Captains of the Clouds (1942)

I just recently watched the 1942 James Cagney film Captains of the Clouds, and I fought it spectacular, photography-wise. James Cagney was good as Brian MacLean, the cocky Canadian bush pilot who joins the Royal Canadian Air Force and must learn to turn himself into a team player. As for the film itself, I did not care for it; I only paid attention to the wonderful cinematography that the wonderful Technicolor had to offer. Anyway, folks, this is almost my last James Cagney film review blog, so there will be a hiatus between this blog and the next James Cagney film review blog, until like next month or so, or until that yahoo on YouTube finally uploads a new James Cagney movie (or I may finally watch White Heat and do a film review blog about that). Anyhow, during that hiatus which I'm not sure is gonna exist yet, I will be writing Marx Brothers film review blogs. Just wanted to keep you folks posted for a moment there. So anyway, on with the film...
"So Full of Spectacle and Glory it Had to be Made in Technicolor!" screamed the ads for Captains of the Clouds, and sure enough, James Cagney's first color movie boasts some spectacular aerial sequences. The story follows a group of Canadian bush pilots who decide to join the Royal Canadian Air Force when WWII breaks out. It sounds simple enough, but the truth is that Captains of the Clouds was an exceptionally challenging and difficult picture to make. Warner Bros. producer Hal Wallis wrote in his memoirs that the film "proved to be by far the most extensive and difficult venture in location work undertaken by Warners since the silent period." Most of the film was shot in and around Ottawa. With difficult wartime conditions, every hotel in the area was booked, and the crew had to be housed in an army camp - with army food. "They grumbled loud and long," recalled Wallis, "and twice we came close to a strike on the picture."

One day, Cagney suffered a concussion during a stunt in which his character gets knocked into the water by a propeller. Afterwards, Wallis and director Michael Curtiz were informed by their technical adviser that in such a situation "the propeller would normally have been turned off, and we had gone through this experience for nothing." Other problems included truck crashes, plane crashes, various on-set injuries and even lightning, which one afternoon struck a camera reloading shed "and burned it to the ground."But the single hardest sequence to shoot was the elaborate "wings" ceremony, in which Air Marshal Billy Bishop's speech to the ranks on an airstrip is interrupted by Cagney's daredevil flying maneuvers. The scene took forever to nail down. Just getting the timing right was a major logistical challenge which required many attempts, but there were other problems: A sudden rainstorm. Engine trouble. Not enough sunlight. Malfunctioning cameras. The air marshal showing up late. After a week, wrote Wallis, "Rain, technical mishaps, and problems of every kind continued to dog us. We finally had to piece together fragments of footage from the many days of shooting in order to achieve a finished result. In the picture, however, it looks as if the whole sequence was shot at high noon in optimum sunny conditions."Captains of the Clouds sprang from a magazine story called "Bush Pilots" which Canadian actor Raymond Massey had brought to Wallis's attention. Cagney wasn't crazy about the script but was persuaded to do the film by Jack Warner, who told him that he would be contributing to the war effort by accepting the role. Cagney relented, but only on the condition that his brother Bill be the line producer. In his memoirs, Cagney also remembered the film as one of his most grueling, but he added, "the one consolation for all the hard work was the kind of person you worked with. Alan Hale, that big, wonderful guy we all loved. Always in a good humor. Dennis Morgan, also a nice, nice guy. As the years wear on, I look back at those people and think about them. When they were around, I really enjoyed them, but now I realize that I could have enjoyed them more. The picture business has always been such a hysterical one and the demands on attention so great that one didn't have time to savor everything to the fullest - particularly your friends. That is one of my regrets."



Reviews were mixed, but critics raved over the sensational aerial scenes. Time said, "Although Cagney is much better than his thankless role, the real heroes of Captains are director Michael Curtiz and his five cameramen, who caught the matchless greens and browns of Canada's infinite north-country." The Motion Picture Academy thought so, too, nominating Sol Polito for a Best Cinematography Oscar®. (He lost to Fox's The Black Swan, shot by Leon Shamroy.) Ironically, Polito almost didn't make it to the set. As an Italian, he had serious trouble getting across the Canadian border since Canada was already at war with Italy. He also suffered a heart attack during production.

Captains of the Clouds was completed before Pearl Harbor and released in January 1942. In hindsight, the picture is an interesting precursor to the WWII combat film genre that would soon get underway. Intended also as a rousing "war preparedness" film for American audiences, by the time it played, the U.S. was already at war, but it did serve as a showcase of the Canadian war effort. Released in an era of patriotic films that skirted propaganda themes, Captains of the Clouds received an enthusiastic public acceptance. Although it was a "Hollywood" production, the film premiered simultaneously on February 21, 1942 in New York, London, Ottawa, Cairo, Melbourne, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver with RCAF pilots transporting film copies to all these cities. The public reaction can be partly attributed to the plot line that revolved around the unique Canadian wilderness and the enigmatic bush pilot mystique. The vivid aerial scenes filmed in Technicolor were another aspect of the expensive production that garnered critical attention. Although reviews were mixed especially in regards to the stagey plot and forced "romantic" overtures, the aerial scenes were considered the film's redeeming feature.

The description of the film's production is detailed in an article at http://www.pastforward.ca/perspectives/august_292003.htm

Much of
the crew stayed at the Empire Hotel and at Len Hughes Camp Champlain during
their stay here. The big stars spent very little time here but some of the crew
remained for several weeks shooting the bush plane scenes. Cagney hated flying
and did not fly as was the case with the other actor pilots. Hollywood stunt
flyers were brought in. The close-ups of the cabins of the planes were shot
later in Hollywood in mock up cockpits. Of local interest is the fact that well
known North Bay businessman Harry Mulligan, who had some Hollywood connections
was instrumental in bringing the movie to North Bay. He loaned his carrier
pigeons to the director to send messages to North Bay for transmission to
Hollywood and elsewhere. Trout Lake was just in the early stages of its
development and there were no phones and the roads were very rough. Yvette
Gravelle Boyce who lives on Nipissing's south shore and her sister Jeanette
worked as cooks at Len Hughes Camp Champlain in 1941 and fed the staff and crew
of the film on several occasions. Cagney and others had cabins there for
convenience. The sisters and a brother were asked to be a part of a scene where
people were needed in the background and their brother caught a rope thrown from
a docking plane in one scene. Stand ins were often used until a scene was
actually shot and before the stars stepped in and sometimes a double that looked
like the star was used where a close up was not required. Mildred "Middy"
Morland, daughter of the owner of North Bay's Morland real estate company was
chosen to be a double for Brenda Marshall. In one scene she stands on a
wagonload of hay while Cagney's bush plane buzzes the wagon. The scene was shot
several times and the star was nowhere in sight until she comes down off the
wagon and is seen in a close up. Mildred married Jack Gorman, a young reporter
at the Nugget who covered the shooting of the film. They live in North Bay. She
recalls the good pay and the trips to work in a Deluxe taxi.

The film obviously recycles elements of both Devil Dogs of the Air and Ceiling Zero (in a very clumsy attempt), but without O'Brien (regrettably), and neither color nor the addition of an awful (I'll say) title song could freshen it. Anyway, Captains of the Clouds was Jimmy Cagney's second Warner Bros. aviation picture in a row (you see, it was made after The Bride Came C.O.D., and it was his fourth overall), but his very first to feature material connected to World War II. After directing this film, Michael Curtiz directed two of the generally best films in American film history which make this film look like crap: Casablanca (which I like very much since it doesn't overpraise the US unlike the latter film) and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Anyway, I did not really watch the fighting scene at the end and some of the flying scenes since they were too dramatic. I would recommend this film for James Cagney fans who enjoy watching him in war films. Happy Commenting!!
(Next blog: A Day at the Races [1937])

Clips from Captains of the Clouds:

The Fighting 69th (1940)

I just recently watched the 1940 James Cagney movie The Fighting 69th, but not for the first time, and it was full of action! James Cagney was superb as Jerry Plunkett, the obnoxious, despicable braggart who soon turns into a coward as soon as he gets down in the trenches! It was very rewarding to see James Cagney in a movie with his two best friends, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh, again!

Warner Brothers' inspirational tale The Fighting 69th (1940) was an enormous hit with the public when it first premiered in pre-Pearl Harbor America. The studio rightfully assumed that American audiences, well aware of the escalating signs of war in Europe and the Pacific, would respond well to a patriotic action-adventure. And the box office take alone convinced Warner Bros. mogul Jack Warner to continue making gung-ho war films, culminating in a movie about the much-decorated World War I hero, Sergeant York (1941). Like the latter film, The Fighting 69th is based on the true-life story of a World War I hero - Father Duffy, who was played by Pat O'Brien. The real Father Duffy was the regimental chaplain of "the fighting 69th," a group of Irish national guardsmen who were incorporated into the Rainbow Division in 1917 after distinguishing themselves in combat.

Typical of Warner Brothers (and Hollywood), their film version of The Fighting 69th was highly fictionalized. Tom Wicker wrote in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies that the movie was "stereotypically "Hollywood." (Eh, what are you gonna do?) He also commented that "predictably, the wise guy turns coward in battle; predictably, the wise priest tries to save his soul; predictably, the coward finds God and courage in the end. And when all else fails, as it usually does, the film throws in Frank McHugh for wisecracks and funny faces."

O'Brien's co-star in the picture was James Cagney, who often played the scoundrel in need of redemption from O'Brien's saints in Warner Bros. movies. Together the two actors co-starred in nine films together, including Ragtime (1981), the last film either one of them ever made. Close friends off camera, O'Brien later remarked of his frequent and easily more famous co-star, "Jimmy can steal a scene by lifting an eyebrow." Father Duffy was one of O'Brien's most famous portrayals, while Cagney's was patriotic showman George M. Cohan, whom he played in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Ironically, statues of both of these famous men are still standing in the middle of New York City's Times Square.

Jimmy’s character in this film was very different from his usual characters. He usually made them lovable and cute (in my eyes) but he makes this character disagreeable (well, maybe not so much in my eyes). A scene in this film that I really loved for its use of juxtaposition is a scene where Jimmy Cagney is sitting by a sign that says "NO SMOKING!" But rather predictably, he is disobeying the sign by smoking!

Most of The Fighting 69th was filmed at Warner Brothers' Calabasas Ranch which doubled as Camp Mills, the regiment's training base, various French villages and numerous battlefields. No expense was spared in the pre-promotion of the film, which included a well-publicized meeting in New York City between O'Brien, Cagney, the real Father Duffy and surviving members of the regiment. For this event, more than five thousand fans showed up to greet the two stars when they arrived from Hollywood at Grand Central Station. The real Father Duffy also attended the New York City premiere and shook hands with nearly every actor who appeared in the film, all of whom were of Irish descent.

The Fighting 69th beat another rival studio's production of the same story to the theatres; Fox had planned to borrow Spencer Tracy from MGM for the starring role in Father Duffy of the Fighting 69th but dropped it once the O'Brien-Cagney picture went into production. When The Fighting 69th was released, the critics were mixed in their reviews. Some derided the movie's clichés while others enjoyed its vitality and pace. Frank Nugent, the film critic at the New York Times (and later a close collaborator of director John Ford), wrote that the film "is better if you can manage to forget the plot, with all it obvious theatrics, hokum and unoriginality, and think of it instead as the human, amusing and frequently gripping record of a regiments' marching off to war." The public, though, loved every minute of it and helped make it one of the biggest moneymakers of the year. (And the public is obviously more important than the critics.)

James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and George Brent (who I obviously underestimated by thinking he wasn't a very famous actor but he apparently is) are all billed above the title (that's because they're all better and more important than the f****** title [sorry, but I just had to say that]), and the impressive group of actors is featured in of Warners' most stunning visual "cast parades" before the action begins. William Keighley's depiction of the "Rainbow Division" opens at Camp Mills, New York, featuring fictionalized versions of real-life soldiers Father Duffy, "Wild Bill" Donovan (Brent), and Joyce Kilmer (Jeffrey Lynn), the poet best known for "Trees."

And since it's almost Christmas, I thought it'd be appropriate if I added that in one scene, during what seems to be Christmastime, the soldiers, except for Cagney, are in a church singing Christmas carols, and they sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" in Latin. Now I've studied some Latin but I've forgotten most of it, unfortunately. So I could only translate some of the lyrics they were singing. I didn't really watch the battle scenes because I thought they were too dramatic, especially the scene where Cagney gets wounded in a German bomb blast and later dies. I would recommend this film for any James Cagney fan who loves watching him in dramatic war films. Happy commenting!!
(Next blog: The Bride Came C.O.D [1941])

Clips from The Fighting 69th: