Wings for the Eagle

One of the movies that TCM ran during the Star of the Month salute to Ann Sheridan that I hadn't blogged about before is Wings for the Eagle. It's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive collection, so I recently sat down to watch it and do a post on it here.

Dennis Morgan plays Corky Jones, a habitual shirker who BSes his way through an encounter at a gas station where he meets Roma Maple (Ann Sheridan). Roma is the wife of Brad (Jack Carson), who just happens to be an old classmate of Corky's from college as well as a former football teammate who would be 4-F because of a knee injury. Corky would be prime draft material, and plans to keep himself out of the draft. (It should be pointed out that World War II has not started at the beginning of the movie, although you could be forgiven for not realizing this. The attack on Pearl Harbor comes up halfway through the movie or so.)

One way to get out of the war effort is to be involved in an essential industry, and the Maples happen to live near one of those essential industries, the Lockheed aircraft plant. So Corky decides he's going to get himself a job there to be able to stay out of the war. Brad, for his part, seems to have less earning potential because of that knee injury, and that's a constant source of tension between him and Roma.

Corky does get a job at the plant and, because he's rooming with the Maples because of the housing crunch, that really puts a strain on Brad and Roma's relationship. They decide to separate, which lets Corky think he can put the movies on Roma. He also moves out, getting a room in the house of one of his bosses, Jake Hanso (George Tobias). Jake has a son in Pete (Russell Arms) who is studying to be able to join the Air Corps, since the modern-day US Air Force would only be organized as such after World War II.

Disaster strikes when it comes to light that Jake's citizenship papers never came through; the aircraft plant being "essential" for the war effort, it's no place for legal aliens, even if they've been living in the country long enough to have an adult son who got his citizenship by virtue of having been born in America. Jake starts running a lunch joint across the street from the plant, while Pete says to hell with joining the Air Corps; any country that would treat Dad the way it did doesn't deserve Pete.

Meanwhile, Corky's being an even smoother operator in trying to woo Roma than you normally get from a Jack Carson character, so the roles are somewhat reversed here. Not that Brad is out of love with Roma, but their situation is complicated until Brad is finally able to pass the application test to get a job at the aircraft plant. The Japanese finally attack Pearl Harbor, and that changes everybody.

Wings for the Eagle was released in July 1942, so right in the middle of World War II and a time when the audiences on the home front needed a lot of cheering up. As such, the movie is pure wartime propaganda, with the need to inculcate a desire to serve crowding out more important considerations like a good story. I found the whole thing fairly cringeworthy, with neither of the male leads particularly likeable. Some people might enjoy the movie for its contemporary look at the early stages of America's involvement in World War II, but I think that's about it. Still, as always, you may want to watch and judge for yourself.