I Wanted Wings

I was either 12 or 13 when I saw this movie and it probably had much to do with my becoming a United States Air Force pilot. Shortly after I saw the movie my father and I attended the grand opening of Ellington Field in Houston and I saw a P-38 and fell in love with aviation.

I have seen the movie again in recent years and after twenty-nine years in the Air Force tend to pick the movie apart for the "Hollywood" production which is frequently quite different from the real world. However, it was an outstanding movie for its time and I probably have many fellow aviators that this movie influenced when they were young and impressionable.

This Army air corps recruitment film from Paramount Pictures and director Mitchell Leisen follows three cadets, former stockbroker Jeff (Ray Milland), insecure mechanic Al (William Holden), and amiable lunkhead Tom (Wayne Morris), as they go through flight training under the tutelage of tough instructor Captain Mercer (Brian Donlevy). The boys also find time for romance with photographer Carolyn (Constance Moore) and gold-digging nightclub singer Sally (Veronica Lake). Also featuring Harry Davenport, Phil Brown, Edward Fielding, Willard Robertson, Hobart Cavanaugh, Charles Drake, Alan Hale Jr., Craig Stevens, and Hedda Hopper.

This movie is an overlong, melodramatic mess, but I liked it anyway. The first half is not unlike many pre-WW2 military boot-camp movies, where guys bond, fight over a girl or two, and slowly reveal why they joined the service, since in those pre-war days, they all had to have some reason, be it scandalous or life re-invention. Just as things were beginning to grow stale, at around the midway point of the movie Veronica Lake shows up as a super-sexy manipulator, and things get interesting again. She looks amazing and her character is irredeemable. According to the trivia I read, this is the film where she started getting a bad work reputation, but knowing that just adds to her performance. Where it all leads is ridiculous, but entertaining, although like so many studio-era films, it's all wrapped up too nice and neat at the end. The movie features some terrific aerial footage and stunt flying, but ironically it would win the Oscar for Best Special Effects, which are arguably the worst aspect of the film.

Mitchell Leisen was drafted in to do this one after shooting had started when it wasn't coming together under the original director. He did a good job of the flying shots but the clichéd, inconsistent script stops this from being any more than passable.

The movie is also long, unusual for Leisen as he liked fast paced movies, and I guess some of this is due to scenes capturing the feel of the air force at work. However by the time you get back to the court martial scenes at the beginning you have almost forgotten what the trial was about.

I liked Brian Donlevy - thought he was convincing. Bill Holden was just starting out. Ray Milland always reminds me of a second rate Cary Grant, except he managed to do something later in his career that Cary was unable to do - win the Oscar for best actor. There is no development at all for his character in the script. Didn't mind Veronica Lake though she was apparently not a lot of fun to work with in this her first movie.

This movie is also referenced in Leisen's next movie "Hold Back the Dawn" as the movie Leisen is making when the Charles Boyer character comes in to tell his story.

As a former Air Force pilot, I noticed that none of the pilots wore their wings while in their workaday blouses (as opposed to flight suits or more formal jacket and tie uniforms). That must have been standard just before WW II. The film is hardly a gung-ho recruitment poster. It shows some unconvincing cowardice (from Ray Milland) and some slightly more convincing insecurity (from Wm. Holden). It does have some good shots of training planes doing aerobatics -- and those must have been responsible for the Academy Award for special effects. Holden's emergency landing in a small field is also well done. The film hints at the kinds of things pilots have to learn, but doesn't educate us to the process. The early version of the B-17 did not have a tail-gun, so that design feature permits Veronica Lake to stowaway late in the film. By the way, the base security at March Field must have been really lax! Lake is wonderful as a sinuous singer (voice dubbed) in a glimmering gown. That she turns out to be Holden's ex-ember strains credulity. But this sub-plot is strong, simply because of Lake and Holden, who is given the only three-dimensional character in the film and who deals with his character with restraint. The love plot between Milland and Moore is bland, except for the brief instant when she grants him permission to kiss her. While the film was made in 1941, the pilot class that Holden, Milland, and Wayne Morris (who later became a Navy ace) is 38a -- early 1938. The film, then, is supposed to depict a time-span of a little more than two years, though we are given few signals about when it happens -- other than the elegant late 30s autos -- or how much time the action consumes.

When Constance Bennet's character is sitting on the tail of the bomber taking pictures, she's using a range finder camera. When she jumps down, she's now holding a TLR (twin lens reflex).