The High and the Mighty (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

How air travel has changed! This fateful Trans-Orient Pacific Airlines flight from Honolulu to San Francisco is on a Douglas DC-4 (four propellers), a trek said to take twelve hours and sixteen minutes; passengers actually get dressed up for the trip, most of the men in suits and ties, the women dressed as if going to a swank party; and, since there’s no security checkpoint, Sidney Blackmer boards carrying a handgun in his jacket pocket! Instead of TVs on the backs of the seats, or headsets with music, for entertainment one passenger (John Qualen) plays his harmonica. Oh, and people smoke on board too, even in the cockpit. (When the stewardess lights Blackmer’s cigarette, she casually tosses the match on the deck, as if they are in a dive bar and not a luxury airliner!)As a look back at passenger aviation in 1954, “The High and the Mighty” is like a quaint historical documentary. As a lesson in screenwriting (by Ernest K. Gann from his novel), it’s almost too simplistic. We get the background of co-pilot Dan Roman (John Wayne) right at the start, thanks to crewmen gossiping on the tarmac (he crashed a plane in South America that killed everyone on board except him, including his wife and son; there’s soon a flashback of Wayne stumbling from the burning wreckage and happening upon his son’s burning teddy bear!). The reservations clerk at the ticket counter in Hawaii (Douglas Fowley) knows a lot about most of the passengers, so his gossiping to the stewardess (Doe Avedon) at the start gives viewers the gist on most of them right away, rather too obviously. Conveniently, these passengers come to the counter one at a time—no long lines! As Hawaii is not yet a state, the passengers also have to check in at Immigration.Among the passengers is Robert Newton (Long John Silver in “Treasure Island”) as a theatrical producer afraid of flying; Paul Fix, who is seen on the tarmac in a wheelchair but otherwise is given no background—apparently just being disabled is enough to know about him; Laraine Day as a snooty rich woman (“as low as high society can get,” says the trailer), who tells her husband, “I’ve always felt your brain would fit nicely in a demitasse”; Claire Trevor as a flirtatious woman on the make (having little to do, really, but she earned an Oscar nomination anyway); Jan Sterling as an aging beauty contestant worried about her fading looks (an Oscar nod for her as well, probably for the scene in which she wipes off most of her makeup out of disgust with herself); John Smith (later to star on TV’s “Laramie”) and Karen Sharpe as a honeymooning couple returning home to an uncertain future; and a young boy flying alone (the director’s son Mike, a character not in the novel), and so on, a jumble of characters touted in the film’s trailer as “The most bizarre group of people ever thrown together by fate.” Though it’s not the kind of societal mix we’d see today: there’s one Korean woman (Joy Kim), and John Qualen plays a fisherman with an indeterminate accent, and that’s it for racial diversity. (In “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Qualen would play a Scandinavian cook; he was good at accents and fractured English.) Bandleader/comic Phil Harris has the task of being the film’s comic relief as a passenger whose dream trip to Hawaii with his wife (Ann Doran) was ruined by a series of calamities, including bad weather, mixed-up reservations, and so on, much like an early sitcom, but he belongs to a kind of optimist club back home, Good Neighbors, and has learned to shrug off such things just as life’s little inconveniences. He’s soon to have his glad-handing, overt optimism put to the test.Naturally, everything that can go wrong does. Twenty-three minutes into the film there’s a hint of trouble ahead, an unexplained vibration. Uh-oh. There’s a storm, poor radio contact, and about an hour into the movie, just as Blackmer pulls his gun to confront a man he thinks has been cheating with his wife back in Hawaii, the plane gives a lurch as the number one engine catches fire! They’re past the point of no return and still a thousand miles from the mainland and losing fuel fast. Complications ensue.Pilot Robert Stack (still about five years away from playing Eliot Ness on “The Untouchables”) fears they’ll have to ditch in the Pacific and, when he seems to be losing his nerve, Wayne slaps some sense into him. To lighten the load to conserve fuel, Wayne holds the back door open while the passengers start heaving out their luggage (try that on a jet!). (Oddly, no one ever tells co-pilot Wayne about the passenger with a gun! Qualen takes possession of the gun after the passengers struggled with Blackmer just as the engine caught fire, but later actually gives it back to him when he calms down!) To make matters worse, engine #4 conks out!To those who have seen the disaster spoof “Airplane!”, “The High and the Mighty” comes across as kind of clichéd and silly. All those serious back stories, the voice-over flashbacks, etc., have all been rendered laughable in retrospect. (They’re even funnier with stolid Robert Stack being ultra-serious in both films.) It was tailor-made for spoofing, though “Airplane!” didn’t come along until 1980, 26 years later.(In a 2012 biography of Myrna Loy, who was one of the passengers in the disaster film “Airport 1975,” the author claimed “Airplane!” was a spoof of “Airport 1975,” but, according to a commentary on the “Airplane!” DVD, it was mainly a spoof of the equally serious airplane drama, “Zero Hour.” The makers of “Airplane!” never even mention “The High and the Mighty” in their commentary, yet all the now-familiar elements are there.)Dimitri Tiomkin won an Oscar for Best Score, and the whistling theme was a major hit record at the time; William Wellman got a Best Director nomination (losing to Elia Kazan for “On the Waterfront”). Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling lost Best Supporting Actress to Eva Marie Saint in “On the Waterfront.” The screenplay was not nominated.The DVD has so many extras that it took two discs to get them all in. There’s a running commentary on the film by Leonard Maltin, William Wellman, Jr., Karen Sharpe, and Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez (who plays a radio operator on a ship who relays messages from the plane to San Francisco) on Disc One. Disc Two has a dozen extras including featurettes on director Wellman, composer Tiomkin, writer Gann, Wayne’s production company Batjac, and one titled “Flying in the Fifties,” which is a hoot, especially when a former pilot (Vernon McKenzie) tells why he became a pilot: “Where else are you gonna get a job where they give you a multimillion dollar airplane full of booze and women and send you out of town?”(A particularly well-done film from an Ernest K. Gann aviation novel is “Fate Is the Hunter,” with Glenn Ford.)

"The High and the Mighty", the granddaddy of air disaster movies, often falls into almost campy melodrama, but under the direction of the legendary 'Wild Bill' Wellman, and punctuated by one of Dimitri Tiomkin's most bombastic yet exciting scores (earning him an Oscar), the film maintains such a level of intensity that it remains constantly entertaining. With John Wayne heading an ensemble cast (including several co-stars from the past, as well as personal friends), it is certainly an essential for any 'Duke' film library.Produced by Wayne-Fellows Productions, and 'owned', eventually, by the Wayne family's Batjac Productions (along with "Hondo", "McLintock!", and "Island in the Sky"), the film was a BIG hit, when released, and offered one of Wayne's better performances, then gained even greater stature as it was unseen for a generation. I've always held the belief that the family planned to release the entire quartet of films in 2007, to mark the centennial of Duke's birth, but two events changed the plan; first, an unauthorized, 'remixed' VHS version of "McLintock!" was released, with rumors that a version of "Hondo" was also in the works, forcing Michael Wayne, then President of Batjac, to release authorized VHS versions of the two films, rather than have the market glutted with bad copies; second, with Michael's death, in 2003, the Wayne family rethought the master plan, deciding to release the entire collection on DVD earlier. For whatever reason, seeing "The High and the Mighty" again is a cause to celebrate!Based on Ernest K. Gann's bestseller (which would inspire Arthur Hailey's later novel, "Airport"), the story centers around a routine commercial flight between Honolulu and San Francisco, which becomes a life-and-death drama when one engine explodes, just beyond the 'Point of No Return'. With limited fuel, in deteriorating weather, the crisis brings out the best and worst in both passengers and crew.Wayne as the co-pilot, is quite good, playing a character older than he actually was (the role had been written for Spencer Tracy, who pulled out, just prior to filming); Robert Stack almost foreshadows his character in "Airplane!" as the no-nonsense pilot who goes ballistic when stressed. For cockpit 'overacting', however, the award has to go to Wally Brown, as the navigator, with his bugged-out eyes, visions of his shrewish wife, and WILDLY unruly hair...While the passengers are all stereotypes, several actors are quite good in their roles, with standout performances by Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling (both Oscar-nominated), Robert Newton, Paul Kelly, and Paul Fix. While Phil Harris attempts to inject humor into his role, it only works sporadically (and Ann Doran, as his wife, plays 'hysterical' so convincingly that you want to STRANGLE her!) Laraine Day, third-billed (and, with Trevor, a previous Wayne leading lady), is remarkably unlikable as a rich wife with a 'bought' husband (John Howard); Sidney Blackmer plays the 'mandatory' unbalanced type; and veteran character actor John Qualen adds another 'ethnic' portrayal to his long list, as a Latin family man (with a Norweigan accent!) A bit of trivia: The young boy onboard was portrayed by director Wellman's son!Almost as fascinating as the story is seeing how much has changed, since the film was released; the plane's 'tail' is controlled by pulleys and wires in a rear compartment; the sole flight attendant is a "stewardess"; and everyone smokes (especially in the cockpit). On a more somber note, there is NO security, and one passenger boards easily, carrying a gun. It is, sadly, a wiser world, today...While no one would ever accuse "The High and the Mighty" of being a film classic, it's role in creating the 'airplane disaster' genre can't be denied, and it continues to be a vastly enjoyable John Wayne feature.It's great to have it back!

If you have never seen a John Wayne movie. This one of his best!

The film begins with a parade of characters booking in at the desk, and it's fun spotting the drunk, the honeymoon couple, the precious actor etc who will each get their moment of screentime later.John Wayne literally plays co-pilot in this film, with Robert Stack notionally in the driving seat. It's odd and rather disappointing seeing The Duke in such a secondary role, and although he gets going (slightly) in the second half of the film he never really breaks through, preferring to mope about his wife and son who were killed on one of his flights.Robert Newton plays an actor in such an overblown manner that I couldn't decide whether he was playing for laughs, Phil Harris booms his merry way and pilot Robert Stack seems to have made his mind up the 'plane is going in the drink almost as soon as it's in the air.All in all a bit of a mess, but it is saved by Dimitri Tiomkin's swirling, romantic theme. It really is a cracker. The film has scrubbed-up very well and there are many extras to enjoy.

The special features are far more interesting than the film itself as it is too long and tedious. Dimitri Tiomkin won an Oscar for Best Score in this film, and there's no doubt that he is a good composer. He deserved the Oscar, but this wasn't his best score. 'Dial M For Murder' was a better score which came out in the same year. I can see why this film was out of circulation for years because despite the cinemascope and beautiful shots, it still drags its feet and feels much longer than the 141 minutes.

While I like 99.99999999999% of Wayne's movies this one was a little pasty, but still watchable I suppose, but then, so too is mud wrestling but I wouldn't want to do that more than once. There is something about this film and I can't remember what it is, but I don't think Wayne was supposed to act in it, but sadly I can't remember why he did...

From a historical perspective this is an interesting film as its influence can be seen in so many later disaster movies and spoofs such as 'Airplane'. The picture quality is amazing in this restored print.

I remembered this film from my youth and had to buy it out of nostalgia. It did not disappoint. Beautifully remastered and very high quality. I recommend this DVD highly.