Men with Wings

Men with Wings (1938)

AMERICA'S GREATEST HEROES!

Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. Back home in Underwood, Maryland, however, his uncle Hiram F. Jenkins, owner and editor of the local newspaper, refuses to print the story. Nicholas quits and continues to work on his own airplane, with the devoted help of his little daughter Peggy. Peggy is actually the first in her family to fly when her friends, Patrick Falconer and Scott Barnes, induce her to get inside a large kite they have made, and run with it in a field until she is airborne. The kite is caught in a tree, however, and Peggy gets a black eye. Later, Nicholas dies when his experimental airplane crashes, leaving his wife and children alone. By Peggy's adulthood, planes are capable of flying at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h. Peggy continues her father's obsession with flight by helping Scott and Pat to build a plane.

Date of release
1938-07-16
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Drama
Director
William A. Wellman

Casting

Interesting facts

Men with Wings is a 1938 American Technicolor war film, directed by William A. Wellman and starring Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, and Louise Campbell. Donald O'Connor also has a small part as the younger version of MacMurray's character. The two would soon star in the film Sing You Sinners together along with Bing Crosby.

Production

For Men with Wings, Wellman was able to utilize a vast amount of talent and resources to stage the epic. Besides the impressive array of movie talent, the film was one of the first Hollywood productions to utilize the Technicolor three-strip camera process pioneered by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.

Wellman had a special affinity to both the story and aviation in general. In World War I, earning himself the nickname "Wild Bill", Wellman was first an ambulance driver in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, then joined the French Foreign Legion.

The use of mocked-up Nieuport 28 and Thomas-Morse Scout fighters along with other period aircraft such as one real Fokker D.VII and the ubiquitous Travelair "Wichita Fokkers" were featured in the aerial sequences. Principal photography took place primarily at California airport locales. Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz was involved in both flying and directing the aerial filming.

Men with Wings chronicles the "Golden Era" of aviation (1903–1938), featuring a number of significant aircraft in the production, including:

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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