Flight Command

Robert Taylor plays a flier assigned to the famous "Hell Cats" in "Flight Command" from 1940.

Taylor plays Alan Drake, who excitedly joins the Hell Cats and then realizes he has a lot to learn from his commander, Billy Gary (Walter Pidgeon) - Alan met Billy's wife Lorna when he landed off-course en route to join the Hell Cats.

Though he feels left out by the guys, he finds acceptance at a party given at Billy's and Lorna's (Ruth Hussey) house and blends in well. He helps Billy's brother-in-law Jerry (Shepperd Strudwick) with a device he's working on that allows one to fly in the fog; unfortunately, Jerry is killed testing the device, leaving his sister Lorna devastated.

While Billy is out of town, Alan does what he can to cheer Lorna up. She starts to fall for him, and in a panic, she leaves Billy. The Hell Cats assume that Alan is having an affair with her and turn on him.

Pretty routine with some wonderful flying sequences and some lovely performances, particularly from Pidgeon and Hussey. Strudwick, a young man here, was a Broadway actor who went on to continue on Broadway and also prime time television and soap operas, best remembered as Victor Lord in One Life to Live. He gives an energetic performance.

Taylor is handsome and debonair and does a good job as Alan. He was a solid actor, not given to introspection, and capable of better work than he was often given. He loved being at MGM, took the pathetic money the studio gave him (he was supposedly the lowest paid contract player in history), and played whatever parts he was handed.

Taylor's roles were better after the war. We lost so many of these leading men way too young, thanks to the habit of smoking. Taylor was a three-pack-a-day man who died at the age of 57.

Pretty good, nice performances, great effects for 1940.

Aviation buffs will love Flight Command. The special effects are outstanding for 1940, very much like Howard Hughes's classic Hell's Angels.

If this were made at 20th Century Fox, Tyrone Power would have been cast as the lead. Power had a patent on hero/heel types over at that studio. Robert Taylor who plays the lead here usually played straight up heroes in his films. Taylor played hero/heels, but not as often as Power did. Taylor debuted in that kind of part at MGM with A Yank at Oxford and wouldn't play one again until his classic Johnny Eager.

Taylor is a wiseacre fresh naval cadet straight out of the flying school at Pensacola, hence the nickname the others give him. Because of deaths an opening occurs at the elite Hellcats fighter squadron and Taylor is brash enough to think they requested him personally.

His attitude doesn't make him too many friends, among them being the squadron leader Walter Pigeon, his wife Ruth Hussey, and her brother Sheppard Strudwick. Strudwick is working on an instrument that will enable planes to land in fog, but gets killed trying to test fly it.

That opens all kinds of complications and misunderstandings among the men of the squadron and Taylor gets to feel mighty unwelcome. But he gets a chance to redeem himself in the end.

A few days earlier I did a review of another aviation picture Ceiling Zero and commented how Warner Brothers played on the cheap with the special effects. MGM did just the opposite, Flight Command got two Oscar nominations for visual special effects and sound, both well deserved.

Carrier based aircraft was still an unproven tactic for war, although aircraft carriers had been developed since the early twenties. But it hadn't yet been shown to be effective in war. It's almost quaint to watch the cast using ancient World War I era biplanes as training vehicles. But that's what the United States Navy had available back then. It was two years until the battle of Midway and less than two years until Pearl Harbor when Flight Command came out. A whole lot of aviation progress was made in that period, it had to be.

Flight Command out of necessity has to be dated, but it is still a good film to watch bearing in mind what these men were training for.

One of the top fighter plane squadrons is the Hellcats. When the film begins, they have just lost one of their pilots in an accident. His replacement is an extremely cocky new Ensign (Robert Taylor) just out of flight school at Pensacola. On his way from the academy in Florida to the Hellcat base in San Diego, he gets in trouble--everything is fogged in and he can't possibly safely land. Ignoring orders, he tries to land and is nearly killed. Soon after this, he also screws up during gunnery practice and nearly kills himself for the second time!! Clearly, Taylor has a long way to go to fit in with the Hellcats!

In addition to this plot early on in the film, Ruth Hussey plays an interesting part. She's the wife of the group's commander (Walter Pidgeon). The stress of seeing her husband and other men she cares about risking their lives is simply too much. Keeping a 'stiff upper lip' is getting tougher and tougher and unless something changes, she's headed for a breakdown.

The sort of character Robert Taylor played in this film is nothing new for him, as he'd played a similar cock-sure guy in "A Yank at Oxford" a couple years earlier. And, by formula, you know that the character's cockiness will eventually change to make him the team player and all-around swell guy by the time the credits roll at the end of the film. But, because it's all handled so well, the film is a lot of fun. Excellent acting, an interesting script (it's more than just airplanes and Taylor's adjustment to the Hellcats) and direction by one of the era's better directors, Frank Borzage, make this a very good film--even if you aren't into airplane films.

By the way, the biplanes used in this film were the Grumman F3F-3. These dated looking planes were retired from service in 1941 and were pretty much outdated by the time the US entered WWII. It's odd, then, that the Hellcats (a crack fighter squadron) would STILL be using this plane by the time this movie was made in 1940. Top Navy squadrons would have been using more modern monoplanes like the Brewster Buffalo or F4F Wildcat. MGM would probably not had access to these other planes, as the Navy would have been a lot more protective of their newer planes. Of course, few people on IMDb are plane nuts like me, so most of this hardly matters to the average viewer!

And, for ship nuts out there, Miss Hussey reads a newspaper article about the navy going on maneuvers with three aircraft carriers--including the USS Virginia. There never was a carrier with this name and the battleship Virginia was deliberately sunk in 1923.

By the way, I did a little checking and found out some things which are interesting. This is one of Red Skelton's first films. Soon after finishing this film, he and his wife split up...and she married the director, Borzage! Wow...now that's pretty sensational and weird! And, if you are in the mood for more dirt, try reading up on the life of one of the principle actors in the film, Paul Kelly--it's pretty sensational.

"Flight Command" was shown as part of the TCM Memorial Day series, and it deserves to be remembered for its excellent performances by the leads and all the supporting players, as well as the air scenes of single-engine planes flown by the squadron of Navy pilots. There is a lesson in their comraderie which is all the more moving when one considers the 1940 date and the skilful stuntwork of the planes for its time. Walter Pidgeon gives a classic performance, both strong and vulnerable, for which he will become better known in later films, and Ruth Hussey, usually in a secondary role, puts in a sensitive and generous performance as the "skipper's" stalwart wife in a part that could have been given to Myrna Loy. I am not a fan of Robert Taylor, but I felt he gave one of the more honest of his performances, and his good looks did not for once detract. Ruth's brother in the film, Shepperd Strudwick, hardly a known name, was well-cast as the outgoing, daring inventor working on a fog-navigating device. Between Pidgeon's Apollonian personality and Taylor's Dyonisian charm, Strudwick's relaxed and interestingly handsome face reminded me of Joseph Cotton in having a natural sense of gravitas in his manner.

Even though the plot was not a complex one, the different character relationships, whether between the pilots themselves, or of the perceived triangle of Taylor, Hussey and Pidgeon, was sensitively handled, and the several tricky maneuvers demanded of the pilots kept me glued to the screen. Credit should be given to the director, Frank Borzage, for coaxing such balanced performances from the cast. As for the supporting roles, Paul Kelley and Red Skelton (apparently in his first film appearance) both deserve mention, as do the script writers. The situations and dialogue appear routine, but nothing that is said or done is hackneyed or banal.

Of four ****, I would give it a highly recommended three***.

Lots of fun. Wells Root and Commander Harvey Haislip penned this screenplay from an original story Haislip also co-authored about an eager Naval Flight School cadet (Robert Taylor) in Pensacola flying solo out to Southern California to join Hellcat Fighters who have just lost one of their beloved teammates; he makes a colorful entrance (having to ditch his plane and parachute into the ocean because of fog!) and finds an early friend in a somewhat-emotional woman...the Skipper's wife! Camaraderie between the pilots on the ground is enjoyably written and played, with Taylor's charming self-assurance an interesting dynamic within the group (he isn't cocky, he's careful--though anxious to fit in). Subplot with Ruth Hussey's lonesome wife is soapy yet surprisingly skillful, while the aerial maneuvers are nicely photographed. An extra bonus: Red Skelton as a joshing lieutenant...and Walter Pidgeon looking younger than I have ever seen him. **1/2 from ****