Operation Haylift

Pleasant low-budget fare about a topic Hollywood never had much time for-- the real problems of family farms. In years past, severe winters across the plains and mountain states often devastated cattle herds that perished from starvation. Trucking hay to the stranded herds often proved impossible, leaving farmers no choice but to absorb the loss.Their plight is dramatized here as a farm family headed by ex-flier Bill Williams faces just such a winter. But then he runs into old airforce pal Tom Brown and one of them gets the grand idea of organizing discharged WWII fliers into a haylift operation. Where trucks can't go, airplanes can. After all, if the Berlin airlift (1948) could feed a city, why not feed a starving herd. Maybe it's not glamorous, but it is resourceful.

The movie benefits greatly from good, gritty location photography. Also, the Williams farm house and family has the look and feel of the unvarnished real thing. I expect the production was motivated by cast members, since journeyman character actor Joe Sawyer is credited as co-writer-- (the other co-writer Dean Riesner has a small part, but would one day become one of tinsel town's highest paid screen-writers). Airlifting hay to freezing bovines is certainly not the sort of material that the studios would have bothered with. Nonetheless, it's a nice period-piece of low-key entertainment that proves once again how Hollywood's talent pool goes far beyond the big names.

Lippert Pictures who usually produced films of not really good quality, did a very fine docudrama on a joint effort by the United States Air Force and the Department of Agriculture dropping bales of hay over several thousand square miles of northern Nevada to feed cattle and sheep. This film was no doubt a great recruiting tool for the newly formed Air Force. The story that accompanied the scenes of Haylift was easy to take as well.

And the story was about two brothers Bill Williams and Tom Brown who are partners in a ranch. Williams is married to Ann Rutherford and has Tommy Ivo as a son. Brown is recently out of the service, but his heart is really in the flying he left behind. When he decides to go back in the service, Williams takes it real personal. In fact he acts like one incredible jerk about it.

Joe Sawyer who also wrote the screenplay is the local Ponderosa owner in that part of Nevada and he takes the lead in coordinating the dropping of the hay. The scenes of the frozen Nevada winter and the actual airlift were remarkably photographed.

Lest anyone think that this is dated material I would remind people about the efforts of our armed services and local national guard in places like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Operation Haylift is one of the best things to come out of poverty row studio Lippert Pictures.

The Second World War is over, and brothers Bill Williams and Tom Brown return to Nevada and ranching. But Williams is called up again as a USAF pilot to take part in the Berlin Airlift, leaving Brown to manage both ranches and make witty but sarcastic comments about government handouts, which reporter Jimmy Conlin uses in the paper. Then 18 snowstorms hit the Rockies and Great Plains in less than four weeks, leaving the cattle and sheep to starve and freeze. The Air Force takes a hand in carrying thousands of tons of hay to th ranches and dropping them where the animals can get at them. Williams is part of the effort, while Brown scoffs.

This movie is based on the real Operation Haylift. While it's a major operation for Lippert, and they used their facility in getting old-time talent in, like Ann Rutherford, co-writers Dean Riesner and Joe Sawyer, and Raymond Hatton, it's a rather dry affair, with straw man arguments disguising the real accomplishments of the operation.

Hatton is worth looking at. He entered the movies in 1909, and joined Keystone early on. In the 1920s, he formed a popular comedy pair with Wallace Beery, and continued on screen until 1967. He died in1971, five days after his wife of 62 years, at the age of 84.