Gallant Journey

Depending on whether you believe the plot of Gallant Journey verbatim or not, John J. Montgomery may have been the first man to make a heavier than air flight and he did it in 1883, twenty years before the Wright Brothers did their thing at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Whether you do or not there is no denying that Glenn Ford gave a wonderful performance as the earnest young man, consumed as so many were at that time of the dream of manned flight. Janet Blair played the ever helpful and supportive wife of Ford and does it well.

The film is directed by William Wellman, one of many he did in his career combining his two great loves, film and aviation. Of course Wellman reached the pinnacle of his aviation success with the first Academy Award winning Best film, Wings.

The film is narrated by Charlie Ruggles to a group of post World War II kids and he's Montgomery's brother who has outlived him by a considerable period. Montgomery when he wasn't doing his aviation glider experiments, earned a living teaching science at Santa Clara College where a couple of supportive priests are played by Arthur Shields and Charles Kemper. Best in the supporting parts in the film however is Jim Lloyd who plays the balloonist daredevil who helps pilot Ford's experiments when an inner ear problem forces him to stop doing the actual flying.

Aviation historians still debate Montgomery's actual contributions to the saga of manned flight. But I think Montgomery himself would have been well pleased with how Bill Wellman and Glenn Ford told his tale.

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.

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.

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?

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.