Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is Francis Ford Coppola's tribute to automotive innovator Preston Tucker.

A combination of comedy, drama, and biography aptly titled "Tucker: The Man and His Dream."

The 1988 movie was a collaboration between Coppola's Zoetrope Studios and George Lucas' Lucas Film Limited.

It stars, Jeff Bridges Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Elias Koteas, Frederick Forrest, and Christian Slater.

There are also cameos by Dean Stockwell as Howard Hughes and by Jeff Bridge's father, veteran actor Lloyd Bridges.

as a Michigan senator.

Preston Tucker is a man fascinated by engines and especially by automobiles from an early age.

He's had some successes and several failures in business ventures that have included racing cars, aircraft and a battle vehicle for the Second World War that introduced a new type of gun turret.

Tucker, his wife and their four children live in a house next to his machine shop near Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Once the war is over, Americans are anxious to buy new cars.

But the big three automobile companies, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors, are slow to offer consumers anything new.

Tucker, on the other hand, is determined to produce a safer, faster, and more dependable sort of automobile for American families.

His planned "Tucker Torpedo" will be the car of the future, boasting safety glass, seat belts, a pop-out windshield, disc brakes and swiveling headlights to make turning the car at night easier and safer.

In addition to his team of skilled mechanics, Tucker hires a young designer, Alex Tremulis, and seeks out a financier, Abe Karatz, to help him secure money for the project.

With his help, Tucker raises money through his stock offering and the sale of Tucker Automobile Dealerships.

He manages to acquire a factory space previously used to produce planes during the war and begins work to produce a prototype of the Tucker Torpedo, but interference from the big three automakers and their friends in government as well as production, financial and time schedule problems put Tucker and his team to the test as they struggle to make his dream of the car of the future a reality.

Preston Tucker was born in Capac, Michigan on September 21st, 1903.

The son of a railroad engineer who died when Preston was only a few years old.

Obsessed with automobiles, he learned to drive at 11 and by 16 was buying and refurbishing cars to sell at a profit.

He attended the Cass Technical High School in Detroit but quit to work as an office boy at Cadillac.

He later joined the police force in Lincoln Park, Michigan and married his wife Vera in 1923.

They leased the gasoline station that Vera ran while Preston worked on the assembly line at the Ford plant.

He later moved into auto sales and became interested in automobile racing, moving his family to Indianapolis to be closer to the Indie 500 Speedway.

There he worked with Harry Miller who built engines for racing cars.

They were partners in various business ventures until Miller's death in 1943.

In 1939, Tucker moved again, this time to Ypsilanti, Michigan where he set up the Ypsilanti machine and tool company.

There he created an armored battle vehicle with a top speed of 100 miles per hour.

But the United States Army wanted something only about a third that fast.

Tucker was also involved in various projects involving aircraft during the war.

After the Second World War, with the American public clamoring for new car designs, the big three Detroit automakers were essentially offering the same models they'd sold in 1941, despite the advent of new technologies and new concerns with safer driving.

It's hard for us today to appreciate just how unsafe driving was in the 1940s.

Not only were both drivers and pedestrians often recklessly unsafe, cars themselves had few of the safety features we now take for granted.

Auto windows, which shatter in accidents, dashboards were unpadded steel, seat belts were virtually unheard of and engines, brakes, tires and headlights were all unreliable.

The market was ready for small automakers to step up and offer something new.

Studebaker was the first to offer an all new post-war car model but Tucker had a different plan, a safer, more stylish car with innovative features and the look of tomorrow.

"Tucker: The Man and His Dream" was a real passion project for Francis Ford Coppola.

His father, Carmine, was one of the original investors in Tucker's stock and bought one of the 50 cars Tucker's plant managed to produce.

Francis first had the idea of a movie about Preston Tucker while attending the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the early sixties.

But it wasn't until 1973, after the success of "The Godfather," that he began serious work on the project.

He originally conceived of "Tucker" as an experimental musical with music and lyrics by Broadway legends Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green.

The story would've focused on Preston Tucker but also included other American inventors and businessmen such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and Andrew Carnegie.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, those plans were scrapped when Zoetrope Studios declared bankruptcy after the twin movie debacles of "One from the Heart" in 1982 and "The Cotton Club" in 1984.

It was George Lucas who encouraged Coppola to revive the idea for Tucker in 1986, calling it the best film Francis had ever been involved with.

He encouraged Coppola to drop the concept of a musical and instead makes something like Frank Capra's movies about the meaning of the American dream, especially Capra's 1939 "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Lucas also agreed to be the film's executive producer and offered Coppola use of the resources of both Lucas Film Limited and Industrial Light and Magic.

At the same time, Lucas himself had produced two critical failures in 1986, the fantasy musical "Labyrinth" and the disastrous superhero comedy "Howard The Duck."

Distributors balked at the proposed 24 million budget so Lucas decided to cover the costs himself.

It's nice to have friends.

Coppola consulted continuously with Preston Tucker's children and grandchildren while developing and producing the film and keeping with the movie's emphasis on the role of family and friends in Tucker's life and work.

Coppola was developing the film in the aftermath of a family tragedy of his own when his son Gio was killed in a speedboat accident at the age of 22.

What is sometimes called family values is an important theme in the movie and the sepia toned cinematography gives the impression of looking through an album of particularly well shot family photographs.

In fact, Jeff Bridges studied the family's home movies to get a sense of Preston Tucker's mannerisms and his way of carrying himself.

The family in turn, heartedly approved a Bridges' portrayal of Tucker and allowed Bridges' to wear a black pearl ring and a pair of cuff links that had belonged to Preston while the film was being shot.

Preston's son John said, "Bridges has got it all in the mannerisms and the look.

My father was very positive, always thinking of what came next.

Jeff captures that."

Other enthusiastic participants in "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" were the members of the Tucker Automobile Club of America.

47 of the original 51 Tuckers still existed when the film was made, and many were in excellent condition.

The production borrowed 21 of these original Tuckers and used them extensively throughout the film in both factory and street scenes.

No original Tuckers were harmed during production of the film.

The crash scene instead featured three separate artificial Tuckers.

The before with a fiberglass body, a Studebaker modified to look like a Tucker for the rollover and another fiberglass after version on a Ford LTD chassis.

Both Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas had two Tuckers each.

Although Lucas later sold one of his in 2005 for over $385,000.

"Tucker: The Man and His Dream" received mixed to positive reviews, most of them praising the performances of both Jeff Bridges and Martin Landau, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

A critic for Variety wrote, "The true story of a great American visionary who was thwarted, if not destroyed, by the established order.

Tucker represents the sunniest imaginable telling of an at least partly tragic episode in recent history."

The film failed to earn back its $24 million production budget, but initiated at least one significant financial benefit elsewhere.

The film sparked renewed interest in the Tucker automobile and a boost in the value of the remaining cars.

In 2008, a low mileage Tucker fetched over $1 million at auction.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.