Winning Your Wings

Wonderful curio for WWII buffs, aviation buffs, and Jimmy Stewart fans. It's a recruitment film for the U.S. Army Air Forces. There are various young men presented who want to serve but have questions. Stewart answers their questions and provides info about the Air Forces. And yes, it was called Air Forces back then before the 's' was dropped in 1947. There's a lot of interesting information here about the process in joining the AAF and learning to fly. Also of interest to film buffs, this marks the one time that John Huston and Jimmy Stewart worked together. Very cool.

One final note over a comment I read that got under my skin. There is nothing about this that needs to be "excused." No one needs to explain, justify, rationalize, and certainly not apologize for serving their country and encouraging others to do the same. Not in peacetime and definitely not in wartime.

James Stewart is absolutely charming as "Wild Blue Yonder" plays and he taxis up the run-way and hops out of a B17 bomber in uniform complete with wings. He is the sole voice of this 20 minute short from 1942 about why young men should sign up for the Army Air Corps ASAP. He talks to actors portraying college students, high school students, men who didn't finish their college degrees, and an average Joe working at a gas station.

Stewart tells all of these guys that their stations in life - no college, some college, waiting to get out of college - is no bar to getting into the Army Air Corps. But he does mention that business of getting your name pulled out of a fish bowl - aka "drafted" - as a kind of added incentive to join up. One surprising fact - that in this "greatest mass mobilization in history" you could join the Air Corps and finish your degree as a reservist, then become a regular airman.

The short shows much of how America wanted to see itself in 1942 - Stewart shows a dramatization of a young man who just signed up leaving home. He says goodbye to his parents, his aunt, his sister, and "that sweet young thing" next door. Hey, did we just segue into an Andy Hardy film? Nope, the airman to be is too tall to be Mickey Rooney.

Stewart then goes into detail about the jobs that must be done on the ground and in the air to keep 'em flying. On board the plane - radio man, engineer, navigator, bombardier, photographer. He mentions that all get their wings, and all are an important part of a team. This is probably to not get the recruit's hopes up that he will be a pilot.

Stewart was a great salesman for joining up. After all, a tremendously popular actor in 1941, he quit his movie career to join the Army Air Corps himself, having to practically make himself ill eating pound cake and drinking milk so he would meet the minimum weight for enlisting. He retired as a brigadier general in 1968.

This is worth your time to see the tremendous charm of James Stewart and how his love for the Air Corps comes shining through, and as a bit of history on what the Air Corps looked like at the beginning of WWII.

Newly-minted LT Jimmy Stewart gives a folksy appeal to guys from 18 to 26 to join up and fight the axis!

Jimmy would go on to make an admirable career in the Air Force Reserve and become the recognizable face of the Strategic Air Command in the 1950's--- here you can get a first glimpse of this enthusiasm. Winning Your Wings is aimed at recruiting officers--- more specifically at what must have been hordes of guys with the qualities but not necessarily the educational credentials to make the cut. Don ("Hazel") Defore does a bit as a 26-year old married gas station jockey who's not sure he's qualified. There's a run down of what must have been virtually unknown commissioned positions (navigators, meteorologists) and a run down of the 9-man crew of a B-17, all framed within Stewart's likable homespun drawl. Look for a nearly unrecognizable Peter Graves in the Flying Fortress. And go for Captain, they knock down $450 a month!

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.

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.