I saw several John Ford films when I attended the LaSalle Bank Theatre with my dad on Saturday nights, but one that I was less than enthralled with was The Wings of Eagles. I knew someone who saw it at the Uptown Theatre (on the Northside, Broadway and Lawrence) in late 1957 when it was first released and he just racked it up as a routine John Wayne that happened to be directed by John Ford. It’s hard to imagine anyone at the time being overwhelmed by this film.
I like a number of things in it, even though it’s a terrible mix– a mix, not a blend— of pathos and slapstick. The domestic scenes and the turmoil following Wayne and Maureen O’Hara’s divorce was interesting and I wish the script would have expanded upon that. I think Wayne gives a solid, thoughtful performance in that instance. But that knockabout stuff in the early footage just put me off. And Wayne was much too old to be convincing as a jack-legged, young air pilot. One other thing that probably affects no one but me: the large, lumbering Waynester, with that gigantic head stuffed into that skin-tight aviator’s cap… with the chin strap dangling. He just looks goofy. Kane “Spy Smasher” Richmond could wear an aviator’s cap (and goggles); the Duke couldn’t.
I got a kick out of Ward Bond doing the “John Dodge” take-off (on director John Ford), but has there ever been a more annoying sidekick this side of “Jar Jar Binks” than Dan “I’m gonna move that toe!” Dailey? Now this may be nothing more than wishful thinking, but I’m sure some in that Uptown audience burst into thunderous applause the moment that Jap Zero strafes the Destroyer and stitches that fine Metrocolor line of bullet holes across Dailey’s back. Incredibly– and unbelievably– the guy survives.
Ford always alibied that the film’s weak box office was due to no one knowing who the heck Spig Wead was. Of course that doesn’t hold water; The Spirit of St. Louis tanked that same year and I guarantee you everyone on the planet knew of Charles Lindbergh. I can believe the trailer to Wings could have put advance audiences off. Both the sequence of Wead merrily smacking his plane into the middle of an admiral’s garden party at Pensacola (uh-huh) and that dreadful, poorly blocked donnybrook in the dining room in the Army/Navy Club in Washington are depicted. (I just love the obviousness of placing cutesy cut-ups in proximity of a swimming pool and a layer cake.)
Lastly, the movie could have had more of a punch ending, not that I needed Spig’s death scene in my face. Still, I’d rather sit through Wings again than a number of other later Fords I can name.
~MCH