Isla en el cielo

All I can say is the Wayne family estate is really making the Duke's fans salivate over seeing this film and The High and the Mighty. Island in the Sky came first and a lot of the same people have credits on this and The High and the Mighty. William Wellman directed both, both from novels by Ernest K. Gann, and William Clothier photographed the aerial sequences in both.

The only criticism I have of Island in the Sky is that I wish it had been done in color. Those bleak vistas of the tundra where Wayne and his crew are stranded would have really been outstanding in color.

John Wayne and his crew have to make a forced landing in the bleak tundra of very northern Quebec and they have to hope to be rescued before to long. It's either freezing or starvation, not a pleasant choice. The Duke is a civilian pilot contracted to the army to fly supplies.

When word of the fact he's down gets out his fellow civilian pilot contractors drop whatever they're doing to search for Wayne. The rest of the film is the story of that search and as the action shifts back and forth from the search to the men on the ground, the suspense never lets up. Wayne gives one of his outstanding performances as the pilot in charge who has to hold his crew together until rescue comes. Some closeup shots reveal his torment, but the men must never see it. This is a different John Wayne, battling the elements instead of bad guys.

He gets great support from a great cast of players. I'd like to single out Lloyd Nolan and Sean McClory in particular. Lloyd Nolan is one of the other pilots searching and he has a terrific scene on the telephone with the wife of one of Wayne's crew, trying to comfort her and give her hope and hopefully psyche himself up. It's beautifully played.

Sean McClory is one of Wayne's crew on the ground and I won't tell you his scene, but it is unforgettable and haunting.

Of course the credit here also goes to director William Wellman. Wellman before he became a director was a real adventuring character in his youth which included a stint in the Lafayette Escadrille. He developed a life long love of aviation and a lot of his films have an aviation background and theme.

One other thing that's probably reason enough to get this film if it comes out. Andy Devine is another of the pilots searching for Wayne. A call is placed to his home and his wife in turn relays it to Andy who is at a public pool with his two kids. He takes the call and then says we have to leave, but one more race to the other side of the pool. He tosses the kids in and then does a great belly flop dive in the pool himself.

Andy was a big fat man. God only knows where they got a bathing suit to fit him. But he's quite a sight doing that dive and in a bathing suit.

If it is ever shown on TV catch it if at all possible.

This is based on a true story and I had the priviledge to fly with the co-pilot of that trip of Feb 3, 1943. His comment was that he didn't like the movie because they showed the co-pilot dieing in the movie. On Feb. 3, 1993,50th annaversary of the downing of the B-24 liberator/cargo version, I flew directly over Lac O'connor flying a trip from Frankfurt, Germany to Chicago, Ill. The Lat. and Long. is roughly N54:20 and W74:30. The movie didn't tell the whole story;although, very well done. There was a Northeast Airlines DC-3 down also. When they first found O'Connor and his crew, the NE Airline pilot thought he could just land and pick them up. When he touched down, he was buried in snow. They spent exactly 2 mos on the lake. They were flown out on April 3, 1943. If you can find a book by James Mangan called westward....... something or other, has a very factual run down. Try the C.R. Smith museum in Ft. Worth, TX.

Despite the movie being confined to the frozen north of Canada and the narrowness of the plot (rescuing a downed plane), this movie was able to keep my interest and avoided the "claustraphobic-feel". That's because the movie, though very simple, is written and directed so well. It manages to throw in little moments of drama into the story whenever there is a chance for a lull and in the process pulls the viewer into the story. Plus, on top of that, the acting and supporting cast is excellent. PLUS, for you lovers of oddness out there, look closely at the adult Alfalfa Switzer (yes, from OUR GANG shorts) in an adult role (shortly before he got himself killed).

I have been trying to purchase the movie for 20 year's or more w/ no luck, I even went to San Juan Island ( where E.K. Gann Lived ), Unfortunately it was right after his death & I would not bother his wife. It's the only movie w\ John Wayne that I ever loved. I haven't seen it in at least 20 or 25 years. I say it was Wayne's Greatest roll, & I would pay almost anything to see it before I die. The only thing that would have made it better, if it had been made in color. The scenery was so beautiful, I don't know where it was filmed, but it sure looked like Northern Labrador or Quebec. I don't get to travel anymore but I send to chamber of commerce & get brochure's. Some book's about similar area's, that one might enjoy, would be book's buy "Farley Mowat", People of The Deer, or "Never Cry Wolf". If you Liked the movie "Island In The Sky" You will LOVE the Book.

"Island in the Sky" has long vanished from television station inventories: I last saw this movie in, best guess, 1960. But I've never forgotten it, & two years ago I tracked down the knuckle-biter Ernest K. Gann novel on which the film is strongly based.

When a transport plane goes down in the white-blindness of sub-arctic Labrador its crew is in dire straits: howling winds, icy weather, almost no food, and no shelter or heat source. Fellow pilots & aircrews organize an air search, but the Labrador landscape they search is vast, monotonous & unforgiving of downed airmen: the searching crews know they're in a race against time, that the odds against their downed mates' survival decrease with every tick of the clock. The film sublimely depicts the searchers long hours of tedium in their inadequately heated Douglas C-47 flight decks, all the while with their hope for sighting their downed comrades dimming. They battle the ice-fog, the weather fronts, the monotonous vastness of the landscape, the limits of their aircraft and radios and compasses, and the human limits of their flying and navigational skills and their powerful fatigue. Yet nobody will give up the search: each of the rescue crews knows that they themselves might, at nature's or a fouled sparkplug's whim, have been the men crash-landed in the frigid wasteland beneath their wings.

We also see the plight of the downed aircrew scrabbling in their plane's wreck for morsels of food, shelter, clothing, and with their frozen fingers struggling to whirl the crank of a "Gibson Girl" emergency radio transmitter of dubious value. We feel their growing, chilling despair: after all, they're veteran airmen who know the odds against a search crew sighting their snow-covered wreck in this sub-arctic expanse where, from the air, every lake, hummock, snowfield, depression, hill and endless sweep of terrain looks alike. They know their would-be rescuers are flying over uncharted space, without a single reliable reference point; and they know that magnetic compasses (long before GPS satellite navigation came on the scene)in the Labrador region are subject to grievously false readings - they know the searchers could well be flying the same search routes over and over again without even realizing it: and the search crews know it too. And because there are no distinguishable landmarks, and because compasses are untrustworthy, the shivering men know that even if they are sighted it's likely that a rescue plane at the limit of its fuel could well be unable to relay accurate headings or recognizable landmarks to the crew of a follow-up aircraft.

The script neatly follows Gann's novel & its spirit: man and his pitifully inadequate, yet much-ballyhooed technology pitted against nature, against what has been called "the benign indifference of the universe". Gann was a veteran transport pilot whose novels, and this one is no exception, convey the grim obstacles airmen faced in aviation's primitive days. Gann's characters aren't heroes: they're just guys who happen to operate equipment which, like the men themselves, has finite limitations in the face of remorseless nature. Like the novel's, the film's dialogue is terse, the casting superb: you can imagine each actor being the man Gann wrote about in his novel. "Island in the Sky" is a no-frills film: no special effects worth mentioning, and none are necessary. You get to be on the frozen earth in the middle of nowhere, and on the flight deck with the weary, half-snowblind, anxious search crews. You feel the fear, the anxiety, the pressure, the cold, the crews' frustration with the limits of their technology and abilities.

I'd love to see "Island in the Sky" come out on DVD: a solid, bare-bones, no glamor, no mercy story well told.