Flight Command (1940)
Directed by Frank Borzage

Plot Summary: Alan Drake (Robert Taylor) is a naval air cadet assigned to one of the U.S. Navy's most elite flying squadrons. He must prove his worth and fit into the elite group at the same time live down the assumption he has had an affair with his Commanding Officer's (Walter Pidgeon) wife (Ruth Hussey).

Flight Command has the distinction of often being credited as the first Hollywood film glorifying the American military to be released after the outbreak of World War II in Europe. A year later, of course, after the U.S. had entered the conflict, theaters were inundated with such pictures. But at the time of its release, many Americans were still leery about breaking their long-held isolationism and engaging in a foreign war. Movies like this helped change that perception and subtly supported the argument in favour of a build-up of arms and troops.

The film follows the exploits of a hotshot trainee cadet from the flying academy at Pensacola, Florida to be accepted by the pilots of an elite service corps to which he is posted. The pilot -played by Robert Taylor-does not make a propitious start, being forced to ditch his plane in heavy fog and mistaking his Commanding Officer's wife for a possible date. Matters get worse when a project he becomes involved with that aims to make it possible to land safely in fog, goes fatally wrong resulting in the death of a colleague, and he is also falsely suspected of breaking up his C.O.s' marriage. The second world war is taking place (there are references to Dunkirk) but the U S is not yet involved.

The plot is fairly mediocre, the different character relationships, whether between the pilots themselves, or of the perceived triangle of Taylor, Hussey and Pidgeon, was sensitively handled. The real stars of this film however are the Grumman G-32A "Flying Barrel" bi-planes (the last biplane fighter for the US Navy) & the noteworthy aerial photography albeit in black & white.

In one nail biting scene hotshot pilot Alan Drake, played by Robert Taylor, is having target practice with the rest of the squadron over the sea & against his flight instructors orders gets too close to the target (a barrage balloon) in a determined effort to shoot it down, entangling his little Grumman G-32A bi-plane in the targets cables blocking his view. With the target wrapped around his windscreen he can't see where he is flying & starts downwards toward the sea. Flight instructor Squadron Cmdr. William Gary, played by Walter Pidgeon, orders him to bail out which of course he refuses to do managing to get the target clear of his plane with only seconds to spare before flying into the sea. On the way back to base the Squadron Commander is forced to crash land on an island sustaining injury. Against orders our hero lands on the beach, puts the commander in the storage hold of the little Grumman G-32A & takes off again-just. By the time he reaches his airfield thick fog has rolled in & our hotshot with the help of ground crew using a fog landing radar invention devised by a dead and valiant squadron member just barely manages to land in one piece.

Robert Taylor had a long & successful film career. Two of his best films were the 1942 gangster classic Johnny Eager co-starring Lana Turner. If you are into film noir, then this is a must see & the following year he starred in one of the most uncompromising war films ever made-Bataan. In 1970 the year after his death he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Flight Command Trivia:

• Flight Command was shot on location at a major Navy base in San Diego, California (though the story is set in Florida) with the full co-operation of the Navy's Air Corps, which would become standard practice for all branches of the service in the production of war movies at the time.

• Arnold Gillespie (photography) and Douglas Shearer (sound) received an Academy Award nomination for the special effects used to create the movie's exciting flying sequences. A master of the craft, Gillespie created the effects for 160 films in his long career, including the justly celebrated earthquake sequence in San Francisco (1936) as well as Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). That same year he won an Oscar for his work on Ben-Hur. Principal cinematography on Flight Command, however, was handled by cinematographer Harold Rosson, who lensed such MGM classics as The Wizard of Oz (1939), On the Town (1949), and Singin' in the Rain (1952). Although closely associated with top musicals, Rosson also earned his action/war credits with his work on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), the film that earned Gillespie his first Oscar for special effects.
  

• Also proving himself here in a new arena was director Frank Borzage, who at this time had been one of Hollywood's most successful directors for more than a decade. Borzage is best known for complex and compelling 1930s romances. Borzage's other film released the same year, The Mortal Storm (1940), one of three movies he made with actress Margaret Sullavan, was one of the most chilling portraits of the horrors of Nazism. Although couched in a sensitive love story, the film likely also contributed to turning the tide of public opinion toward a willingness to fight the rise of fascism in Europe. Ironically, Flight Command, done in the more "realistic" patriotic action style that would dominate American screens for the next several years, marked the decline in his career. Such finely-wrought, tender romances as Seventh Heaven (1927), which earned him the first Best Director Award ever given by the Academy, A Farewell to Arms (1932), and Desire (1936), a wry romantic comedy about jewel thieves Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich, had fallen out of favour by 1940, and Borzage's work has become largely neglected.

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