Captains of the Clouds (1942)

Interesting facts

• Box office: $3.4M
• Budget: $1.8M
• Earned 1.9× its budget
• Filmed in: Ottawa
• Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Captains of the Clouds is a 1942 American war film in Technicolor, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring James Cagney. It was produced by William Cagney, with Hal B. Wallis as executive producer. The screenplay was written by Arthur T. Horman, Richard Macaulay, and Norman Reilly Raine, based on a story by Horman and Roland Gillett. The cinematography was by Wilfred M. Cline and Sol Polito and was notable in that it was the first feature-length Hollywood production filmed entirely in Canada.

Production

During pre-production, Joseph W. G. Clark, the public relations director of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, was heavily involved in promoting a film project that was initially identified as "Bush Pilots" based on a script submitted by Canadian screenwriters. With RCAF backing, Hal Wallis and Jack L.

Numerous attempts to rewrite the script into a more acceptable form resulted in a final screenplay now titled "Captains of the Clouds". The name was borrowed from a Victory Loans speech given by Billy Bishop. The only holdup was casting, which was resolved when Warner persuaded its resident "cocky guy" (as producer Jerry Wald had dubbed him), 42-year-old James Cagney, to take on the lead male role.

This film was Cagney's first in Technicolor. His participation in the production has been characterized as reluctant, and he accepted only after his brother was taken on as an associate producer. He quipped, "I didn't like this story the last four times I did it and I don't like it now!" and feared that he was immersed in one of his trademark Warner Bros. "potboilers", playing a role he had reprised numerous times.

Captains of the Clouds was produced with the full cooperation of the Royal Canadian Air Force to promote enlistment in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. (It was also intended as a rousing "war preparedness" film for American audiences, but by the time it was released, the U.S. was already at war; nevertheless it did serve as a showcase of the Canadian war effort.) The Warner Bros.

Much of the early footage involved a number of bush planes at the Woodcliff Camp on Trout Lake in North Bay, Ontario, and nearby Camp Caribou on Jumping Cariboo Lake in Marten River, Ontario. The aerial sequences were under the direction of Paul Mantz, a long-time Hollywood stunt pilot, who used a Stinson Model A trimotor camera ship.

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