ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

marcslope William Wyler was to have directed this adaptation of Moss Hart's hit Broadway play with music/ recruiting poster-vivant, but his own military commitments intervened and it went to a most unlikely helmsman: George Cukor. The "women's director" has a sure touch on the many documentary-like sequences of Air Corps training, and he invests it with more unhackneyed humanity than the genre generally allowed, particularly in wartime. Sure, the gee-whiz (and entirely white, save for one unbilled Chinese-American recruit) bunch of newbies are nicer and more wholesome than in real life, and the speechifying about home and Mom and the wife and kid gets pretty thick, but it's efficient propaganda and undeniably stirring. Notable, too, for the all-military male cast, several of whom didn't reemerge for years: Lon McAllister, Edmond O'Brien, Martin Ritt, Red Buttons (in drag, as an Andrews Sister), Peter Lind Hayes, Karl Malden, Kevin McCarthy, Gary Merrill, Lee J. Cobb, and Don Taylor. Also for a very early glimpse of Judy Holliday, who doesn't show up till an hour and a half into the picture but has some good little sequences as O'Brien's worried-sick Brooklyn spouse. Too bad its rights are in a tangle and the only print anyone knows of is 16mm; evidently, after Twentieth Century Fox released it (to considerable success), the rights reverted to the Army, and if there's a good 35mm print out there, it probably lies somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. It's disingenuous and corny in spots, but it also captures the rigors of military training and the terrors of war vividly, and it deserves to be more widely seen.

btillman63 As has been noted, this is one wartime film that got it right. Apart from the accurate depiction of army flight training, WV probably remains the only movie featuring the Consolidated B-24. A flight instructor who helped with the film reports that most of the cast got along well with the supporting officers and men, the exception being Edmund O'Brien. While filming an engine-start sequence he noted the usual "fire guard" with the extinguisher and became exceedingly nervous. Finally he "abandoned ship" and refused to proceed with the shot. Considering that his performance was witnessed by genuine airmen, let alone some combat veterans, EO's stock plummeted on base.

papawow I was 17 when this movie came out and in my senior year of high school.. Several of my friends enlisted in various services and I knew I was to be drafted when I became 18.. This movie made me make up my mind to enlist in the Army Air Corps..The movie was very accuate showing all the testing that we had to go through inorder to get into the Cadet program, but by the time I finished my "boot" camp and was about to get assigned, the war in Europe was about over and air-men were no longer needed.. I did serve as an aerial gunner/ flight radio operator so I did get some flying in before I was discharged.. Anyway I'm still trying to get a copy of that movie and I've also tried to contact 20th Century

pvkennedy This movie gets it right. As a former USAF Aviation Cadet, I can tell you this movie has it all. The tedium of the application process. The waiting for word. The joy of acceptance. The worry about making it through the course. The sorrow of watching one's buddies (perhaps the best of them) wash out. The anguish of paying the ultimate price - the death of fellow student airmen. The glory of graduation. Always the flying, the flying, the flying. Many are called but few are chosen. We did for pay what we would have eagerly paid to do. Later, a lifetime of flying fighters and close air support aircraft. Living through combat in Viet Nam but always with the foundation gained in the Aviation Cadet Corps.