received an Emmy Award and Writer’s Guild Award; The Positively True Adventures of the Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (Emmy Award and Writer’s Guild Award). She also wrote and directed Normal, The Baby Dance, When Billie Beat Bobby and the first segment of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk II which starred Vanessa Redgrave. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway and in theaters around the country. Her latest play, Mother of the Maid, premiered at the Public Theater in 2018 and starred Glenn Close.

Featured Woman

Jackie Cochran

Jackie Cochran rose from a poverty-stricken childhood to become one of history’s most accomplished female aviators. She was the first woman to break the sound barrier and an important contributor to the formation of the wartime Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).

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