Young Eagles

Young Eagles (1930)

Here's Spectacle! Breath-Taking Action in the Clouds! And a Gripping Romance in Glamorous France!

Lieut. Robert Banks, an American aviator on leave in Paris, meets Mary Gordon, a young American who lives abroad, but their romance is cut short by his return to the front. In an air battle, Robert brings down and captures the Grey Eagle, Baden, and takes him to American Intelligence in Paris. Mary, ostensibly a spy for the Germans, drugs Robert, who awakens to find that his uniform has been stolen by Baden. Later, in an exciting air conflict, Baden is wounded but shoots down Robert's plane. The German rescues him, however, and takes him to an Allied hospital, assuring him of Mary's love; his faith in her is restored when he learns that she is actually a spy for U. S. Intelligence.

Date of release
1930-03-20
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (3)
Runtime
1h 10m
Genres
Drama
Director
William A. Wellman

Casting

Interesting facts

Young Eagles is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by William A. Wellman for Paramount Pictures. It stars Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Jean Arthur, and Paul Lukas. The story is based on the stories "The One Who Was Clever" and "Sky-High", written by American aviator and war hero Elliott White Springs. The film's hero is a "heroic combat aviator of the Lafayette Escadrille".

Production

Young Eagles called for only two scenes depicting air battles, with more of the action centered around a story of espionage and unrequited love. Wellman began pre-production in November 1927, making the decision to use aerial footage from Wings matched to new sequences.

Wellman hired veteran film pilot Leo Norris as the aerial coordinator, responsible for assembling a small fleet of World War I aircraft that included a SPAD VII and Thomas-Morse Scout. Other airworthy aircraft were obtained, such as American Eagle, Travel Air 2000 & 4000 and Waco biplanes that at least were close facsimiles of wartime aircraft.

Film sets for a wartime airfield were built at Lake Sherwood, California, with three weeks spent on location shooting. Two crash scenes were staged by Norris on location, with the second one nearly causing the death of the veteran movie pilot Dick Grace when he flipped his aircraft in a crash so violent that his shoes were ripped off his feet. He walked away with only minor bruises.

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

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