Welcome to the First Edition of The B-17 Blogs! This series is being created in tribute
to those who served on B17 Bombers defending our Freedom and comes as a result of
my discovery about my Ancestor Staff Sgt Sanford E Losh from Poplar Bluff, Mo of the 32nd Heavy Bombardment Group in WWII that was a Waist Gunner aboard B-17 #44-6546 that was hit by flack and lost a wing over Hungary on 2/13/1945 and when the crew bailed out, he did not make it as his chute did not fully deploy.
This series will feature classic movies and documentaries that feature B-17 Bombers. These will include but will not be limited to Twelve O’ Clock High, Memphis Belle, The Best Years Of Our Lives, Masters Of The Air, Air Force, Johnny In The Clouds, Ditch And Live, Dick Powell Theater: Squadron.
Our First feature is the 1942 Warner Brothers and Jack L Warner produced, John Huston Directed recruitment film Winning Your Wings featuring my favorite actor James Stewart who was a year into his service with the Army Air Force at the time he appeared in it. He talks about how many planes were to be built in 1942 and 1943, as well as how many Captains, Lieutenants, and Sgts they were needing at the time. He shows what walks of life potential recruits could be from.
There are ground and airborn shots of B-17’s and you get introduced to a B17 Crew that mans a plane as well as the Ground Crew.
Winning Your Wings was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
I hope You will enjoy Winning Your Wings and I’ll see You next time on Losh-Man’s Hollywood Classics!
In Director Anthony Mann’s 1955 release Strategic Air Command, Jimmy Stewart is Robert “Dutch” Holland, a baseball player for the St Louis Cardinals under owner Tom Doyle (Jay C Flippen) who along with his wife Sally Holland (June Allyson), daughter of Pastor Father Dr Thorne (James Bell) and Mrs Thorne (Rosemary Decamp) is enjoying Spring Training in Florida and has just signed a lucrative contract.
What he doesn’t know is that his Reserve Commission in the United States Air Force that he retired from as a B-29 Bomber pilot and Lt Colonel is about to interrupt the peace of his baseball career when his old friend General Rusty Castle (James Millican) shows up at the stadium and later at the Holland Home by invitation to their housewarming party to tell Dutch that he is being recalled to Air Force duty. Dutch argues vehemently against it based on his age, not having been near a plane in nearly seven years and never a jet, Then there is his baseball career. But he is told there is now way around it as the decision comes from General Castle’s boss General Hawkes (Frank Lovejoy) who says no exceptions to everyone in Dutch’s Classification being recalled.
Upon reporting for duty, he can see this is not the same Air Force he retired from. But he is reunited with his B-29 Flight Engineer Sgt Bible (M.A.S.H.’s Harry Morgan).
The schedule Lt Col Holland is now required to keep and even the readiness to report for duty anytime even on his off days and a B-36 crash in Greenland just as Sally has their daughter Hope and he joins the new B-47 wing begins to take a toll on the relationship. Especially when Dutch has the chance to get back to Civilian life and baseball at the end of his 21 month tenure and the family was back in Florida getting to watch some Cardinals baseball but he chooses on his own to remain in the Air Force.
But a shoulder injury that he suffered in the plane crash but never saw the Flight Surgeon about nearly costs him another plane and the SAC (Strategic Air Command) is forced to release him.
If you’re a military aircraft fan, a Jimmy Stewart Fan or a baseball fan, you’ll really enjoy this full color feature! Below are some clips from it.
I’ll see you next time here on Losh-Man’s Hollywood Classics!
Another week is under way and I’m so glad you chose to start it with me here on Losh-Man’s Hollywood Classics, but also hope that later this morning, you will be spending some of this Lord’s Day in church worshiping with other believers.
I have a ghost of a Spirit Sunday for you today in the 1944 film The Canterville Ghost. It is based on the original story by Oscar Wilde and was directed by Jules Dassin, and Norman Z Mcleod. Sir Simon Decanterville (Charles Loughton) becomes the most unlikely phantom to be feared while haunting Canterville Castle as he becomes the latest casualty of the Canterville family curse: Cowardice.
Simon’s brother Anthony (Peter Lawford) is wounded and cannot fight a scheduled duel so initially Simon volunteers to bravely stand in for him. That is….until he gets a look at his would-be opponent, the cousin of his initial opponent Sir Guy Valentine of Bolton Manor, as Sir Guy also claims to be injured and got his Cousin to stand in.
So what does “brave” Simon do? He decides he wants no part of this, points his horse in the direction of the safety of Canterville Castle and wastes no time escaping the field of battle.
When Sir Valentine (Donald Stuart) arrives at Canterville Castle searching for Simon, who is hiding in his room, and Simon and Anthony’s Father Lord Canterville (Reginald Owen-who also plays Scrooge in one of my favorite versions of A Christmas Carol) hears what took place, he has Simon walled up in his room, sentencing him to death, and tells him when he dies (which takes place according to the story-line in 1634), he is to haunt Canterville Castle until a Kinsman does a brave deed in his stead. Once Sir Simon dies, he becomes one of England‘s most famous ghosts, and for the next 300 years find new and unique ways to go about his macabre duty.
As for the Kinsman to save him from this fate by performing a brave deed, he appears to find one when (during World War II) seven year old Lady Jessica Decanterville (Margaret O’Brien) and her Aunt Mrs Polverdine (Elisabeth Risdon) host a group of American Army Rangers who are there to support British Commandos in efforts against the Nazis in their castle (and as they tell the soldiers he will, Simon attempts to scare them off), but a clever plan by Private Cuffy Williams (Robert Young) who also turns out unknown to Private Williams previously, to be a Canterville, turns the tables on Sir Simon.
Cuffy, upon finding out he is a Canterville (“the bluest blood in all England“), promises “Uncle Simon” that despite all the previous cowards in the Canterville family, he will do the brave deed necessary to free him from his ghostly fate the first time he faces the German Army. That is, until his Army Buddy “Trigger” (Jack Lambert) is killed and the sight of his friend’s blood brings out the mile wide yellow streak that all his ancestors possessed and Sir Son’s earthly prison seems no closer to being eliminated.
That is, until a German parachute bomb comes to rest near Canterville Castle as well as the route the Rangers (that Cuffy was not with as he had been declared unfit for combat and was in the process of being transferred) were using to return from maneuvers and Cuffy realizes that many will die if he does not dispose of the bomb. So with Uncle Simon riding shotgun to keep an eye on the tow-chain he hooks up to a jeep, he drives the jeep over a cliff, jumping out just before it went over.
Finally, Sir Simon Decanterville can cease his endless wanderings and have eternal rest. His bones are removed from his room he was walled up in and given a proper burial, thanks to his brave kinsman Private Cuffy Williams.
So, check out The Canterville Ghost the movie and also the Old Time Radio Version on Lux Radio Theater https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/drama/lux/lux-radio-theater-45-06-18-488-the-canterville-ghost in which Tom Drake plays the role of Cuffy Williams and I’ll see you next time on Losh-Man’s Hollywood Classics!
Today we look at my absolute favorite Cary Grant movie, Operation Petticoat. This screenplay by Maurice Richlin, Joseph J Stone, Paul King and Stanley J Shapiro was directed by Blake Edwards and released in 1959.
It won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1960. Cary Grant won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
It won a Writers Guild Award for Best Written Comedy.
Among its cast are:
Cary Grant as Capt Matthew T Sherman Robert F Simon as Capt Henderson Tony Curtis as Lt Nick Holden
It also stars three from some of my favorite TV shows from my youth:
Gavin Mccleod of “The Love Boat” Marion Ross of “Happy Days” and Dick Sargent of “Bewitched“.
It starts in a Post World War II “Modern Day” format, with Cary Grant no longer Captain but Admiral Sherman, and the former Lt Holden (Curtis) now as Captain of the US Navy submarine the Sea Tiger, on the day the sub is to be sent off for scrapping. When Admiral Sherman arrives at the Sea Tiger and goes down into the sub to wait for Capt Holden’s arrival, he goes to his former office and soon opens and begins to read his old Captain’s Journal that begins just before the Sea Tiger was bombed and sunk by a Japanese fighter attack, while moored in the Philipine Islands.
We are then taken back to the day of the bombing and go forward from there. After the Sea Tiger is brutally bombed and sunk, Capt Sherman (Grant) is soon in the office of his Commanding Officer Capt Henderson (Robert F Simon) and he is proposing that the Sea Tiger that Capt Henderson feels is now just “a periscope sitting on top of a couple thousand tons of scrap metal” could actually be repaired by his now skeleton crew as several of his men had already been transferred, and put back into service. Capt Henderson thinks Sherman is nuts, but gives him two weeks to either “get her out, or we blow her up”.
Among the replacements Capt Sherman gets (and the only one we actually see arrive) is former Admiral’s Aid Lt Nick Holden (Curtis) who shows up in full dress white uniform and is soon being laughed at by Sherman and some of his crew, as some of them tell Sherman that according to society pages of Honolulu newspapers, Holden is “The Darling of the high-brass social set, who along with the Admiral’s wife, won the Navy Rumba dancing championship two years in a row”, and is stared at by many others.
Holden has zero experience in the areas that the Capt Sherman’s crew are short-staffed in, and tells Sherman he is “primarily an idea man”. Holden’s ideas, (when he sees the difficulties the crew is having in obtaining supplies by going “by the book” and “through channels”, which he says “The boys in Las Vegas would say is trying to make their point the hard way”), soon have some of Sherman’s crew looting and scavenging from every military establishment they come across. They even run sort of a “Will Pay For Parts” line at one island’s casino, and even steal a Civilian’s pig off his farm to keep the sub afloat, or submerged, and the crew fed.
Their wares are transported by an Army truck stolen by the side-kick Holden takes on, Sgt Ramon Galatto, a Marine that was incarcerated in a military prison stockade after it was discovered that the restaurant he started after becoming an Admiral’s personal Chef, was being supplied by things stolen from the Marine Corp.
The paint that is gained from the casino operation becomes a defining moment of the movie, as the submarine ends up painted pink….. and the Japanese attack for the third time in the story, forcing the crew to crash dive, and escape before they can then paint it gray.
The team confiscates parts, wiring, ice-house refrigeration units, building walls, and even plumbing fixtures right off of working restroom sinks. At one island stop, Holden brings back a group of Army Nurses that were stranded when their plane took off to avoid being bombed on the ground, but was shot down before it could return for them. The nurses come in handy when Holden later takes on a group of families that include several pregnant women and children…..and even a goat. which each time is much to Capt Sherman’s disapproval and create awkward and more cramped, but funny surroundings aboard Sea Tiger.
Despite Capt Sherman’s own orders to the contrary the minute the nurses board the sub, and several comical mishaps between the nurses and various male crew, just as you would expect, several of the crew end up in romantic relationships with the nurses, that we know led to marriage for both Sherman and Holden, as well as children for Holden.
This is one of those films that I know every word of inside and out but never grow tired of watching again and again, and even own on DVD and I know you too will enjoy Operation Petticoat! It is currently available for viewing in its entirety on You Tube, and has been for some time.
Check it out when you can, and I’ll see you next time on Losh-Man’s Hollywood Classics!
Losh-Man's Hollywood Classics 