Jornada gloriosa

Sturdy, dependable GLENN FORD gives another one of his understated but sincere performances as a young inventor, John Montgomery, in the late 1800s who makes a number of semi-successful attempts at getting his flying machine off the ground and soaring into the atmosphere.

JANET BLAIR is the love interest as the childhood sweetheart who stands by her man until the end of his life. While I always liked this actress, the jarring note is her make-up which is so modern that it seems like an anachronism. She has a distinctly 1940s look about her (lip gloss and modern hairdos) that works against the otherwise authentic look of the film.

WILLARD ROBERTSON as Ford's pa is fine but SELENA ROYLE is completely wasted in a minor role as his loving mom. William Wellman directs with a thorough knowledge of his subject and as an aviation drama it maintains interest throughout. All of the aerial scenes are well staged and look glorious in crisp B&W photography.

Summing up: A very unheralded film that is certainly watchable but could have used a stronger and less sentimental script.

This nice biopic from Columbia stars Glenn Ford as John Montgomery, a man whose ideas about gliders and aerodynamics lead to the creation of the first airplane. The studio has assigned Janet Blair to costar as Ford's love interest, with Selena Royle playing his mother. As expected, there are some excellent aviation scenes with a great deal of suspense. Several sequences depict both the heartbreak and the triumphs involved in an invention of this kind. Ford gives a soaring performance, in a role that seems to draw on his sensitivities as an actor and his feelings about portraying the man as honestly as possible.

What should have been an inspiring film, turns into a slow-moving film about an early aviator John Montgomery. To say that this guy was unlucky was to put it mildly.

A very young Glenn Ford does an adequate job in portraying this man who dreamed of flying in the 1880s. Janet Blair is his co-star as the girl who loved and eventually married him.

Montgomery is viewed as some sort of crackpot for his desiring to fly. Through the film, we see that he is victimized by vertigo, a suit on his patent, the tragic death of his partner, and his inability to move up within the social milieu despite his achievements.

The film is slow paced. By the way, who was the old man who tells his story to the boys at the beginning of the film? Who was he supposed to represent?

Am sure that the earthquake they we see was not the big 1906 one. If it were, the film suffered from the fact that Ford just didn't age. Was he another Dorian Gray?

It is amazing how little has appeared in motion pictures about early attempts at flight before the Wright Brothers. There are no films about Sir George Cayley (the founder of aeronautics), the Montgolfier Brothers, Otto Lilienthal, or Samuel Langley. Actually, except for a television film that starred Michael Moriarty as Wilbur Wright, there is no film about the Wright Brothers. Only two films (that I know of) deal with early aviation pioneers. One is a film with Don Ameche and Myrna Loy about the life of inventor Hiram Percy Maxim (inventor of the Maxim machine gun and the lawn sprinkler - he designed a cumbersome flying machine that almost flew a little in 1895). The other is this film, about John Montgomery.

John Who?

John J. Montgomery was a professional acrobat who had an act concerning gliding in his own glider. It involved some degree of tightrope style balancing and looked very impressive. Less impressive than Montgomery and his fans have made it sound in the last century. To his fans, Montgomery almost flew a plane before the Wrights. Actually the glider he designed was basically stationary, and only went aloft due to a balloon above it. It would detach and drift (or be steered) to go softly to the ground. Otto Lillienthal and Percy Pilcher flew real gliders in the 1890s (both were killed eventually in their gliders), but they flew in the outside air. Montgomery never achieved the results of those two real pioneers*.

But he was a local boy from California, so he had a fan base. And William Wellman tapped it for this very good movie (alas, not shown as often as it should be shown), dealing with his career, up to his tragic death in 1911 (killed, ironically, when trying to fly an early motorized aircraft). It has a typically first rate performance by Ford. Catch it if it is offered on the Turner network.

*Since I originally put this on the Board I have looked a bit deeper into Montgomery's work. He apparently was more experimental than I credited him for, but still it doesn't convince me that he could have beaten the Wright Brothers to powered man-made flight.

I viewed this picture many years ago and acquired a crush on - was it Glenn Ford or John Montgomery? Don't know..... he played the role so well. With Glenn Ford's passing yesterday, that was the first picture that emerged from my recollections, other than Stolen Life, in which he held his own so well with Bette Davis. It is, indeed, unfortunate that Hollywood did not fully tap the dramatic abilities of this fine actor. His comedic ability was evident in Pocketful of Miracles, which could have opened a whole new genre for him had it been further utilized in his career. As for Gallant Journey, it is an inspiring film of early aviation and of the caliber so well suited to family viewing.