CLASSIC or ANTIQUE: The Wings of Eagles (1957)

            John Ford was talked into directing a movie about his good friend Frank “Spig” Wead.  His reluctance may have been due to the similarity in their personalities.  To reenact the pain Wead put his family through must have been uncomfortable for Ford, but Ford and Wead had been drinking buddies for years and Ford was with his friend at his death in 1947.  Ford visited Wead when he was in the hospital for paralysis and was one of the friends who encouraged him to write.  Later, Ford filmed several of Wead’s screenplays, including “They Were Expendable”.  In “The Wings of Eagles”, long-time Ford posse member Ward Bond plays Ford under the pseudonym John Dodge.  Ford loaned him his pipe, hat, hollowed out booze cane, and his three Oscars.  When Wead met with Dodge, there is a clip of “Hell Divers” playing.  Wead wrote the screenplay to that movie (but it was not directed by Ford).  This was the tenth Ford/Wayne film and the third of five Wayne/O’Hara films.  The movie was based on an article by Wead entitled “We Plastered the Japs”.

                “Anchors Aweigh” plays over the credits.  The Navy cooperated by providing the Naval Air Station at Pensacola and the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea.  The movie was dedicated to “the men who brought Air Power to the U.S. Navy”.  Wead played a major role in that.  It paid to be a maverick back in the early naval aviation days.  The first scene establishes the movie as one of the Ford/Wayne tongue in cheek entries, like “The Quiet Man”.  Wead has not even soloed yet, but he takes an Army guy named Hazard (Kenneth Tobey) up for a joy ride and ends up crashing in an admiral’s pool.  He gets court-martialed, but you know how much aviation loves mavericks.  The early flying days transitions to the home life where his wife Min is in the hell that is cinematic serviceman’s spouse.  She complains about the constant moving, but he doesn’t care.  Like she has a choice.  Meanwhile, Wead has this Maverick/Iceman thing going with Hazard (who is based on Jimmy Doolittle).  They compete in air races to prove the superiority of their air branches.  There are not one, but two, of the cliched barroom brawls between naval aviators and air corps pilots.  His neglect of his wife and family (his daughters don’t recognize him) is patched up with a simple “I’ve been a heel”.  Unfortunately, that brief moment of familial caring is interrupted by an accident that leaves him paralyzed.  And no, it’s not because Min hits him on the head with a frying pan.  Wead eventually overcomes his paralysis with the help of his friend Carson (Dan Dailey) and goes on to become an innovator in the development of escort carriers in WWII.

                “The Wings of Eagles” is an uneven blend of comedy and melodrama.  Actually, it starts off as a comedy and then makes a jarring shift to melodrama after the accident.  The good ole boy scenes are intermixed with the Spig and Min scenes.  Although Min is the typical service spouse who is second banana to the service, the relationship is unpredictable.  Wead really is a heal, but unlike a modern biopic, this 1950’s movie has to imply that he was going to mend his ways before the accident.  Wead is clearly more interested in snapping towels with his buddies and trading punches with his rivals.  The relationship with Hazard is your standard Quirt/Flagg rivalry.  You have to wonder how comfortable O’Hara was during the production.  There is a lot of smoking and drinking in the movie and that probably reflected the production as well.  However, the boys are familiar faces and Wayne has one of his better performances.  It helps that he is bed-ridden for a good chunk of the movie.

                As a biopic, the movie air brushes the warts mostly.  You get just a hint that Wead was a bad husband and father.  Maybe that was a good thing because if he had been distracted, we might not have come up with the idea of “jeep carriers”.  According to the film, Wead had a sudden “eureka!” moment that led to this naval innovation.  This is just one of several moments in the movie that seem to be artistic license.  But those moments are largely forgettable and eclipsed by the hospital scenes.  If you have seen this movie, the one thing you probably remember is the line “I’m gonna move that toe”.  Carson says it 31 times and Wead says it 65!  Speaking of biopics, how is it we have one for “Spig”Wead, and not for the much more interesting and significant Jimmy Doolittle?

                As far as the accuracy, two of the sillier moments are supposedly true, according to Ford.  He insists Wead did crash in an admiral’s pool and there was a brawl with cake throwing.  As far as the historical events, it appears to be a fairly realistic depiction of the major moments in Wead’s life.  The rivalry with the infant air force is played for entertainment but there were air races.  The post-accident career is simplified.  He did play a role in the development of jeep carriers (escort carriers) and they were initially viewed as being used to transport aircraft to the fleet carriers.  Unfortunately, the movie leaves the impression that became their key role in the war.  In truth, they played a much more important role as escorts for convoys in the Atlantic and as supplements to the big boys in the Pacific.  You have to feel sorry for the CVE’s  (“combustible, vulnerable, and expendable”) for getting short-changed.

GRADE  =  C