Wings for the Eagle

I dare anyone to get past the opening scene in a gas station. I promise you will never again watch ANYTHING with d. morgan in it.

"Wings for the Eagle" is a wartime propaganda film from Warner Brothers. It's generally good and worth watching, but the writing is extremely inconsistent....frustratingly so.

The story begins just before the US entered WWII. Dennis Morgan plays Corky Jones...an unlikable and annoying guy. He is not the least bit patriotic and obtains a job with Lockheed building airplanes...but not because he adores the USA but because he figures when the US goes to war, the assembly line workers will be exempt from the draft. And, to make him even more unlikable, he's an obnoxious cad and sexual harasser who spends most of the movie trying to steal his best friend's wife!! I really wish the writing of this character was better. I don't think they needed to make him super nice but in the film he's just a jerk....and so the expected transformation at the end just seems obligatory and not exactly believable.

So is it all bad? No. Many of the characters are quite good, especially the immigrant supervisor played wonderfully by George Tobias. And, the story when it's not focused on Corky is quite nice as well. Overall, worth seeing but a highly flawed film.

Mostly a documentary-style salute to the tireless workers at Lockheed and how quickly they're turning out aircraft for the war (which we're not in until the end of the movie), this Warners assembly line effort is unremarkable in pretty much every way. It stars Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson, who were teamed in several other movies, usually more felicitously, as sort of a Warners Hope and Crosby. They're old school buddies, and when Morgan makes it out to California to work, he bunks in with Carson and almost immediately is flirting with his wife, Ann Sheridan. The three yell at each other an awful lot, and you may notice, neither of the guys is a really good guy: Morgan's a lazy cynic and Carson a quick-tempered idiot. Both are eventually redeemed, of course. The comedy's limp and the romance unsatisfying, and the one really good performance comes out of George Tobias, of all people, who's the immigrant supervisor who makes wry remarks and eventually encounters tragedy. The patriotism is thick even by the standards of the day, and the musical score intrusive, and don't expect any surprises. But what he heck, I enjoy Morgan and Carson, and Sheridan did have oomph. A period piece, indifferently directed by Lloyd Bacon, but not too bad as a time waster.

Unemployed Corky Jones (Dennis Morgan) and Gil Borden arrive in town. They get jobs at the Lockheed aircraft factory. Corky lives with his jobless friend Brad Maple (Jack Carson) and his wife Roma (Ann Sheridan). Brad's jealous pride is hurt and Corky leaves. Next, Corky rents from his friend Jake Hanso (George Tobias).

It's a fine wartime effort. It's fine as a love triangle melodrama. The actors are fine although I'm not taken with any of the relationships. It closes with a very, very short flying action scene. It's extremely short. This is fine. It's all rather fine. It's nothing that good.

A good cast goes to waste in this story of two pals, Dennis Morgan (qv) and Jack Carson (qv), dueling for the affections of Ann Sheridan (qv).

Make no mistake about it -- Ann Sheridan is definitely worth fighting for. It's just too bad that Wings for the Eagle doesn't put up much of a fight when it comes to telling a story.

If you want to see the starring trio in a much better movie then check out _Shine On, Harvest Moon (1944)_ (qv). Or, to a lesser degree, _One More Tomorrow (1946)_ (qv).