Gallant Journey

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.

Saw the film years and years ago...It has always been one of the most enjoyable films of early flight that I have ever seen...When Montgomery was hauled aloft with his glider attached to a hot air baloon and then released, the scenery was breathtaking as he made his decent to earth high above the Santa Clara valley. Janet Blair as I remember, was Montgomery's wife and in one particular scene, she removed her silk petty coat and gave it to her husband who was in desperate need of patching material for his damaged glider...I would like to rent the video of Gallant Journey but have not had any luck finding a rental agency with it even listed. As I remember, it had an excellent story line...

If ever there was a drive in movie, this would have to be it. It centres around an the dreams of American aviation pioneer John J. Montgomery (Glenn Ford) who was indeed a visionary individual determined to build a glider in the early 1880s. He studies hard at university where his ambitions are largely supported by the Jesuit order (Arthur Shields) even if they are somewhat frustrated by his own politically ambitious father Zachary (Willard Robertson). Along the way, he falls in love with "Ginny" (Janet Blair) and that's where the film loses it's scientific impetus and surrenders to a series of melodically scored romantic scenes - violins squeaking away merrily as the pace drops as surely as one of his earlier inventions. The thrust of the story still surfaces now and again. He has to fight a costly battle to protect his increasingly successful inventions and there is some nice aerial photography that illustrates the joys (and dangers) of his labours, but for the most part this is a rather unremarkable effort from just about everyone involved that seems to drag just once too often before the historically accurate conclusion. If this were a book, it'd be a very short pamphlet on early aerodynamics, balsa wood and willpower.

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?