wsutton_49 I was stationed at Beale AFB near Marysville/Yuba City, Ca in the 1980's and there is an excellent local book about the history of the area, including Beale. When the movie was made and before the SR-71 came along there was a SAC Bomb Wing there, as there was at Travis AFB. At least some of Gathering of Eagles, including the scene of an Officers' Wives Club meeting and scenes inside the wing commander's quarters were shot on Beale. The base received some payment from the makers in the form of a swimming pool built near the Alert Facility (it was later filled in when the bomb wing left Beale and security was tightened due to the SR-71).

ridercoachret I was stationed at Beale AFB, California when the Movie "A GATHERING OF EAGLES" was filmed, and watched much of the filming. I was the crew chief on B-52G #6515 (cannot give the rest of the tail number) I spent many hours on the alert pad. And if you have never had that experience of answering to the call in the middle of the night to a klaxon from a sound sleep to running to your fast ride vehicle and being prepared to launch your aircraft and flight-crew, Then you don't what being a proud B-52G Crew Chief is like. All of the people in SAC had special jobs. I'm honored to have served with the greatest command in the world. Therefore I rate the movie very high. After the film about a year later I worked on the Aircraft that they used for the movie. I still have some local news paper articles and pictures from the filming. I went to Beale last year "2006" for an air show and got to go out on the hardstand where my air plane was parked many times. I read and agree with one of the people about the hot brakes. Also a scene where the so called fuel was coming out of the main entry hatch. The real crew chief was standing up inside the aircraft pouring water out of a bucket to simulate the fuel. I'm trying to get a copy of the movie in DVD or VHF. I would be glad to help with copies of the news paper articles. I would like to find someone else that was in the 456th OMS at Beale during the filming that was a crew chief or a ground crew member on the B-52G'sThank youJerry

Poseidon-3 A fair amount of military detail went into this examination of the Strategic Air Corps and its internal machinations along with the effect of Air Force life on a marriage. Hudson plays an Air Force Colonel placed in charge of base at which there is fear that the men may not pass the next surprise test in which McCarthy shows up and expects near perfection in the expulsion of B-52 bombers into the air. Taylor, as Hudson's second-in-command, was present when McCarthy failed to pass a previous commander and that man was discharged. Taking no chances, Hudson runs roughshod over practically everyone. He even cans a fellow colonel (Sullivan) when he suspects that his drinking may limit the base's chances for success. This particular move threatens Hudson's marriage as his new wife Peach has grown close to Sullivan's wife Dana and Peach can't understand the stoic, cheerless, never-ending demands of running an Air Force base. She tends to identify more with the laid-back Taylor, but unfortunately, this creates rumors on the base, and even more tension when Hudson begins to doubt Taylor's strength as an officer. Hudson, typically a very likable persona on screen, enjoys himself in this authoritative role and does a decent job. His marriage to Peach seems rather unbelievable, mostly because they just don't seem compatible even from the beginning, but they do manage to muster up a certain amount of chemistry. Taylor, an even more amiable performer than Hudson, does well here and is able to offer more dimension in his portrayal than Hudson is allowed to. Peach has an attractive figure, but just seems out of place in the film, perhaps because of her English accent and manner. The love story might have carried more weight if the couple had just been regular Americans facing a marital crisis. Her British formality puts her on the outside practically from the beginning. Sullivan handles his role nicely as does Dana as his concerned wife. McCarthy, though his role is brief, looks about as good as he ever did in films. A number of other familiar actors pop up in the cast including Silva, Lansing and Anderson as officers serving under Hudson. Lansing, in particular, has a nice, understated scene with Hudson in a steam room. Future Oscar-winner Fletcher appears briefly as the wife of an appendicitis patient. While not a stellar military film (perhaps due to its peace time setting), this does provide insight into some of the inner working of the Air Force and offers some degree of tension as in the scene in which the inside of a plane is doused in gasoline. It's also admirable in its attempts to show the marital strain that can occur within the armed services, though those scenes tend to lean towards the unrealistic. A bombastic Goldsmith score doesn't always work. Some of the set-ups and techniques foreshadow what would later be seen in "Airport" and "Airport 1975", albeit using domestic planes instead of military ones.

tarmcgator I saw this film when it first came out in 1963, a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I lived near a SAC base in south Florida, had a lot of friends whose fathers were USAF, and found the realism of the film rather scary. Seeing it again more recently, I was still impressed with the storyline and the semi-documentary footage of the B-52s and KC-135s.The deficiencies of this film are those of most Hollywood films of the 1950s (or the "greater 1950s" in this case): star casting and "love interest." Rock Hudson was never a great dramatic actor (one exception: John Frankenheimer's "Seconds"), although he's obviously working hard here to convince you that he's a decent guy whose job as a SAC wing commander requires him to be a "heel" at times. His lack of credibility has nothing to do with his homosexuality (in hindsight) and everything to do with the image that Hollywood crafted for him in the 1950s. Rod Taylor played a lot of macho roles but he also struck me as a little too precious in this film, cast mainly as a romantic rival for his boss's wife. She's played by Mary Peach, and her thankless role requires her to display considerable initial ignorance of the strains on a military officer's family. Since this is as much a character study as it is an "occupational" movie, the interaction between Col. Caldwell and his wife is an important part of the film. But it would have been more interesting if they were portrayed as a long-married couple than a pair of newlyweds. The "lesser" roles in the film, however, feature some convincing performances by such Hollywood characters as Barry Sullivan, Leora Dana, Kevin McCarthy, Richard Anderson, Henry Silva, and Nelson Leigh.I had not realized until a recent viewing that Sy Bartlett both produced and wrote the original story for "A Gathering of Eagles." I have long been a fan of Barlett's novel "Twelve O'Clock High" (co-written with Beirne Lay Jr.) and its classic film version, released in 1949, directed by Henry King and starring Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger. And as I watched "Gathering" I quickly realized that Bartlett was telling essentially the same story as "Twelve O'Clock High," updated from the World War II Eighth Air Force to its Cold War successors in SAC, about the soul-grinding responsibilities of command. The B-17s become B-52s, and Peck's Gen. Frank Savage becomes Hudson's Col. Jim Caldwell, but both characters face the same hard challenges, preparing men and machines for war by imposing high standards and hard discipline. The main difference is in that "love interest" subplot, but again, that would be more appropriate for a film set in Cold War "peacetime."Of course, there were a couple of moments in the film when I had the feeling that Col. Caldwell would stress out to the point that he would become General Jack D. Ripper. Interesting double-feature possibility there, coupling "Gathering" with "Dr. Strangelove."Interestingly, the best performance in "Gathering" is that of Robert Lansing, who plays a career USAF non-com with a quiet gravitas that characterized much of this under-rated actor's career. About a year or so after "Gathering" was released, Lansing traded his non-com's uniform for officer's pinks and took on the role of Gen. Frank Savage in the TV series based on "Twelve O'Clock High." I haven't seen those programs in many years but I recall the disappointment I felt when Lansing quit after one season. Good actor, good role.Conclusion: "A Gathering of Eagles" is in many ways a relic of its times, the early 1960s, when Cold War tensions were at their their tautest and nuclear war seemed a tremendous threat. Actually, compared to earlier films with similar backgrounds (e.g., "Strategic Air Command" and "Bombers B-52"), "Gathering" doesn't say much about the Cold War or about justifying SAC. Given what they had experienced in the preceding months, 1963 audiences didn't need that background info; and the fear or nuclear war may have contributed to this film's poor box office performance. Who needed the reminder?Did SAC help win the Cold War (by deterring a Soviet nuclear attack and making the U.S.S.R. spend billions for its own defense)? There's no way to know for sure, but there's a case to be made for that argument. This film is an inkling of just how difficult the job was.