The High and the Mighty
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
In Honolulu, a DC-4 airliner prepares to take off for San Francisco with 17 passengers and a crew of 5. Former captain Dan Roman (John Wayne), the flight's veteran first officer known for his habit of whistling, is haunted by a crash that killed his wife and son and left him with a permanent limp. The captain, Sullivan (Robert Stack), suffers from a secret fear of responsibility after logging thousands of hours looking after the lives of passengers and crew. Young second officer Hobie Wheeler (William Campbell) and veteran navigator Lenny Wilby (Wally Brown) are contrasts in age and experience.
Stewardess Spalding (Doe Avedon) attends her passengers, each with varying personal problems, including jaded former actress May Holst (Claire Trevor), unhappily married heiress Lydia Rice (Laraine Day), aging beauty queen Sally McKee (Jan Sterling) and cheerful vacationer Ed Joseph (Phil Harris). Spalding befriends the terminally ill Frank Briscoe (Paul Fix) after being charmed by his pocket watch. A last-minute arrival, Humphrey Agnew (Sidney Blackmer), causes the crew concern with his strange behavior.
After a routine departure, the airliner experiences sporadic sudden vibrations. Although the crew senses that something may be wrong with the propellers, they cannot locate a problem. When a vibration causes Spalding to burn her hand, Dan inspects the tail compartment but still finds nothing amiss.
After nightfall, as the aircraft passes the point of no return, Agnew confronts fellow passenger Ken Childs (David Brian), accusing him of having an affair with Agnew's wife. The men struggle and Agnew pulls out a gun, intending to shoot Childs, but before he can do so, the airliner swerves violently when it loses a propeller and the engine catches fire. The crew quickly extinguishes the fire, but the engine has twisted off its mounting. In mid-ocean, the crew radios for help and sets in motion a rescue operation. Dan discovers that the airliner is losing fuel from damage to a wing tank and that as a result, along with adverse winds and the drag of the damaged engine, the plane will eventually run out of fuel and be forced to ditch.
Unassuming José Locota (John Qualen) disarms Agnew and confiscates the gun, compelling him to sit quietly. Gustave Pardee (Robert Newton), who up until now has made no secret of his fear of flying, inspires calm in his terrified fellow passengers. Dan calmly explains the situation, trying to lessen their anxiety, but warns that their chances of making the coast are "one in a thousand." The passengers rally around each other and find changed perspectives about their existing problems. They toss luggage from the airliner to lighten its load, with May Holst literally kissing her mink coat goodbye.
In San Francisco, Manager Tim Garfield (Regis Toomey) comes to the airline's operations center but is not sanguine about their chances. A favorable change in the winds raises the crew's hopes that they have just enough fuel to reach San Francisco but Wilby discovers that he made an elementary error in navigation and their actual remaining time in the air is inadequate.
Dan's experience tells him that their luck would be better trying to make land than ditching in the rough seas at night. Sullivan panics and prepares to ditch immediately, but Dan slaps him back to his senses. Thinking clearly again, Sullivan decides not to ditch. As the airliner approaches rain-swept San Francisco in the middle of the night and at a perilously low altitude, the airport prepares for an emergency instrument landing. The plane narrowly surmounts the city's hills and breaks out of the clouds with the runway lights dead ahead, guiding them to a safe landing. As the passengers disembark, Garfield watches their reactions as they are harried by inquisitive reporters. After the tumult dies down, he joins the crew inspecting the damaged airliner and informs Dan that only 30 gallons of gas remained in their tanks. Dan acknowledges the gamble they took and walks away, limping and whistling. "So long...you ancient pelican," Garfield mutters to himself.

Review: "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.
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 Norwegian accent!) A bit of trivia: The young boy on board was portrayed by director Wellman's son!
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!.
At the same time, we are told the story of nice-guy Dan Roman, played by John Wayne; he was the pilot of a plane that once ran into wind shear; the rear of that plane was destroyed; on impact.; he survived the death of his wife and son to fly again.
In addition to cynical young crewman William Campbell, uxorious navigator Wally Brown, up-tight young Robert Stack and Wayne, we meet Sidney Blackmer, overwrought and insistent; ebullient Phil Harris and his wife Ann Doran, sensible and prolific Johna Qualen, intelligent Claire Trevor, Jan Sterling as an aging beauty queen worried about meeting her new mail-contact fiancée, handsome couple John Smith and Karen Sharpe as newlyweds, Paul Fix who is elderly and unflappable, Dorothy Chen, John Howard, flight-fearing Robert Newton and his loyal wife lovely Julie Bishop, secret-keeping Paul Kelly and dynamic David Brian, and a little boy, among others.
I still remember when Lucy stole John Wayne's footprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre and that never to be forgotten line she said to him about his latest film quoted above.I think a lot of people felt that way about The High and the Mighty.
Case in point: In The High and the Mighty Douglas Fowley as a ground attendant at the beginning of the movie and Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez as a ship's radio operator have tiny parts, but you will remember both.The plot concerns a flight from Honolulu to San Francisco which develops engine problems and a fuel loss.
We all hummed, whistled or la-la-la'd the theme song all the way home.I would love to add The High and the Mighty to my collection of John Wayne films, but the Wayne Family Trust has got to allow this film to be converted to either a DVD or a VHS format.
I know they are waiting for the time when they can squeeze the maximum number of dollars out of it, but if they aren't careful, they will wait too long and the world will have moved so far beyond the ideas, concepts and technology of the 50's that the film will not appeal to the younger generation of purchasers of movies.It's more than just Wayne's performance that is being withheld from the public.
Much of what is made today doesn't even stand up against today's low standards.The High and the Mighty actually has a STORY and characters who have conflicts, hopes, fears and loves.I was a young boy of about six when our family flew the first United Airlines DC-7 flight from Honolulu to San Francisco.
It's a throwback to a time when pilots were fresh from a World War. Men acted more like gentlemen then, as they do in this movie, and ladies had a lot more class before our modern age made it acceptable for both sexes to be so crass.The writing may seem archaic by modern Hollywood standards but it fit perfectly the era in which it was made and gives us a wonderful glimpse of the beginning of the golden age of commercial aviation.This movie captures all of this brilliantly and provides a complex mix of characters living an ominous threat to their survival.I loved it as a boy and love it now.
I bought the Special Edition DVD just recently and love it immensely.It has a lengthy series of featurettes and will surely please lovers of John Wayne and the rest of the cast and of this movie in particular.As an additional footnote, I want to add the following: In the late 1970's, after I received my own private pilot's license, and after reading one of Ernest K.
As when a commercial airliner develops engine problems on a trans-Pacific voyage , then a pilot called captain Sullivan (Robert Stack ; producer John Wayne chose Robert Cummings as his co-star for the role ; Director William A.
Meanwhile , the passengers are helped by a flight attendant named Lydia Rice (Laraine Day) but suffer every range of problems and remember by means of flashbacks , such as May Holst (Claire Trevor) , Clara Joseph (Ann Doran) , Jose Locota (John Qualen) , Frank Briscoe (Paul Fix) , Gustave Pardee (Robert Newton), Ed Joseph (Phil Harris) and Sally McKee (Jan Sterling, reportedly shaved her eyebrows for her role in the film and they never grew back) , among others .
In the 1950s Wellman's best later films starred John Wayne, including this influential aviation picture for which he achieved his third and last best director Oscar nomination .
Yes, John Wayne did indeed make the film his own and turned in a multi-layered performance, and yes, this is the granddaddy of the 'disaster films,' which has never been surpassed in quality, but its distinction is not the primacy, nor the casting, nor even the story by a professional pilot, but the distinctive music - distinctly rendered - which one may not notice at first, but which imbues this non-epic with the caliber of stardom.I can remember when I was in high school in the '60s some ten years after the movie was released (I have never seen it since) and Mr. Marcellino was a guest at one of our assemblies and demonstrated his amazing versatility at whistling and even performed the letters of the alphabet as an example of how he had mastered his craft.
I'm betting on the former reason.There are still things to like in THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (Dimitri Tiomkin's Oscar-winning score among them), but an awful lot of people have been waiting forty years to see this "masterwork" again, and an awful lot of them are going to be either seriously disappointed or forced to convince themselves that it's not as bad as it seems..
I say near classic because although the film is an exciting and well acted drama, it is nonetheless a little dated and predictable.The story involves the flight of a plane load of passengers from Honolulu to San Francisco.
The crux of the film is how the crew and the passengers react and interact with each other in dealing with the emergency.Climbing aboard are the crew, Pilot John Sullivan (Robert Stack), Co-pilot Dan Roman (John Wayne), Second Officer Wheeler (William Campbell), Navigator Lenny Wilby (Wally Brown) and Stewardess Miss Spalding (Doe Avedon).
Young Michael Wellman (the son of Director William Wellman) rounds out the passenger list as Toby Field a little boy on his way to meet his mother.Others in the rather large cast are Pedro Gonzoles-Gonzoles as a ship board radio operator, George Chandler as an airport mechanic, Douglas Fowley as a ticket agent, Regis Toomey, William Schallert, Douglas Kennedy and Robert Easton as various airport officials, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer as a Coast Guard Co-pilot, Walter Reed as the young boy's father and Phil Van Zandt and Dorothy Ford as the annoying couple who ruin the Joseph's holiday.This film was one of the early Cinemascope features.
Then, of course, Robert Stack gives us his best earnest looks and determined dialogue, and I was expecting someone to say "Don't call me Shirley." Of course, the other "serious" Airport movies that this creature inspired were some of the most insipid cinematic trash in movie history (albeit entertaining trash), so you really wonder if director William Wellmann was thrilled at giving rise to a whole genre that could be considered a blight on the face of film making.Still, we have to make some sort of effort to like this movie on its own merits.
It was scripted by that great bad writer Ernest K Gann from his own novel and John Wayne and Robert Stack were the A-list stars heading a B-list cast as pilots of a plane whose engines start conking out on a flight from Hawaii to San Francisco.Stack's presence will surely alert fans to the parallels between this and the "Airplane" spoofs while passengers Claire Trevor, Jan Sterling, David Brian, Phil Harris, Robert Newton and Sidney Blackmer among others ham it up as if their lives depended on it, which, I suppose, under the circumstances, they do.
"All of you hate me, and only because I tried to do what was right!""How can I ever be afraid when you hold me like this?" moans newlywed Nell (Karen Sharpe) to her man."Thanks for knocking some sense into my head," says pilot Sully (Robert Stack) after getting slapped by his co-pilot.The co-pilot is played by the film's co-producer, John Wayne, in what is only a nominal leading role, Dan Roman.
It's two-and-a-half hours that never feels like a second less, especially when Phil Harris and Ann Doran, "the Waikiki Kids," tell us of their awful vacation in a painfully overstretched comic flashback.In a DVD introduction, critic Leonard Maltin tells us this is "very much a film of its time" and that we need to "step back in time, and meet the movie on its own terms." He wouldn't have had to say that about "Casablanca," or even Wellman's earlier "Public Enemy" and "Wings." The latter film is silent, too.
There's not all that much spectacle of the failing airliner itself; it's the human experiences that predominate, and that's to the good.Dimitri Tiomkin's classic theme, no doubt influenced by John Wayne's character, Dan "The Whistler" Roman, won't appeal to everyone; no piece of music ever does!
You can look for Robert Stack as pilot, and recall that he revisited that role in the spoof "Airplane!"You might even remember the source and inspiration for "Airplane!" as the forgotten 1957 "Zero Hour!" (note they even kept the exclamation point) which is also a flawed but certainly more exciting film than "The High and the Mighty." If you do watch this one, you might like it, but it's no classic..
Except for a great music score which only attests to how talented Tiomkin is and that he was able to save an otherwise awful, incoherent story-line, a painfully overacted script, characters who not only were uninteresting, but who, by midway through this overly long drudge of a movie, had become so annoying that I was secretly wishing the plane would indeed plunge into "the brink," as they called the Pacific Ocean, and drown the whole lot of them.
Here we have a text-book example a vanity project (producer and actor rolled into one) and what happens when a good cast is put the hands of an what can only be described as untalented director who doesn't know when to yell cut, letting shots run on much longer than they should and who cannot rein in his cast so they don't make fools of themselves, all over-acting to the point where the thing starts to look like a third- rate, really bad soap-opera or a silent film melodrama.
I'd buy it, regardless of cost, if I knew where to get it.The Duke is kind of special to me because when they were making the Green Berets, He came to Vietnam to my Special Forces Camp and we spent a few hours together, I admired him and the principals that he stood for.If someone is holding this film from being shown to the public I wish I could contact them and somehow pursuade them to release it so this great work of art and acting could be seen, not only by people my age, who remember it from 1954, but for the younger generation who have never seen the greatest movie John Wayne ever made or starred in..
The passenger list reads like a "Who's Who" of the film industry, including Robert Newton, Jan Sterling, Claire Trevor, Phil Harris, Robert Stack and Larraine Day. Wellman effectively collects each passenger's story and through the process of well edited flashbacks, presents a slice of each character's life.
"The High & the Mighty" is a damn good film but far from a great one, and awfully far from Wayne's best work by a long shot.
To fully appreciate this film you have to be living in a time capsule.Let's get a reality check, please, all you JOHN WAYNE fans who seem to remember this film as being the greatest thing the Duke ever did:1) It is so full of laughable dialog that it rivals the AIRPLANE film as a spoof of itself; 2) Far from being one of John Wayne's best performances, it is simply Wayne behaving level-headed and acting nobly under dire circumstances, no more, no less; 3) Sure, Dimitri Tiomkin deserves credit for his "High and Mighty" whistle theme, but that's all that can be said for the background music; 4) None of the characters are more than cardboard figures, no matter how hard they try to give some humanity to the passenger list; 5) Both Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling have been more impressive in any one of their many, many films.
At least it prepares you for the numerous cringes to come as each passenger is given their star turn.Much better is another recent DVD release of John Wayne's ISLAND IN THE SKY, a film about the rescue of a downed airplane that is much less pretentious (in glorious B&W) and far more riveting than this airborne soap opera..
Just as JAWS didn't mean you shouldn't go to the beach, this movie did not want to discouraged air travel.The interplay of the characters portrayed by John Wayne and Robert Stack are abysmal.I voted 3 because it was in color and tried hard.Now I believe that Airplane!
The cast do also give it their all- this movie is far from John Wayne's best movie or even his best role but he is good, and the supporting performers are quite entertaining too, from Phil Harris, Claire Trevor, Robert Newton to Robert Stack.
5/10 Bethany Cox. San Francisco the Hard Way. Whistling John Wayne (as Dan Roman) is a pilot with a tragedy in his past; some time ago, he crashed a plane, causing the death of every passenger, including his wife and son.
It's a fun movie to watch with friends (especially during a flight).Interestingly, Mr. Stack's character seems very much like the one he would play in the 1980 comedy disaster film "Airplane!" The climatic ending of "The High and the Mighty" may seem less so, considering where disaster films have gone since the 1950s.
I have also been a John Wayne fan for most of that time.I agree that if they wait any longer to release The High & The Mighty, it will be so old as to be ridiculous.I remember seeing it when it came out.
"The High and Mighty" and "The Quiet Man" are my two favorite John Wayne movies.
They were intentionally funny, THE HIGH & THE MIGHTY was downright laughable but all in the wrong places.There is an all star cast in this film headed by; John Wayne,Claire Trevor, Jan Sterling, Larainne Day,Robert Stack,Robert Newton, Phil Harris,David Brian, Sidney Blackmer, John Qualen & many other major performers of the 50's, They did the best they can for the lines they were given, Both Ms Trevor & Sterling were Oscar nominated..
This DVD release is for all the other movie fans like me, that remember this film, and have longed for the Wayne estate to finally let loose of it.
For people who like JOHN WAYNE this is a movie will show his best.
John Qualen plays the frightened father of several.....To learn more you'll have to watch the movie that Duke never wanted to make.And then there's that theme.....come on, whistle along folks....."I was High and Mighty how I laughed at love and the stars above....." The words and music were by Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin and it became Wayne's theme song..