Toward the Unknown

Why "Toward The Unknown" is not on VHS or DVD astounds me! The cast is top notch, the filming on Edwards AFB has great historical significance, the director was no other than Mervyn LeRoy, and William Holden was at the peak of his career. The faddish and superficial "Top Gun" pales in comparison to the factual importance of this landmark work. As a flight instructor, I routinely show this film during breaks in my flying academic classes. It is always met with genuine enthusiasm and great curiosity from the young military pilots. The popularity of this film has inspired several websites devoted to it. "Toward The Unknown" is a must for DVD. Why hasn't some company done it?

Too bad that a film like this is not on tape or DVD. A whole generation of viewers miss seeing a film that is history and drama of the birth of the space age. This is a gripping story that is well told and verges on being a documentary about the test pilots at Edwards AFB.

Toward the Unknown (1956)

In some ways this is fascinating stuff—you get a glimpse of mid-50s American military aeronautics, and a specific mention (and micro-glimpse) of the rocket efforts marking early space technology. William Holden plays a troubled test pilot who leads us through the different planes and testing efforts via his own return and rise through the system. It's not bad.

However.

You can't quite call this a formula film—maybe a genre film if there is a genre called test pilots in trouble—but there is a canned quality to this whole thing that holds it back unreasonably. There is the woman from his past who loves him but also has an affair going with the general (the likable Lloyd Nolan) on the base (Edwards Air Force Base). There are the competing test pilots (all good actors known mostly for television). It makes for a good group that is forced into a thin plot about rivalry and camaraderie.

The really best part of the plot (and the reason I watched the movie at first) is that Holden is a man who was in a Korean War prison camp, where he was abused and tortured and "brainwashed." It's this last thing that was so talked about at the time, and which was used to make some really terrific movies like "The Manchurian Candidate," and I wanted to see where it would go here. Well, a heads up, it goes nowhere. His prison camp experience causes a pivotal scene in the movie on the base, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with brainwashing.

Too bad on that.

Holden by this point in his career is not the leading man he once was, though this is just five years after his terrific comeback year with "Union Station" and "Sunset Blvd." But he's really good, holding his scenes together with the woman (Virginia Leith) who has the eyes (blue) and lips (red) to pop on the WarnerColor screen, but who can't act very well.

Obviously if you like airplanes and the air force, this is a movie to definitely see. Some great footage of test aircraft in flight (real footage from the military). And of course the whole supersonic flying experiments were a big deal at the time. If all of this seems a bore and too historical for a good movie, you're partly right. It's not a great plot or drama. But it's not a terrible movie by any means. Director Mervyn LeRoy, rightfully a legend by now, and cinematographer Harold Rossen, equally a legend, together made sure that it held water and survives it's own flaws very well.

"The Right Stuff" tried hard to capture the feel of Edwards and the 'golden age' of flight testing - but "Toward the Unknown" outdoes the later film in spades. In spite of the cut-n-pasted love story with the wooden Virginia Leith, this film catches the flavor of USAF flight testing with William Holden's credible performance as a previously up-and-coming aviator tries to regain his stature following a tormented experience as a POW during the Korean War. The "pilot speak" is dumbed down just enough for the civilian audience, and the flying sequences are well done - no models here. As a footnote, Holden is a composite of real-life test pilot Pete Everest (with whom Holden developed a fast friendship during filming) and Walker "Bud" Mahurin, whose Korean War POW experiences were woven into the script (although Mahurin never attempted suicide). In fact, there are striking similarities (surely purposeful) in appearance between the leading actors and their real-life counterparts: Stand Holden next to Everest, and Lloyd Nolan next to General Al Boyd, and you'll see what I mean.

I have a VHS copy I had made from a deteriorating 16mm print of the film which I picked up off eBay (the friend who made the tape said the emulsion was chipping off the celluloid as he taped it, it was in such poor condition), so I'll have to live with that until a DVD becomes available - which, according to a credible source, won't happen until the Holden estate reaches an agreement with the production company. I do know a print of the film was furnished to the Edwards AFB theater recently for a showing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original premier of "Toward The Unknown."

As a life-long military aviation buff,this is one of my favorite movies. Other reviewers here have mentioned that it contains a few technical inaccuracies and some formulaic characters and plot devices.This is true, but it is a piece of '50s film-making and some of that is to be expected.It has also been mentioned as a great companion piece to "The Right Stuff", with which I wholly agree. In 1984, when seeing TRS for the first time, I thought "The folks who made this obviously saw "Toward the Unknown" and copied some of its style", especially in the scenes where aircraft are shown from above climbing towards the camera with the desert in the background. One reviewer refers to the "fictitious bomber" in the movie. The bomber was quite real, being the XB-51, which was tested but never adopted for service. I've always been a fan of the "X" series of rocket planes and the pilots who flew them, and the inclusion of the beautiful, dart-like Bell X-2 in this film is one of its highlights for me. About fifteen years ago I had a taped from TV copy of this movie that I got off of TBS or TNT, but it is long since bit the dust. I'd dearly love to have it on DVD.