Interesting story of Dutch Holland (James Stewart) and his wife (June Allyson) and their involvement with the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force in the post-war years. Holland, an ex bomber pilot, is now a successful third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals and has just signed a contract for seventy thousand bucks. His career is interrupted when the Air Force activates his reserve status and he's hauled back in for 21 months. Holland has a lot of catching up to do but learns to love flying the huge B-36 and then the slim B-47. He's a good officer and reenlists, which perturbs his wife, but a bad shoulder forces him out of the Air Force and, presumably, he goes back to baseball as a coach or manager.
The movie is practically a recruitment film for the Strategic Air Command, promoting self sacrifice for the sake of a nation on the brink of war. The incidents we witness are familiar from earlier war movies. All that's missing is the war itself.
June Allyson plays June Allyson, the steadfast, common-sense wife, who endorses Stewart's first hitch but balks at the second. Some sit-com humor is gotten out of their adjustment to military life. They move from a prosperous-looking home into a standard typical spare functional monochromatic generic Monopoly Air Force house. The re-introduction to military routine is played for some sarcasm too. Stewart has gone for a medical check up but he's late. "Well, honey, they go over you from head to foot here, and they've only gotten down to my throat." There is the requisite cigar-chomping tough general, modeled after the brave but reckless Curtis LeMay who ran SAC at the time. The tedium of being checked out on various airplanes is omitted. And there is a soaring score by Victor Young that almost adds lift to the wings of those stone-heavy B-36s.
Interesting airplanes, B-36s. The largest combat airplane ever produced. As in a training film, the story guides us through the vast interior of this machine, crowing a bit over the 80-foot-long "Holland Tunnel" that connects the fore and aft compartments. The thing was a dinosaur, of course, designed during WWII to deliver bombs from the US to Germany in case Britain fell, slow, ungainly and obsolescent almost from the beginning. The B-47 represented a new paradigm -- twice as fast and with a crew of only three men. And the B-36s replacement, the B-52, has had a service life of half a century. There are also a few proud shots of Globemaster transports, huge things, seen swallowing an 18-wheeler whole from its open maw, like a python swallowing a shoat. It seems impossible.
Gorgeous shots of airplanes in flight. (In fact, the photography, by seasoned pro William H. Daniels, is superb.) Seeing this spacious bomber fly from Texas to Alaska and back without refueling generates a desire to be aboard. There's even a built-in coffee station. Maybe glazed donuts with sprinkles.
I've seen it twice and enjoyed it both times despite the stereotypical script. The airplanes make the rest of it worthwhile.
The movie is practically a recruitment film for the Strategic Air Command, promoting self sacrifice for the sake of a nation on the brink of war. The incidents we witness are familiar from earlier war movies. All that's missing is the war itself.
June Allyson plays June Allyson, the steadfast, common-sense wife, who endorses Stewart's first hitch but balks at the second. Some sit-com humor is gotten out of their adjustment to military life. They move from a prosperous-looking home into a standard typical spare functional monochromatic generic Monopoly Air Force house. The re-introduction to military routine is played for some sarcasm too. Stewart has gone for a medical check up but he's late. "Well, honey, they go over you from head to foot here, and they've only gotten down to my throat." There is the requisite cigar-chomping tough general, modeled after the brave but reckless Curtis LeMay who ran SAC at the time. The tedium of being checked out on various airplanes is omitted. And there is a soaring score by Victor Young that almost adds lift to the wings of those stone-heavy B-36s.
Interesting airplanes, B-36s. The largest combat airplane ever produced. As in a training film, the story guides us through the vast interior of this machine, crowing a bit over the 80-foot-long "Holland Tunnel" that connects the fore and aft compartments. The thing was a dinosaur, of course, designed during WWII to deliver bombs from the US to Germany in case Britain fell, slow, ungainly and obsolescent almost from the beginning. The B-47 represented a new paradigm -- twice as fast and with a crew of only three men. And the B-36s replacement, the B-52, has had a service life of half a century. There are also a few proud shots of Globemaster transports, huge things, seen swallowing an 18-wheeler whole from its open maw, like a python swallowing a shoat. It seems impossible.
Gorgeous shots of airplanes in flight. (In fact, the photography, by seasoned pro William H. Daniels, is superb.) Seeing this spacious bomber fly from Texas to Alaska and back without refueling generates a desire to be aboard. There's even a built-in coffee station. Maybe glazed donuts with sprinkles.
I've seen it twice and enjoyed it both times despite the stereotypical script. The airplanes make the rest of it worthwhile.