The Worst Film Ever

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Admirable film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

John Ford's willingness to play it up big in his movies was normally one of the director's great strengths. But sometimes it got away from him. A good example is this tribute to his friend "Spig" Wead.Wead (John Wayne) is a U. S. Navy officer chafing to get up in the air. The way he sees it, "How else are we gonna get aviation?" To that end, he takes on the Army, Navy superiors, and even his wife, Min (Maureen O'Hara). His commitment to air power is such that it cancels out everything else, until a sudden accident forces a change of focus."Spig Wead," Min fumes at one point. "Never listen to anybody else. Just do exactly what you wanna do all the time.""The Wings Of Eagles" is one of Ford's stranger movies. Sudden shifts in tone predominate. The film starts out a light-hearted service romp with pratfalls and car chases. Then sudden tragedy occurs. More light-hearted antics follow. Then Ford drops the big boom on Spig. The next half-hour centers on a long, painful convalescence.Ford did mood shifts in his films all the time, of course. Normally, the gears didn't grind so loudly as they do here."Wings Of Eagles" is perhaps best known for Ford's insertion of an autobiographical element, a director named "John Dodge" who enlists Wead as a screenwriter, which Ford actually did after Wead's Navy career came to a sharp end. An argument can be made that Ford is actually presenting us with a double self-portrait: Wead comes off here as difficult, selfish, alcoholic, career-obsessed, and unable to hold onto relationships, all flaws Ford's biographers say the director had in spades. No wonder Ford can't decide whether to play it as comedy or tragedy.Wayne is flat-out brilliant here. Just a year after making "The Searchers" with Ford, the actor was in his peak thespian form and plays the valleys of Wead's life with candid abandon, even shedding his hairpiece this one time on screen. For 15 minutes, he's required to carry major scenes with his face buried in a pillow, and pulls it off. I never got tired of watching him.The same can't be said of the rest of this movie. The mawk runs thick with this one, with O'Hara doing a lot of crying into the camera while Spig flies around the world to prove something or other. Much of the rest of the time is spent on merry fisticuffs with rival Army aviators, or eye-rolling reaction shots from cigar- chewing Dan Dailey as Spig's enlisted buddy Jughead.Spig's virtual abandonment of his family is one of the movie's constant themes. When Min tells one of her daughters about Spig's latest aviation record, the girl replies: "Would it be a record if Daddy came home?"O'Hara has some good scenes, too, and so does Dailey, the latter especially as a prod to Spig's eventual rehabilitation. Both worked well with Ford and knew how to make use of the director's loose reins.Yet Ford for some reason holds off on the happy endings. Normally, this might be a strength, but here it comes off as a bit wanton, especially when the film pushes so many light-comedy buttons. Through the chuckles, Spig suffers and suffers. After a while, so do we.

Whenever my father would come home on leave from the Air Force, I could count on being taken to at least one movie. There were two that I remembered vividly. One was "The Joker Is Wild", memorable for the scene where Sinatra is beaten and his throat slashed. The other was this film, and what I specifically remembered was the final scene where Frank Wead is transferred from his ship to another to be retired. I haven't seen the film since 1957 until tonight in 2011...54 years...but I still remembered that scene so well.However, I have a lot of problems with this film. And the biggest problem is -- is this really the way our men in the military behaved back then? If so, I've lost a lot of respect for our military back then. No discipline, frequent drunken fights, and so forth. It's an embarrassment. Or, did John Ford just try to make it a good and fun story? But, perhaps our sense of what is good and admirable in American life has changed over the past 54 years. As I watched this film, what was mostly on my mind was what a lousy husband and father Frank Wead was...at least as portrayed in this film.John Wayne did quite an admirable job acting here, particularly because it is not the kind of role -- a cripple -- that we usually associate with Wayne. Maureen O'Hara, lovely as ever, got cheated here. But, as the old saying goes, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Perhaps, next to Wayne, the best portrayal goes to Dan Dailey.Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne were excellent together, although of their pairings this is my least favorite.In the past year or so I've reexamined quite a few of John Wayne's films, and overall I'm more impressed than I remembered. However, I'm not overly impressed with this film, even though it's based on a true story. If you haven't seen this film, and you like Wayne at all, you ought to watch it...at least once. Yet, I cannot recommend it as one of Wayne's better films. But, it is a good -- and different -- performance by the Duke.

This movie surprised me when I first saw it-I wondered where had it been? This movie is just flat out terrific, Wayne, O'Hara, all the supporting cast members, the story, the fact it's true(based on a true story), and that John Wayne is human make for a 9 in my book. (I give The Shootist a 10, as the best John Wayne western.)This is also a great love story, between Wayne and O'Hara-which is more realistic than most of these "guys in war" stories. Also, a tip of the hat to the part of the story dealing with nerve injuries and rehab, and the backdrop of America's unpreparedness in air power post-WW I, think about Billy Mitchell while you're watching this movie.Must see for Wayne, O'Hara, or John Ford fans.

John Ford's tribute to Frank 'Spig' Wead(John Wayne) the pioneer aviator who helped develop naval air power and later turned to screen writing. The first half of the movie is played for every laugh to be had. The second half becomes sentimental and sometimes a little too dramatic in contrast with the movies earlier scenes. Well directed with top notch sets; and an all-star cast that features:Maureen O'Hara, Dan Dailey, Ken Curtis, Barry Kelley, Edmund Lowe and Ward Bond even "spoofs" Ford himself. Wayne does well running the gamut from slapstick to drama. His scenes with O'Hara always seem magical. This film is enjoyable family entertainment.