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"Ze plane! Ze plane!" (also sometimes quoted as De plane! De plane! or The plane! The plane!) is a cultural reference to the typical opening of Fantasy Island, a television series which aired in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Each episode began with the diminutive Tattoo (played by Hervé Villechaize), one of the main characters, spotting the seaplane approaching the island and running up a tower and excitedly yelling, with a French accent, "Ze Plane! Ze Plane!" and ringing a bell.
The actual plane
The actual aircraft used in the series was a SCAN Type 30, a license-built copy of a Grumman Widgeon seaplane, U.S. registry N4453. It was manufactured by the Société Construction Aéro-Navale (aka SCAN) in Rochelle, France in 1951 but not initially completed with engines because of unsatisfactory results achieved previously on other SCAN Type 30 Widgeons with various engines available there. Instead, it was disassembled and stored until 1967 when it was imported into the US, re-assembled, and finally completed using seven cylinder, 300 hp Lycoming model R-680 radial engines in what was called a Mansdorf Gannet conversion. It was one of the few Widgeons converted with radial engines, and it is often mistaken for a Grumman Goose. Note however that although it is technically certified under the same FAA type certificate no.A-734 because it was not built actually by Grumman, it is incorrect to identify it as a Grumman Widgeon; it is properly identified as a SCAN Type 30 Widgeon because it was built actually by SCAN.
It was rented from a local charter company by a contract production company, and almost all of the footage of the plane used throughout the series and films was shot in one day and recycled over the entire run. During the filming of the actual episodes, the guests climbed out of a paper-mache and plywood mock-up of the back of the plane.
Prior to being owned by the charter company, the plane belonged to author Richard Bach, which he mentions briefly in his book The Bridge Across Forever (although he does not mention the television series by name, he makes it clear from the context that he is indeed talking about Fantasy Island). The aircraft was later rented or sold to parties who later used it to smuggle drugs into the United States, and it crashed in a swamp on at least one occasion. It was confiscated by the DEA and sold by the U.S. Marshals Service at auction. It again fell into the hands of other drug smugglers and was eventually confiscated and sold again. It was involved in a gear collapse accident in the 1990s and repainted deep red, so it is not as recognizable as Ze Plane of the television series when it was painted white. Ze Plane! Ze Plane! has at times been on display on the airshow circuit in the American Midwest, and was previously owned by the Ozarks Auto Show, Inc., a regional antique dealer, of Hollister, Missouri, and was stored in a hangar at the M. Graham Clark Downtown Airport near Branson, Missouri along with several other special interest aircraft. The plane was sold at the 38th annual Branson Collector Car Auction on April 16, 2016 to an undisclosed buyer for $275,000.