Beyond the Line of Duty

In wartime, everyone needs some sort of hero and this film provides one in the unassuming guise of Hewitt T. Wheless. Teased by his pals for being vertically challenged, he decides to join the US Army Air Force. What ensues now follows his training regime of theory and practice flights before he and his crew of seven other men head on a dangerous mission to attack shipping in the Philippines. The man himself reminded me a little of Glenn Ford with a big smile and a charismatic look to him that was obviously designed by the film-makers to entice others to follow in his stead and get their own silver wings. It mixes actuality with some dramatic-looking archive footage and what's produced is a less jingoistic but still quite effective piece of WWII spirit-raising. It even gets a plug in for war bonds, too.

A Warner Brothers Short Subject.

Hewitt T. Wheless, a young Army Air Corps pilot, acts BEYOND THE LINE OF DUTY in returning his badly damaged Flying Fortress safely to base during the Japanese attack upon the Philippines.

Wheless, a former Texas cowboy, plays himself in this excellent little film, which was awarded the Oscar for Best Two-Reel Short Subject of 1942. Without a wasted moment or unnecessary scene, it shows how he had all the ‘right stuff' to become one of the first of America's combat heroes of World War Two.

When this Short was released in November of 1942, Captain Wheless was 29 years old. When he retired in 1968, he was the Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Lieutenant General Wheless died on September 7, 1986, at the age of 72, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who narrated BEYOND THE LINE OF DUTY 44 years earlier.

After Pearl Harbor, Hollywood went to war totally against the Axis. Not only did many of the stars join up or do home front service, but the output of the Studios was largely turned to the war effort. The newsreels, of course, brought the latest war news into the neighborhood theater every week. The features showcased battle stories or war related themes. Even the short subjects & cartoons were used as a quick means of spreading Allied propaganda, the boosting of morale or information dissemination. Together, Uncle Sam, the American People & Hollywood proved to be an unbeatable combination.

You can tell the actual fliers in this movie because they speak their lines in dull tones: Major General Harmon, who reads his own speech given to the graduates of the the Army Air Corps training program as if he has bad eyes and can't see them clearly on a blackboard, and Captain Hewitt T. "Shorty" Wheless. Well, he says "Yes, sir" well enough. Perhaps he had been practicing it.

This Warner Brothers Oscar-winning short is about Captain Wheless, his training as an Army Air Corps pilot and the details of the mission for which he won the Distinguished Service Cross, as narrated by Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I suspect it was Roosevelt who won the Academy Award, even if he participated through a transcription of one of his Fire Chats.

If you remember in the Clint Eastwood film Flags Of Our Fathers the three survivors from that famous Iwo Jima photograph were taken from combat and put on a bond tour to sell war bonds and to make various other morale boosting public appearance endeavors. This film is another of those endeavors and in this case about an Army Air Force pilot.

With Ronald Reagan narrating, recent war hero Captain Hewitt T. Wheless who before the war was a young kid working on a ranch during his summers in Texas to pay for school, signs up for the Army Air Corps. The film we see is a dramatization of his story with Wheless playing himself from his days on the ranch, through his training and a description of the mission when he tangled with a squadron of Japanese planes in a running dogfight and a crash landing. He got the Distinguished Service Cross for this action.

Besides Clint Eastwood's film another things came to my mind in watching the film. First the narration of the film was taken over by President Roosevelt himself in one of his fireside chats where he describes Wheless's action. FDR did another such broadcast and that night one of his listeners was Cecil B. DeMille who heard the story of a Navy doctor named Corydon Wassell and who then proceeded to do a film version of his story with Gary Cooper.

Wheless was admittedly no actor and was probably more nervous playing himself than in combat. He was a short man and he reminded of another short Texas hero from World War II, Audie Murphy.

The film while nothing great cinematically is still a reminder of times when America really looked up to its war heroes.

Beyond the Line of Duty (1942)

*** (out of 4)

Lewis Seiler Oscar-winning short about the career of Hewitt T. Wheless, a simple man working on a ranch who got the urge to join the Air Force and he soon found himself flying important missions during WW2. There's no doubt that this film was made to inspire other young men to join the forces and help fight WW2 so the preaching that happens throughout is understandable considering what the country was going through and what the goal of this short was. Wheless actually does a pretty good job at playing himself and he comes across as a very likable guy and someone whose story is interesting enough to make for a good film. Ronald Reagan narrates this short and an interesting twist is that he was President when Wheless would die in real life. In terms of technical achievement this film doesn't offer too much but it's still very entertaining and shows us a part of history. Look quickly for Glenn Strange playing a cowboy.