Thunder Birds (1942)

Let's be realistic.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Accomplishes it's purposes of providing more Technicolor exposure of Fox's ravishing young starlet: Gene Tierney, while providing a drama relating to the then current training of pilots, primarily for the Army Air Corps. Gene , at 22, looks especially beautiful in this film, as in the later Technicolor "Leave Her to Heaven". In the beginning, she's the girl of instructor Steve Britt(Preston Foster), but later becomes enamored of British trainee Peter Stackhouse(John Sutton), who is almost dismissed from the school, save for the intervention of Britt. Britt seems not too upset that Jean went for the younger man, as he was 20 years her senior......I was curious why the bright yellow and blue Stearman Model 75 biplanes were used as trainers, whereas the pilots were going to fly monoplanes in battle. Reportedly, these planes had a reputation for being easy for beginners to fly, relatively forgiving, and rugged. The pilots flying the combat planes in the fadeout were termed Thunder Birds. Interestingly, these fighters looked to me like probable P-47s, nicknamed Thunderbolts. ...... Brit John Sutton was a real life adventure seeker, born in India. He was most often cast as 'the other man' or villain, but here he's the winner, as he was in the prior film "Hudson's Bay" , again, with Gene as his ladylove.....The director, William Wellman, bargained with Darryl Zanuck to direct this film if he were allowed to direct the very controversial project "The Ox Bow Incident". As anticipated, the latter film was a box-office flop, but is highly regarded today. See the present film at YouTube

The man who directed this film about aerial training, William "Wild Bill" Wellman, was a daring pilot himself, and was not only responsible for Wings, the first Oscar winning feature, but also helmed The Ox Bow Incident, Public Enemy and 1937's A Star Is Born, and compared to those classics, this is rather weak tea, rescued by Technicolor, a 22 year old Gene Tierney, and its historical value as a WWII flag-waver. Studio director Daryl Zanuck wanted to give Gene Tierney, his doll-like starlet, plenty of exposure; here she was just a few years away from her indelible performances in Laura and Leave Her To Heaven; Tierney is paired with old reliable Preston Foster in a tale set in the Arizona desert, where the brilliantly colored blue and yellow prop planes dazzle the eye, set against desert sands and clear blue sky; the story is essentially older man vs. younger flier (sometimes leading man John Sutton) who vie for the heart of the fair maid, but the side benefits of the film outweigh the tired plot elements: how often do we see young Chinese and British airmen in Arizona being trained by Americans? How things change!

Aside from Gene Tierney (who gets top billing), this film has no big-name stars. Preston Foster plays a nice guy who is an instructor at a military flight school in the Southwest. He's a great pilot and in love with Tierney. One of his students, John Sutton, is an odd case. He is in flight school even though he easily becomes air sick AND he's already a doctor. In real life, I strongly doubt that the military would have trained any doctor to be a pilot--as the really needed doctors and it would have been a shame to waste that training. However, this is a Hollywood film, so you'll need to suspend your sense of disbelief. As for Sutton's motivation, his father was a great WWI pilot who was friends with Foster and Sutton's brother (also a pilot) was just killed. So, to fulfill his family legacy he enters training school. Along the way, Sutton also falls for comely Tierney and this brings problems--Sutton adores Foster and doesn't want to hurt him--but Tierney is a hot tamale and has fallen for Sutton as well.The main theme, aside from the romance with Tierney, is Sutton's fitness to be a pilot. Despite the family history, he somehow is NOT at home in the air and is a great risk to be washed out of the school. It's only with the help of Foster that he has any chance at all to make it.This Technicolor film is highly reminiscent of a group of films about pilots in school during the war. Believe it or not, there were quite a few films like this, such as CAPTAINS OF THE AIR and I WANTED WINGS and all are grand entertainment due to excellent flying sequences and good acting. Despite Sutton and Foster no longer being household names, they also did a nice job in the film. While I really enjoyed the movie, I also realize that not everyone loves airplane films like I do. So, while I might like the films enough to give them an 8 or 9, I realize that for the average person out there, the films aren't quite as compelling. Still, it's a solid WWII propaganda film--an excellent movie to bolster the war effort and entertain at the same time. The only problems with the film, and they are minor, are that the plot is a tad formulaic and in a few scenes the plane did some turns and acrobatics no real plane at the time could have done. As I said, minor problems in an otherwise good film.By the way, for some semi-insane dating advice listen to the guy playing Tierney's Uncle. The scene where he was giving advice to Foster made me smile.Also by the way, while I said that Foster was mostly forgotten today, he and the Commander (Jack Holt) were pretty big stars back in the silent days. It's interesting here seeing them in roles suited to them in middle age, as they continued acting well past their days as top-billed stars.

The plot is nothing much new. An older, experienced aviator (Preston Foster) is hired as a civilian instructor at Thunder Bird Airfield in Arizona. His missions: (1) To shepherd a class of American, British, and Chinese novices through primary flight training, and (2) to woo an old girl friend, Gene Tierney, who happens to live on a ranch next to the field.One of his British students is the elegant-sounding and clean-cut young John Sutton. The poor guy used to be a doctor but then volunteered for the RAF, a position for which he seems manifestly unsuited. He gets airsick and is acrophobic, like me. Encouraged by his aunt, the no-nonsense Dame May Witty, he does his best to overcome his defects. After some initial flights, Foster says he's going to wash Sutton out but Sutton begs for another chance and Foster relents, for now.That's not all that's going on though. The ability to fly is one thing, but then there's Gene Tierney to contend with. Wow. Sutton and his co-cadet Richard Haydn (the voice of the caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland") run into Gene Tierney in a dress shop. They admire her legs and she taunts them, flirtatiously, and leads them on. Preston's love for Tierney, if that's what it is, in unrequited but Tierney and Sutton get along quite well together. Did I mention her legs? Did I mention her facial features? She looks like the result of a mating between a Chinese porcelain doll and a fox.But never mind the romance. That's ground. The figure is the flying. The director, William Wellman, was a flier himself and though this was strictly a contractual obligation, his fascination with airplanes illuminates the film. I can only think of a few other films that have so successfully captured the exuberance of flying biplanes in their colorful pre-war paint schemes in the blue and crystalline air of Arizona. Such beauty for such an ugly end.If you find the romantic theme music familiar or appealing, it's written by Harry Warren for another movie about ice skating in the same year, 1942. The title is "There Will Never Be Another You," and it's entered the Great American Songbook. You can download it from anywhere.There's not much else to be said about the movie. The performances are all professional, the plot is the result of innumerable recyclings, and the visual imagery is splendor itself, especially the girl and the airplanes. Did I mention her legs? A cheerful and diverting way to spend an hour and a half.