Frank Wead's play / screenplay, "one of the great fliers who broke his back in a fall, and was confined to a wheelchair, so he started writing". Whilst Hawks worked on the romance element ("the
girls make the passes"), the rest of the story was in the play, but it's quintessential Hawks materials in which the relationship between the two buddies James Cagney and Pat O'Brien is more important than that with any of the girls, though with the June Travis character (her debut), tellingly called 'Tommy', you also have an independent and brave heroine; and in its grouping of tough professionals and the talking over each other scenes. Can be seen very much as a trial run for
Angels Only Have Wings which is also about the brave world of mail pilots against the odds.
This is terrific, though perhaps it would have been more pleasing to not kill off Tex (Stuart Erwin), as you have Cagney die in the end as well. Otherwise it's funny, quick, tense and concise.
With Barton MacLane, Henry Wadsworth, Martha Tibbetts, Isabel Jewell, Craig Reynolds, Dick Purcell. Made for Warner Brothers, Arthur Edeson on camera.
Though fuzzy, the
French release is the most affordable way to go - bizarrely, it's not available from the USA at all.
Quotes from Hawks, via
Peter Bogdanovich. Hawks' own brother died in a flying accident.
Note how Hawks loves to fill the screen with characters. In the tense scene with Tex up in the air, more and more characters come into frame, finally joined by his wife in the final frame:
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