Reviews

This movie has always been a favorite of mine since first seeing it as a 12 year old kid in 1962 when it was shown on a Los Angeles television station's "late show". The characters are very engaging from the start of the picture, and it is too bad that the movie has never been released for video tape, nor is it ever shown on television (apparently due to a prohibition by the Estate of Moss Hart, the playwright/producer/director who wrote the story and first presented it on the New York stage during WWII -- the reason for denying its showing is hard to fathom more than 50 years after it was made). I did not see the movie again for over 30 years, when someone who had actually been a major cast member of the movie was able to get me a "bootlegged" copy on VHS (poor video quality, but good audio). My memory of it was correct: it was still an engaging and fascinating movie to watch. An amazing aspect of this film is just how many of its stars, just starting out in their careers at the time 1944), went on to became either major motion picture stars or at least well-known and fully-employed actors (e.g. Judy Holliday, Edmond O'Brien, Jeanne Crain, Barry Nelson, Don Taylor, Karl Malden, Peter Lind Hayes, George "Superman") Reeves, Red Buttons, Lee J. Cobb, Kevin McCarthy, and Gary Merrill). The scenes with the B-24 Liberators are terrific, especially the close-up shots where the details of the giant (for those times) 4-engine bomber (then 18,000+ manufactured, now nearly extinct) can be seen. Good insight into the different levels of training that a pilot-cadet went through on his way to being assigned to a bomber crew (of course, VERY gender-biased as was the trend of the day: only the MEN became pilots, the women just supported them in their roles -- hardly acceptable in today's world). I hope someday it will be released onto video for a new generation to enjoy.

A well done Technicolor story about flight training at Thunderbird Field, Arizona in 1942 at the height of WWII. Great cast of supporting players, with main stars Gene Tierney, Preston Foster, and John Sutton well suited for their roles. Beautiful flying shots with the Arizona desert as background. The dialogue in some spots is not too realistic in terms of aviation, e.g. when Preston Foster, playing the role of a civilian flight instructor at a military training school exclaims that a student's "motor conked out" while viewing the incident from the ground with his former sweetheart, Gene Tierney. Hilarious scene early in the movie where civilians are learning to be "civilian defense" first aid workers: Preston Foster, leg in cast, is loaded into an ambulance that then races away with the back door unlatched ejecting him out the back door and allowing him to fall attached to a stretcher onto the street. Touching brave sentiments portrayed by famed English actress, Dame May Whitty, on the loss of her son in combat. Jack Holt as the C.O. of the school, and Reginald Denny, as the British officer in charge of English cadets, add greatly to the overall quality of the picture, and Holt's facial expressions when he is dancing with Gene Tierney are particularly funny in the dance scene late in the picture. Peter Lawford has an uncredited bit part as a cadet in the movie. Overall, a very enjoyable movie if the viewer is interested in WWII aviation pictures, especially for the color quality.

TRIVIA NOTE: Famed aviation ace Richard Bong is one of the pilots flying the formation of North American AT-6s ("Texans") in the movie (uncredited), done before he shipped out to the Pacific to become the "Ace of Aces" by shooting down 40 Japanese planes, more than any other US pilot in WWII. (He died 8/6/45 at Burbank, California while taking off in a P-80 "Shooting Star" jet which lost power on takeoff.)

GOOF: in the water tower scene early in movie, Preston Foster, in a trainer from the base, buzzes water-bathing Gene Tierney and drops her his flight suit from the plane to use for cover/clothing when she gets out of the water tower. Film editing mistake shows her catching the flight suit, but then a shot of Foster's plane flying away shows the flight suit being thrown out from the plane (after she already has it!).