Steve Crosby found what he was looking for mere moments after stepping onto the set of Masters of the Air.
Scanning the reconstructed World War II barracks, Crosby’s eyes darted to a bedside table in the modified Officer’s Quarters, where a photo he’d seen every day of his childhood was perfectly repositioned.
“I bet that’s Dad’s bunk,” Crosby gestured. His father, Harry Crosby, had kept that photo of his wife, Jean, atop his nightstand his entire adult life. “I took a look in the little side table and there next to the fake bunk of my dad are fake letters from my mother.”
MORE: Masters of the Air is worthy of its place alongside Band of Brothers and The Pacific
Lieutenant Harry Crosby flew as a navigator in World War II as part of the 100th Bomb Group. Nicknamed the “Bloody Hundredth,” the 100th Bomb Group is the subject of Apple TV+’s highly-acclaimed new limited series, Masters of the Air. Crosby, portrayed by the relatively new but immensely talented Anthony Boyle (Tetris), is the narrator of the series, taking the viewer on the emotional and treacherous journey that was aviation in the 1940s.
This project has been a long time coming. Rebecca Hutchinson, Harry Crosby’s daughter, was first approached in 2016 as Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg began the process of creating a high-flying sibling to HBO’s Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010).
In 2017, Hutchinson met producer Kirk Saduski and writer and co-executive producer John Orloff at a 100th Bomb Group Foundation event.
“[Saduski and Orloff] had read our dad’s book and clearly were interested in it and were appreciative of the specific kinds of stories that he tells about his colleagues and his fellow soldiers,” Hutchinson said.
Crosby’s book, A Wing and a Prayer, was also heavily utilized by Boyle when preparing for his role.
“He’s so funny in it,” Boyle said of Harry. “It’s obviously about the hardships of war and his life, but he comes at everything with such self-deprecation and really light humor that you can’t help but fall in love with him on the page.”
Hutchinson called the collaboration “a wonderful experience.”
“We have provided photographs, we have provided audio, tapes of Dad’s voice, we have provided letters,” she added in an interview with For The Win.
According to his daughter, Crosby saved everything, and making copies was his absolute favorite thing to do: “He loved copy machines. In fact, it’s one of the last things he gave up at his assisted living facility when he was in his 90s.”
Hutchinson even heard from Saduski frequently throughout the filming process. He’d call to ask how they’d think their father would react to a situation or if they had any further information on a specific mission.
And although their father wasn’t particularly loquacious about his time in the war, there were some instances in which he would share his experiences.
“My dad always cut my hair when I was a kid,” Crosby shared. “I would go into my parents’ bathroom and sit on a stool … then Dad would tell the story of a mission. So all these missions — Regensburg, Bremen, Munster — I’ve heard these time after time.”
After all was said and done, all four Crosby children — Steve, April, Jeff and Rebecca — got to meet Boyle at the Los Angeles premiere of Masters of the Air. Boyle was nervous, to say the least, at the prospect of meeting the very real children of this character he had been playing.
“Suddenly you’re confronted with the fact that you’re playing a real person whose flesh and blood are about to meet you and judge you and see you and say, ‘Oh, that’s not my dad, my dad wouldn’t say that. My dad wouldn’t lift a cup like that, he always lifted his cups like this,'” Crosby said. “You go, ‘Oh God how is this going to go down.'”
But that nervousness quickly evaporated when they all met up after the showing.
“They seemed to dig it. They seemed to have enjoyed what I had done,” Boyle said of the premiere. “I felt like I was holding onto a breath … I got the sort of seal of approval from them. I don’t care if the critics say it was [expletive], I got his children’s approval. That meant a great deal to me.”
For Boyle, the emotion truly hit when he met Steve and recalled Crosby’s narration at the end of the series. “‘I’ve got a son. I’ve got a life to start,’ and I’m suddenly looking at the son, and he’s telling me about all the things he had done and achieved.”
Boyle shouldn’t have been nervous at all as the Crosby children were more than pleased with his portrayal of their father.
“We loved it,” Rebecca said enthusiastically. “We loved it, and we loved him.”
The first four episodes of Masters of the Air are streaming now on Apple TV+.
