The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Film: The Wings of Eagles (1957)

Stars: John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O'Hara, Ward Bond

Director: John Ford

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Ward Bond: click here to learn more about Mr. Bond (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

With apologies to Ward Bond, I took a vacation this month, and so while we will get the full gamut of articles for him (he'll have a second film this afternoon), he'll only get two Saturday's.  Maybe this is okay though.  Ward Bond is an unusual star primarily because he wasn't.  We'll talk this afternoon about what it was like for Bond to briefly step into the spotlight in Wagon Train on television, but despite being in over a hundred movies, most of them with marquee stars from big studios, he almost always plays a small part in those films.  This was why I was excited for Wings of Eagles. It isn't because he has a big part (indeed, it's arguably the smallest role he'll have in our four films this month), but instead it was exciting because it might be the best performance we've seen from him all September.  Sadly, the movie that surrounds it is a complete dud.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on the life of real-life naval aviator Spig Wead (Wayne), who is trying to prove that the Navy should value aviation in combat.  He does endurance races to achieve this, which means that his wife Min (O'Hara) and family are left at home, oftentimes for years at a time while he is off pursuing his professional ambitions.  After falling down a flight of stairs, he is paralyzed & rejects his family further, only hanging with his buddies in the navy like Jughead (Dailey), who finally are able to convince him to "move that toe" (seriously-there is a five-minute sequence of Dailey & Wayne singing and chanting "Move that toe" over-and-over to the point where you think it was a running joke or an inside drinking game between the two actors).  After this, he becomes a Hollywood screenwriter, even meeting famed director John Dodge (Bond), before eventually going back into the Navy one last time, before suffering a heart attack and being forced to fully retire from active duty.

The movie is not strong, and it's honestly the dullest John Ford movie I've ever seen (seriously-Ford is almost always a good time as a moviegoer...I'm confused how his name is on the picture save for the call sheet & the last twenty minutes, where we see some decent combat footage that apparently includes some stuff from real-life).  Wayne & O'Hara, movie magic in other films, are barely in the picture together (O'Hara is sidelined for giant swaths of the picture), and it stretches a thin (if heroic) story past the point of patience.  Worst of the bunch is Dan Dailey, an annoying figure and with the possible exception of Mickey Rooney, my most-loathed Classical Hollywood leading man.

The movie is saved briefly by Bond, who gives the film's best performance, albeit in a very small cameo.  He plays a fictionalized version of the director, and it's a riot.  He even dresses like Ford did in real life (with the sunglasses and omnipresent pipe), and given their extremely long working relationship, you can tell this is both accurate and a gas for Bond, who honestly looks like he & Wayne are about to bust into a blooper real the entire time that Bond is onscreen, it's so much fun.  Had we focused on this relationship, this might've been the rare Ford comedy (and one that would work).  Alas, we're stuck with two hours of tepid war cinema around it.