roll up your flaps, will ya? Released in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, this training camp film provides what is known in the study of attitude change as "inoculation." You get a little shot of it in the media so that when the real thing comes along you're prepared for it. Jenner found out it works for cow pox, so why not war?
Ray Milland, Wayne Morris, and William Holden, all of whom want wings, enter the Army Air Corps base at Randolph Field to begin primary flight training under the tutelage of barrel-chested Brian Donlevy. As an instructor, Donlevy is -- how you say? -- stern but fair. He whines his annoyance from the rear seat of the North American T-6 Texans, the popular trainer of the time. You already know what the airplanes look like if you've seen "Tora Tora Tora", in which they masqueraded as Japanese Zeros.
As trainees, Milland is cocky, Holden nervous, and Morris neither here nor there, his primary trait being his clumsiness and stupidity. Curiously enough, Morris was to become a Navy pilot during the war with seven Japanese aircraft to his credit, a recipient of four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals. The girls were swooning over Ray Milland in the 40s. Holden is so boyish as to be unrecognizable but then he was only nine years old at the time.
The movie makes no pretense at realism. The activity level in the barracks and mess hall resembles that of a Cub Scout summer camp, all rambunctiousness, noise, and grabass. In a movie like this, girls are called for to prove that the men are heterosexual, and they appear in due course: Constance Moore for Milland and tiny Veronica Lake (née Constance Ockleman) as an infliction, more pernicious than anemia. Wayne Morris doesn't need a mate because, as it turns out, he pollinates.
A good deal of tension is on display towards the end and there are some nice flight scenes; even the simulated shots using back projection are attractive and exciting, at least as good as those in a big budget film like "A Yank in the RAF."
But in essence it's a training camp film whose target is the civilian population. They need to know that war is coming and that men will join the armed forces. They need to know that you don't have to be a pilot, or even an officer, to acquit yourself bravely although, to be sure, it's better to be an officer than an enlisted man, as I know all too well. There is a place for women in the war too, not women like Veronica Lake, shifty and lying, but women like Constance Moore, stalwart, honest, and resolute. Why, Moore even has a job!
Ray Milland, Wayne Morris, and William Holden, all of whom want wings, enter the Army Air Corps base at Randolph Field to begin primary flight training under the tutelage of barrel-chested Brian Donlevy. As an instructor, Donlevy is -- how you say? -- stern but fair. He whines his annoyance from the rear seat of the North American T-6 Texans, the popular trainer of the time. You already know what the airplanes look like if you've seen "Tora Tora Tora", in which they masqueraded as Japanese Zeros.
As trainees, Milland is cocky, Holden nervous, and Morris neither here nor there, his primary trait being his clumsiness and stupidity. Curiously enough, Morris was to become a Navy pilot during the war with seven Japanese aircraft to his credit, a recipient of four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals. The girls were swooning over Ray Milland in the 40s. Holden is so boyish as to be unrecognizable but then he was only nine years old at the time.
The movie makes no pretense at realism. The activity level in the barracks and mess hall resembles that of a Cub Scout summer camp, all rambunctiousness, noise, and grabass. In a movie like this, girls are called for to prove that the men are heterosexual, and they appear in due course: Constance Moore for Milland and tiny Veronica Lake (née Constance Ockleman) as an infliction, more pernicious than anemia. Wayne Morris doesn't need a mate because, as it turns out, he pollinates.
A good deal of tension is on display towards the end and there are some nice flight scenes; even the simulated shots using back projection are attractive and exciting, at least as good as those in a big budget film like "A Yank in the RAF."
But in essence it's a training camp film whose target is the civilian population. They need to know that war is coming and that men will join the armed forces. They need to know that you don't have to be a pilot, or even an officer, to acquit yourself bravely although, to be sure, it's better to be an officer than an enlisted man, as I know all too well. There is a place for women in the war too, not women like Veronica Lake, shifty and lying, but women like Constance Moore, stalwart, honest, and resolute. Why, Moore even has a job!