China Clipper

Following the filming of Frank 'spig' Wead's successful Broadway play Ceiling Zero, Warner Brothers got one of the stars of that film Pat O'Brien, to star in a Wead screenplay about the creation of the famous China Clipper, the plane that made the first passenger run from San Francisco to the Orient. Back in the day it excited the American public no end.

Wead based his lead character on a World War I aviation hero who went into the commercial flying business, Eddie Rickenbacker. But he invested a lot of himself in O'Brien's character as well.

That's what struck me watching China Clipper today. The scenes with O'Brien and his estranged wife Beverly Roberts reminded me a whole lot of the plot for Wings of Eagles which is John Ford's biographical tribute to Spig Wead. It was like Wead himself through O'Brien was trying to justify his single minded attention to aviation to the neglect of wife and family.

Humphrey Bogart, Ross Alexander and Henry B. Walthall are O'Brien's associates. This was Walthall's farewell screen performance. He collapsed on set and died shortly thereafter. I'm not sure if the film was rewritten to accommodate Walthall's demise or his death was originally part of the story. Whatever it is, it is spookily coincidental.

Marie Wilson plays her usual dumb Dora with eyes for Ross Alexander, in this one she got a bit annoying I have to say.

Bogart was not especially fond of this film though it was a change from the gangster thugs he was doing then. He plays another flier at loggerheads with O'Brien.

The scenes involving the flights were well done, much better than in Ceiling Zero, though that had a better story.

China Clipper is a routine action adventure film from Warner Brothers, yet viewed together with Wings of Eagles it does kind of take on a whole new meaning.

This is a great and exciting movie especially if you are a pilot as I am. It reflects a time in aviation that was exciting. Those days are gone forever. I would have enjoyed travel in those flying boats not to mention piloting them. I am from Miami and remember Dinner Key. Those flying boats parked in the bay looked so magnificent with the cumulus nimbus clouds over the Atlantic in the background. I recorded this movie years ago and watch it from time to time and I always enjoy it's vintage scenes. Those great flying boats were magnificent and I can only imagine the joy and sense of adventure flying around the west and south Pacific island hopping! It is true escapism. I highly recommend this movie.

A no-nonsense dreamer drives his men & machines to the breaking point in an attempt to establish a transpacific route for his flying CHINA CLIPPERS.

Warner Brothers gives a rousing production to a story that is essentially, on analysis, a soap opera with wings. Based on the history of Pan American Airlines, the film is at its very best when it takes to the air, especially during the exciting prolonged climax with its race to beat the clock in the initial flight from California to Macao.

Pat O'Brien gives a typically earnest, energetic performance as the tireless & tyrannical protagonist - a man who becomes increasingly obsessed with his lofty aviation goals, no matter what the cost in personal relationships. It's difficult to like the character, but O'Brien also makes it hard not to respect him.

What is especially enjoyable in CHINA CLIPPER is to appreciate the performances of three members of the supporting cast. Henry B. Walthall, the pivotal star of silent cinema, the hero of D. W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), plays the gentle engineer who designs the great flying ship. His haggard appearance is not a result of makeup. He was genuinely ill with influenza and he would die two months before the release of the film. He was only 58, although he looked far older. Warners rewarded him by ratcheting him down to 10th place billing.

Ross Alexander & Humphrey Bogart play two friendly, dedicated pilots who chafe under O'Brien's dictates. These young actors had very similar acting styles & screen personas and it is quite interesting to see them perform together. Their fates, however, would be very different. Alexander had the necessary talent to become a major star, but the breaks simply didn't come his way, and, his private life spiraling out of control, he would be dead less than five months after the release of CHINA CLIPPER, a suicide at 29. Bogart got the lucky breaks, and, with some good roles in the next five years, was on his way to eventually becoming a screen legend.

Pretty Marie Wilson has a comical recurring role as a ditsy blonde enamored with Alexander. Movie mavens should spot Frank Faylen in an uncredited bit part as the company's weatherman in Columbia.

This film is about Pat O'Brien's insanely driven goal of creating an international airline service in the very early days of commercial aviation. No matter how successful his new airline becomes, Pat pushes his men harder to be even bigger and better. Unfortunately, he has a heart of stone and is so doggedly fixed on his goals that he treat everyone around him like dirt--never thanking people and ignoring his insanely patient wife. At times, he truly seems disturbed, as he shows signs of Paranoid Personality Disorder--lashing out at even the simplest requests from loyal employees. In so many ways, the film seems like an airplane version of MOBY DICK, as Ahab-like O'Brien is barely human! Despite this and the way O'Brien barks out his lines (this was his style in many films, by the way), the airline works--even though again and again they seem on the verge of failure. The biggest and most daunting goal, though, is not his air conquest of South America but the creation of the first clipper service to China.

Despite sounding rather dull, I did enjoy the film a lot--and much of this is that I am a huge fan of early aviation films. You actually learned a lot AND enjoyed a typically breezy 1930s-era Warner Brothers programmer. By the way, if you like this, O'Brien played nearly the same earnest-style person in many other films of the 30s--though I have never seen him as mean and unlikable as he was here! By the way, one of the supporting actors is a younger Humphrey Bogart and a highlight is when he busts O'Brien in the mouth--boy was THAT a great scene!

This is basically a thinly disguised bio of Juan Trippe and his early days after founding Pan American Airways. Yet the credits at the beginning disclaim any attachment to a true life story. Well what can you say? Hollywood's been putting those disclaimers on movies since the beginning of films. But the public can, and always does, figure it out. An aviation buff will have a field day pointing out some of the planes that appear in this movie,... a Fokker Trimotor and much stock newsreel footage of the actual Martin Flying Boat "China Clipper" to name a few. The Martin China Clippers of which there were about 4 or 5 ever built flew those pioneering trips to the Orient and an awful long journey it was. This movie re-creates those pioneering days with some great stock footage & some darn good acting. Warners did a number of these aviation flicks in the 30s, 'Devil Dogs of the Air' starring James Cagney comes to mind. But I enjoyed Pat O'Brien(with his wonderful excellerated speech as usual), Humphrey Bogart(marvelous and before all those classics), Marie Wilson, Ross Alexander, Henry B Walthall and silent star Kenneth Harlan who appears early in the film as an airline inspector.