Posted on 05/08/2022 9:36:35 AM PDT by Rummyfan
The five year gap in Jimmy Stewart's filmography between 1942 and 1946 was the most vivid and important period in his life, if you believe what the famously reticent and reserved movie star would say later. He spent it in uniform with the U.S. Army Air Force, much of it flying B-24 bombers with the Eighth Air Force over Europe. Interviewed by writer Jonathan Coe for the biography Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life, the actor was asked to compare it to his career as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for nearly half a century. Was it greater than that, Coe asked?
"Much greater," Stewart said.
Several biographies of Stewart like to point out that he never made a war film after coming back from the war, including Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot, an account of his time in the USAAF, written by Starr Smith, who served as an intelligence officer in the Eighth alongside Stewart. The actor is quoted as saying that war movies never really got the truth of war right.
It's a great factoid, but isn't really true: Stewart made two films for MGM set during the lead-up to the war before he entered the service – The Mortal Storm (1940) and Come Live With Me (1941), typical of the mixtures of melodrama and propaganda the studios made to support President Roosevelt's persistent push for American entry into World War II. After the war he would split his time between genres with a heavy emphasis on westerns, but among them was Malaya (1949), with Stewart and Spencer Tracy smuggling rubber out of Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia, and The Mountain Road (1960), as an officer fighting the Japanese in China.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Outrageuously silly plot but the aviation makes it a great watch.
Six turnin’ and four burnin’!
Henry Morgan looked and sounded like a gruff old man even in Strategic Air Command!
There was a cynical takeoff on this patch with the mailed fist holding a pair of testicles and reading, “to err is human, to forgive is not SAC policy”
No Highway In The Sky is pretty good too. James Stewart had so many great films and radio shows under his belt.
By contrast, if WWII were being fought today, most of the socialists in Hollywood would support the other side.
Those same cynical Airmen would often scrawl underneath it, “War is just our hobby”
The movie is a window into that era. Like the WWII propaganda flicks like “Air Force”, these become nearly unwatchable as drama but are great viewing as a message from the past. Trying to bring the B36 off as a viable offensive weapon is pure moonshine. But a lot of fun.
An interesting article... My wife and I used to go to every annual retired officer’s meeting at the McChord Air Force Base Officers club up until they were discontinued a couple of years ago. You would not believe some of the speakers that we listened to there... It was such an honor to be in the presence of so many of our past celebrated and uncelebrated heroes and to be able to listen in on some of their conversations. We were privileged to have many as friends. Unfortunately, we have lost so many over the years.
A few years ago I was talking about this film with your Dad and he said he scoffed at it and left half way through it. I ask him about the B-47 scenes and he said he hadn’t known the B-47 was in the movie. And that they mentioned some of the problems I remember him talking about in flying the B-47. I gave him a DVD copy of it and hopefully he was able to watch it. This is a good summary of the movie. Cheers G-F
Remember that the B-36 was designed to fly from the continental U.S.A. to bomb Germany and Japan. It was the WW2 follow on for the B-29. At the time of its original design and ordering, it flying against jet fighters and crude surface to air missiles was not considered.
“My wife and I used to go to every annual retired officer’s meeting at the McChord Air Force Base Officers club up until they were discontinued a couple of years ago.”
They were called “Heritage Dinners” and were hosted by a General who was one of the former base commanders at McChord AFB. Many of the stories we heard were from the time period that the article is about. Of course, in the beginning there many speakers who talked about their experiences in WWII as well.
Yes. But it was ridiculously obsolete long before it was built. An insane waste of money and resources. Not one B36 would have made it across USSR borders. The MIG-15s would have slaughtered them.
“Outrageuously silly plot”
I disagree. Up until the time the film was made, the nation had entered wars and won them. They had defined starts and endings. Between wars, people went back to a peacetime life largely untroubled by warfare.
But the advent of nuclear weapons changed all that. We entered the era of massive perpetual defense and first-strike capability. It was a sea change in military thinking to shift from an as-needed warfare capability with defined starts and ends to a perpetual cold war mentality. Our soldiers, sailors and airmen were quite unprepared for that shift and the need for career military men. They were used to being called up as-needed and returning to civilian life afterwards.
In my opinion, the film was mainly made to get people to accept the new reality and to recruit people to the new military with readiness a 24x7 requisite. This is pointed out very clearly in the film. I recall Lt. Col. Robert ‘Dutch’ Holland making this argument in a speech during the film, but the only relevant quote I can find on IMDB is by Sgt. Bible: “We never know when the other fella may start somethin’, so we’ve gotta be combat ready 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The civilian population had to adjust to the new reality of 24x7 preparedness and nonstop training flights.
I was born in 1951 and grew up with this Cold War reality. But you have to put yourself in the shoes of adults in the 1950s adjusting to this new world. This required change in attitudes by the American people was something I had not thought of until I watched “Strategic Air Command.”
While Steyn’s review is good, I think he completely misses this critical point.
I’m watching the very last episode of “Ozark” tonight and I think I’ll re-watch “Strategic Air Command” after that.
Here is a good clip with the sound of the B-#^-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1CZdppWrU
Back when hollywierd was terribly weird.
I meant “B-36-”.
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