Bomber Movies

[Yaima President]

Muchof the film involves Lee, Rogers, and Blake performing various tests trying to determine the altitude at which pilots start to black out, and how the aircraft itself is affected when the oxygen level and temperature start to fall. The men develop a harness and later a flight suit that help to provide oxygen to the pilot when he starts his ascent into higher altitudes. I find the scenes of them testing the harness to be funny, because it basically looks like a rubber version of what sumo wrestlers wear. The flight suit resembles something a scuba diver would wear, which makes sense, since scuba divers would deal with oxygen and water pressure issues.

Mr Flynn is also my boy but this film is the pits. He is better in Dawn Patrol if talking aviation flicks. Fred McMurray is like a piece of cardboard: flat, boring and tasteless. Even I put this Flynn in the bin.

My name is Kayla. I am a native Oregonian, and am a "shimmering, glowing star of the cinema firmament" who loves classic movies and television. I was a longtime Nick-at-Nite junkie from the mid-90s through the early 00s. My favorite actor is Errol Flynn and my favorite actress is Lucille Ball. My favorite film is "The Long, Long Trailer" (1954). "I Love Lucy" (1951) is my #1 favorite television show of all time.

On some dumb fundamental level, "Airport" kept me interested for a couple of hours. I can't quite remember why. The plot has few surprises (you know and I know that no airplane piloted by Dean Martin ever crashed). The gags are painfully simpleminded (a priest, pretending to cross himself, whacks a wise guy across the face). And the characters talk in regulation B-movie clichs like no B-movie you've seen in ten years. Example: A bomb blows a hole in the airplane and weakens the tail structure. Martin's co-pilot says: "Listen, Vern, I want you to know that if there's anything I can do..." What's he talking about? Martin's girl.

The movie has a lot of expensive stars, but only two (Helen Hayes and Van Heflin) have wit enough to abandon all pretense of seriousness. Even Martin, who can be charming in a movie when he relaxes, plays a straight hero-type this time. Burt Lancaster is even straighter and more heroic, as needs be, since he has to run the airport, supervise George Kennedy in pulling out a stuck Boeing 707, and decide to divorce his wife, all at the same time.

But Miss Hayes and Heflin apparently realized early on that "Airport" was going to be a deadly dull affair, and they went about salvaging their own roles, at least. Miss Hayes milks her role of a little-old-lady stowaway for all it's conceivably worth, and I have a suspicion she wrote some of her own dialogue. It's warmer and more humorous than the stiff lines everyone else has to recite, and she won an Oscar for the role.

Heflin, as the guy with the bomb in his briefcase, is perhaps the only person in the cast to realize how metaphysically absurd "Airport" basically is. The airplane already has a priest, two nuns, three doctors, a stowaway, a customs officer's niece, a pregnant stewardess, two black GIs, a loudmouthed kid, a henpecked husband, and Dean Martin aboard, right? So obviously the bomber has to be typecast, too.

Heflin sweats, shakes, peers around nervously, clutches his briefcase to his chest, refuses to talk to anybody, and swallows a lot. The customs officer sees him going on the plane and notices "something in his eyes." Also in his ears, nose, and throat. What Heflin does is undermine the structure of the whole movie with a sort of subversive overacting. Once the bomber becomes ridiculous, the movie does, too. That's good, because it never had a chance at being anything else.

I am finally inspired to move "Dive Bomber" to number one in my Netflix queue (ousting "Roxie Hart," which is a feat). Loved your remarks on the cigarette smoking. Never noticed that before in other "boy movies."

Great post on this film Jaqueline. Here in Coronado California we have just finished celebrating 100 years of Naval Aviation, which began here in 1911. Several films have been made here and on North Island Naval Base(its actually in Coronado rather than San Diego). I'd recommend "The Flying Fleet", a silent with Ramon Navarro and Anita Page in 1929 and "Hell Divers" from 1931 starring Clark Gable.

The colour cinematography of "Dive Bomber" is almost hypnotic. I can't think of another colour film that impacts me that way.

Also, the main thing I recall from my long ago viewing was that Regis Toomey lived for as long as he did. Usually, if there's any plane crashes or such to be had, Toomey is the likely candidate for first to go.

I ache to see the movie again with your perspectives.

"Hypnotic", that's it exactly. Glad to hear somebody else was so deeply affected by the colors in this movie.

I don't think I realized Toomey kicked the bucket so often. Maybe they drew straws and Heydt lost, so he had to be first to go.

I'm surprised the medical experiments didn't kill anybody.

Thanks, CW. I think (and I didn't write it down, but you can check) that during TCM's birthday tribute to Alexis Smith on June 8th, they're running "Dive Bomber" again. (Thanks to Laura - - for the heads up on TCM's June schedule.)

"Dive Bomber" is probably about 30 minutes too long, but its pretty watchable while its on. It may be best remembered as the film that finally put the kibosh on the Errol Flynn/Michael Curtiz working relationship.

They got into a huge fight during the making of this film to the point Flynn refused to work with him again. Not sure what the fight was about, but it was a loss to both men that they never worked together again.

Love that final scene with the planes flying off into the sun-streaked skies and the Max Steiner score booming on the soundtrack. If I was an 18-year-old in 1941 I would have immediately enlisted. No wonder the Navy gave its approval to shoot the film on their carriers and on their bases.

Ah, those shared cigarette scenes. So comfortable. So sexy. I have to say I always liked watching them. It gave men something to with their hands.

Too bad cigarettes are such a scourge. I wonder what noir films would have been like without 'em. A little less noir, I'm afraid.

This sounds like a good movie and probably at some point in time I did see it because some of it sounds very familiar.

A terrific overview as usual, Jacqueline. Love that last shot.

Pretty is as pretty does. :)

There's so much smoking in this movie I thought Bette Davis was going to show up any minute, but she never did.

Yvette, I think an artist like yourself would really appreciate the use of color in this movie.

I came to your review by chance and I had to read it slowly and in its entirety. I salute you for your very perceptive insights into the essential greatness of this moving-picture. I first saw it many years ago and consider it among my three greatest aviation films over all.

May I point out that I started building model airplanes in 1953, balsa flying models -- not plastic ones, which one assembles and paints.

Have you written about the other great 1941 aviation picture [Paramount] "I Wanted Wings"? It was a counterpart tribute to the U. S. Army Air Corps [which my Uncle enlisted in in June of 1941]. Sadly the budget was for black and white. Still no company has issued it commercially and restored.

A note: The "British fighter" looks like a worked-over Ryan PT-22 trainer. From memory; I need to see my DVD again.

I was born in 1942. I would really have liked being an adult in 1941.

Thanks for your very "worth it" review of "Dive Bomber"

Thank you so much, and welcome to the blog.

Balsa models - those are hard to make. You must have been a boy of real talent. I have not written about "I Wanted Wings", but I hope to sometime or other.

I suppose many people seeing these films wish they could live in that adventurous, exciting, romantic world, but count your blessings we weren't adults in 1941. Many of us would not have survived the war, and have, despite our many troubles, come of age in a time of relative ease, standing of the shoulders of a generation that did not.

Thank you so much again. How interesting that the "British" plane might have been faux. I wouldn't know.

Well, there are chick flicks and now chick reviews of guy flicks ... and well done too, I might add ... although the overuse of "pretty" got a little tiresome.

Spig Wead, the subject of the John Ford/John Wayne film Wings of Eagles, was an uncredited screenwriter for Dive Bomber.

Carrier aviation was VERY high tech, and even though our Devastator torpedo plane and Buffalo fighter were inadequate and our Grumman Wildcat just barely so (against the Zero), the problems of carrier operation doctrine and procedures were far better advanced than in the Royal Navy or even the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Just watched this movie on TCM and really enjoyed it. The cinematography is excellent. I am a real fan of the pre-war colours carried by US Navy aircraft.

For the record, the "British" fighter aircraft is actually American and a trainer, not a fighter. It's actually a Ryan of some sort painted in fairly realistic RAF camouflage of that period. And the cap was called a "Forage Cap".

Thanks for stopping by Ericlrl. I agree the cinematography is excellent. I didn't know that the "British" plane was actually an American plan in disguise, very interesting. However, forage caps had brims on them, at least American ones did, similar to a square ball cap or golf cap. Perhaps the British and the Commonwealth nations' forage caps did not.

I've always rated DIVE BOMBER as one of FLYNNS' VERY BEST CHARACTER roles in this outstanding TECHNICOLORed film from WARNER BROS. A bit too long --and I thought shoving the on-loan -from-PARAMOUNT-Fred MacMurray, in an above- the-title co-starring- frame with FLYNN, was rude! But then again I've always had a problem with Fred in ANYTHING, ANYWAY; one never knows what he is thinking-- and seems that he never knows, either--, what with that hilarious, constant trademark SMIRK on his face all the time....(!)> ALAS! In DIVE BOMBER, FRED IS ON A --DIVE BUMMER --and all he does in this film is pout, grumble, and argue with FLYNN. ALEXIS thrown in for female eye candy in a thankless, throw-away role, which never the less is a joyful distraction from the heavy goings-on story with it's all-male cast. ALAN JENKINS provides a few scenes of much needed HUMOR RELIEF WITH AN ON-GOING GAG popping up several times during the films' all too long screen time. SAN DIEGO looks SO WONDERFULLY calm and beautifully un-populated--and in 1940, it was less than a century old as an AMERICAN CITY!! NO SMOG, and however wet it looks, (in what appears to be a movie being filmed between rain showers), it looks HEAVENLY especially here, with scenes taken from the air above the CLASSIC HOTEL DEL CORONADO! All in all a stormy warning there, and for folks watching there was probably the common belief that WAR was around the corner. The aircraft carrier ENTERPRISE is here with terrific propaganda scenes- that, however spectacularly filmed that they were-hinted away at the depressing horror that was to come...

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