The Wings of Eagles

I went into The Wings of Eagles (1957) with low expectations, and came away pleasantly surprised. John Ford's sprawling tribute to naval aviator, war hero and screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead is a touching, well-balanced biopic that ably mixes comedy, tragedy and fine performances.

Frank "Spig" Wead (John Wayne) is a daredevil Naval pilot in the early '20s. Wead generates headlines through his rivalry with Army ace Captain Hazard (Kenneth Tobey), wins an international air race and convinces the "big brass" to build up the Naval air wing in preparation for future conflicts. But his naval career puts great strain on his marriage with the feisty Min (Maureen O'Hara), leading to a separation. When attempting to reconcile with Min, Spig suffers a paralyzing fall that leaves him paralyzed. While recovering, Spig tries his hand at writing, resulting in a successful play and a deal with Hollywood bigshot John Dodge (Ward Bond). Spig tries to reconcile with Min, but this is put aside when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.

John Ford did a slew of "service comedies" in the 1950s, none of which rank among the director's best work. Most of these are either uneven (The Long Gray Line, Mister Roberts) or awful (What Price Glory?). Ford loved the military too much to outright ridicule it, and could rarely mix his broad low comedy stylings with the subject's seriousness. Ford's brand of comedy - drunken brawls, pratfalls and slapstick silliness - hasn't aged well, with even his better films like The Searchers weighed down by egregious shenanigans.

The Wings of Eagles compares favorably to the above films, with Ford skillfully mixing comedy and drama. The early sections are broad comedy in the approved Ford fashion, but it works here: Spig's haphazard first flight and the Army-Navy brawls are crude but undeniably funny set-pieces. Ford and writers Frank Fenton and William Wister Haines segue into tragedy - Spig and Min's loss of a child, his painful injury and excrutiating recovery - with smoothness and understatement uncharacteristic of its director. Perhaps it's out of devotion to his buddy Wead (who wrote They Were Expendable), but Ford takes unusual care to balance these tonal shifts. It probably helps, too, that none of the protagonists are Irish.

These transitions are helped by a well-structured story and sharply-realized characters. Spig is a very flawed protagonist: his insubordination is presented as "charming" but his complete devotion to the Navy leads to an awful marriage for Min and their daughters. Spig's long and painful recovery ("I'm gonna move that toe!") makes for painful viewing, and Ford deftly avoids cliches and sentimentality. The well-oiled story avoids the schematic, repetitive plotting of The Long Gray Line, which recycles the same jokes and conflicts for two-and-a-half hours. The only drawbacks are the World War II scenes: heavily larded with stock footage (granted, some of it shot by Ford himself), these bits are stiff and anti-climactic after Spig's recovery and Hollywood success.

John Wayne gives a top five performance as Spig. Wayne proves again what a fine actor he is, capturing all sides of a complex character: the cocky, daredevil pilot, the consummate patriot, the budding writer and the guilt-ridden absent husband/father. Wayne nails the movie's big emotional moments, making Spig's recovery painful to watch: seeing Hollywood's toughest, most masculine star face-down and crippled on a hospital bed is heart-rending.

Opposite the Duke, Maureen O'Hara has an equally well-realised character, with her feisty Colleen channelled into a long-suffering wife. O'Hara and Wayne had explosive chemistry, but usually teamed up in weak films: Rio Grande is the weakest of the "Cavalry Trilogy," and I've never thought much of The Quiet Man's overwrought silliness. (The less said about McLintock! or Big Jake, the better.) Here, given more than predictable "battling lovers," both Wayne and O'Hara shine, their big scenes (the baby's death, their attempted reconciliation) bursting with palpable emotion and poignancy.

Dan Dailey (What Price Glory?) is a perfect foil to Spig, a devoted service buddy who's closer to Spig than his own wife. Kenneth Tobey (Gunfight at the OK Corral) gets an unusually big part as Spig's Army rival, an obvious analog for Jimmy Doolittle. Ward Bond has a hilarious cameo as pompous film director "John Dodge." Ken Curtis gives a fine performance, far removed from the crack-brained hicks he assayed in The Searchers and Two Rode Together.

The Wings of Eagles is definitely an underrated John Ford film. If not as thematically interesting or visually-striking as his masterpieces, it's still an entertaining, uplifting piece of work, and a fine tribute to an American hero.