Winning Your Wings

With the US launched into World War II, Hollywood began working with the armed forces to get people to join. An example is John Huston's Academy Award-nominated "Winning Your Wings", featuring Jimmy Stewart talking about the Air Force, the enlistment process, and who all participates in operating the planes.

Obviously the sheer level of propaganda comes across as corny nowadays, especially with the archaic gender relations. My favorite propaganda shorts from the era were the cartoons portraying Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck battling Nazis (not surprisingly, many of them got pulled from circulation after the war).

Anyway, this short works well as a time capsule. Entertaining, if nothing else.

Before I checked on IMDb, I had completely forgotten John Huston's contribution here – since no director is listed during the opening titles – though I was well aware of James Stewart's participation (oddly enough, this was their sole collaboration)! Anyway, this is typical – and, in retrospect, pretty efficient – 'recruiting poster' stuff (yet another Oscar-nominated documentary, in a category that had a staggering 25 candidates and emerged with a quartet of winners!), with the star delineating the pros (but, obviously none of the cons!) should American youths join the Air Force. For the record, the attack on Pearl Harbour was a very recent memory – and, watching this, we realize just how far the Government went in order to induct pilots, bombardiers, navigators, etc. to fill the thousands upon thousands of planes of various sizes that would be employed in the war effort! Stewart is the right sort of average guy to make such a notion seem appealing, even "adventurous" – but the jingoism is excusable under the circumstances, as the prospective officers are either credited with their college-bred specialization (which would thus be put at the nation's disposal) or given the opportunity to acquire one for those that had been left lagging behind in education…which suggests that combat duty was very much seen as a level 'playing-field'!

This is a very fascinating curio from WWII starring Jimmy Stewart. This is an Army Air Corps recruitment short in which Stewart, after a year in the service, addresses the public to sell them on joining. The film is briskly paced, interesting to watch and has a lot of great footage of aircraft (particularly interesting to airplane aficionados are the early B-17 A and B versions--pretty rare to see this footage). While I doubt if this film would excite most kids, it is a great film historically. Plus, it is one of the few films Stewart made exploiting his service, as he tended to downplay this and few people actually knew that he eventually retired a Brigadeer General after many years of service.

By the way, one of the young guys in the film that was thrilled about joining up had a girlfriend that looks like Judy Garland. It's not--I checked and it's Juanita Stark. They could have been sisters!

I was lucky enough to get to see this recruiting film on TCM this morning with James Stewart this morning. Before going off to Europe and flying several bombing missions over Axis territory in the next four years, Stewart stopped by Warner Brothers long enough to make this recruitment film.

What's ironic here is that those who didn't take to the skies and became infantrymen would have nothing, but derision for films like these. Despite the contributions of the Army Air Corps which were certainly real enough, those who weren't in that service felt these guys got all the glamor. You can see that idea running through any number of war films.

Still it was interesting to see such folks as Charles Drake, Peter Graves, Don DeFore and Ray Montgomery before they became recognizable civilian actors.

James Stewart had three loves in his life, Gloria, acting, and flying and this was I'm sure a labor of love for him.

Jimmy Stewart appears in one of the many Warner Brothers' short subjects hyping the Army Air Corps. Stewart uses his casual charm and his stage training to hype the Force, and talks about training, and how women love a pilot. It's all done in good humor, and makes it seem like a lot of fun, with no risk mentioned and $400 a month, with room and board!

Stewart had been drafted into the Army as a private in 1940; since he was already a pilot, he was assigned to the Air Corps --after being rejected twice as underweight -- first as an instructor, then on combat missions in Europe. He left the War a Colonel, and as a Reserve officer, retired with the rank of Brigadier General.