The Flying Fleet

August 12 on TCM is the day in Summer Under the Stars for Anita Page, who was fairly big at MGM during the dawn of the sound era until she was eclipsed by other stars. Indeed, all of the films TCM is showing date from a four-year period between 1928 and 1932. The day kicks off with a movie that was on my DVR from the Memorial Day weekend military movie marathon: The Flying Fleet at 6:00 AM.

Anita Page is of course not one of the flyers since women were not admitted to the the Naval air corps when the movie was released in early 1929 as a silent film with a synchronized soundtrack and sound effects. That honor goes to the men, and there are six of them, headed by Tommy Winslow (Ramon Novarro) and Steve Randall (Ralph Graves). The six men are about to graduate from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, at which point they'll get commissions, although they all hope to become pilots instead. (Recall that the US did not have a standalone Air Force until after World War II.) But before any of them even get to pilot training, five of them go out for a night on the town while Tommy has to stay behind to relieve the duty officer. This is a blessing in disguise, as the men get drunk. One of them, Dizzy (Edward J. Nugent), gets expelled for his trouble and being the only one to get caught.

After graduation, they all do naval training before starting flight school. The first thing to do is a physical, and since one of the characters is "Specs" for his glasses, he's right out, although he's told that Admirals can have glasses, just not pilots. After a bunch of training in the naval air station in Pensacola, FL, the remaining men get sent to San Diego for training.

It's there that Anita Page shows up. She plays Anita Hastings, who apparently lives in San Diego, and immediately both Tommy and Steve are smitten with her. It's clear that since they're the only two so smitten, that the other two friends from Annapolis are going to wash out of pilot training. The other thing that's clear is that there's going to be a romantic rivalry between Steve and Tommy for Anita. Since Ramon Novarro is top-billed and was a bigger star at the time, you might guess that Anita is going to go for him. In some ways you'd be right, but....

Steve decides to try some underhanded things to win Anita's affection. Or, underhanded things to be able to spend more time alone with Anita. It climaxes with Steve stealing Tommy's trousers when Tommy and Anita go to the beach together. Steve proposes to Anita, and Tommy responds by strafing Steve. The superior officers notice Tommy's act, which is a violation of the rules. They punish Tommy by taking him off a test flight from San Diego to Honolulu.

In some ways, however, that turns out to be a good thing. The plane takes off, with a prototype aircraft carrier following behind. The plane, piloted by Steve and with two of the friend who washed out on the crew as navigator and radioman, hits a storm. Nowdays, flying over the top of a storm might not be such a big deal, and modern planes are tougher anyway. But the crew's attempt to avoid the storm fails, and they crash into the ocean, with Specs being badly injured. Will the search and rescue crews from the aircraft carrier find them in time?

The Flying Fleet is one part military movie and one part melodromatic romance, and it's the military part that works much better. Fans of old planes and old naval vessels will enjoy all the documentary footage, as The Flying Fleet was made with the sanction of the US Navy. The love triangle half of the movie, well, that doesn't work quite so well given how formulaic it is. Not that this is Anita Page's fault. Or even Novarro or Graves' faults, although it should be added that Graves doesn't have the screen presence that the other two do.

IMDb claims that The Flying Fleet is 100 minutes, while Wikipedia says 87, and the shorter running time fits the print that TCM ran over Memorial Day. I don't know if there was footage cut. The screenplay was courtesy of Spig Wead, who had been in the Navy himself before a serious injury. His story was told in The Wings of Eagles, where he was played by John Wayne.