Airplane! watch as "Otto" takes control of the plane, inflates a female companion, and takes off. Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (collectively known as Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, or ZAZ), wrote "Airplane!" while they were performing with the Kentucky Fried Theatre, a small theatre they had founded in 1971. To obtain material for comedy routines, they routinely recorded late night television and reviewed the tapes later primarily to pull the commercials, a process Abrahams compared to "seining for fish". During one such taping process, they unintentionally recorded the 1957 film "Zero Hour!", and while scanning the commercials, found that
Babcock Airplane Corporation contract was for assembly stands on which airplane motors could be assembled. The plans called for worm gears and drives that Babcock could not produce. They turned the contract over to the LaRoe Machine Shop of Eustis, Florida, part of the pool. The LaRoe Family Home Historic District is now on the National Register of Historic Places. During World War II, Babcock constructed 60 Waco CG-4 gliders as CG-4A-BBs, in two batches. The company "was out of production by 1945. Unit cost of these CG-4A was $51,000. Their manufacturing facility was a circus tent, " states one source. Babcock Airplane