mike-prescott304 On the evening of July 1st 1952 a couple of chaps and I were kicking a ball about on the beach at Minehead, West Somerset, England when we heard this rising sound of aircraft, then overhead at quite a low level a number of B36's flew over from East to West. Our accounts of the number varied from fourteen to eighteen as they were spread right out. But it was an awesome sight that I have never forgotten. From that day anything to do with the Peacemaker I've followed with great interest. The sequences on the ground and in the air in this film are marvellous. I'm seventy-eight now but the B-36 was and always will be an all-time great to me.

jhkp This is actually one of the few good films made in the 1950s about the cold war. It's not full of unpalatable, heavy-handed anti-Communist propaganda. Instead, it's a believable human story of a man and his wife struggling to understand why it's necessary for him to give up his current way of life (as a major-league baseball player with a new home) to help defend his country in peacetime. James Stewart and June Allyson again prove to be a great screen couple in an involving, well-acted, ultimately moving story that was a huge hit in its day.Sally Holland (Allyson) questions why her husband, Dutch (Stewart), agrees to return to active service when there's no war. Dutch tries to make her understand that "it is a kind of war." This argument occurs to illustrate the need for active vigilance vs. passive indifference in the ongoing Cold War. The whole film seems to exist to illustrate the rightness of Stewart's side of the argument, and to show those in the audience thinking more like Allyson that to refuse to defend against the threat of nuclear war with the Soviets is irresponsible.Yet there's a sort of subversive undercurrent in the film that suggests Allyson has a point. And I think this is why the film remains one of the more subtle Cold War propaganda films. The writing and direction (Anthony Mann) manage to respect the characters rather than the ideology.Meanwhile we have an entertaining story in stunning VistaVision and Technicolor, really superb cinematography (both on the ground and in the skies), and a great score by Victor Young which has several beautiful themes.The supporting cast contains several actors who were stars in their own right: Barry Sullivan, Alex Nicol, Bruce Bennett, Frank Lovejoy (as General Hawks, a Curtis LeMay type), as well as James Millican, Jay C. Flippen, James Bell, Harry Morgan, and Rosemary DeCamp. The fact that many of these very important actors would take what were almost bit parts, in some cases, speaks to the importance of this project. The poignant ending is also extraordinary and unexpected. Dutch Holland, having given up an amazing career that would be the envy of most men in order to serve his country as a pilot, sustains an injury that leaves him unable to fly, as well as unable to return to a career in sports. It's a great irony. Stewart hasn't literally given his life for his country, but he's given up a great deal. It's an example of the unspoken heroism of so many who served. The final scene says it all, as we see the mixture of emotions on Stewart's face as he stands with Allyson watching the planes flying. And then the camera cuts away and the film is over. A very moving moment beautifully acted by the stars. By the way, it's not June Allyson's fault that in this film she had to play a kind of devil's advocate role that forced her to question a lot of her husband's and the Air Force's prerogatives, for the sake of exposition. She does a good job, even though some of what she's asked to do would probably be more easy to accept coming from a younger, more emotionally immature bride. Nonetheless, If you enjoy the chemistry she and Stewart have on the screen, as I do, you'll appreciate their artistry and subtlety in their scenes together. They give an emotional slant to an essentially technical, military story. At the time, both stars were at the top of their careers, being the most popular stars at the box office in 1955. In 2016, Olive Films released a beautiful print on DVD and Blu-ray, in wide screen.

jayroth6 How many miles of celluloid have been exposed in the business of glorifying the men and planes that dropped the bombs that burned the cities? "Too many" is not a flippant answer.Strategic Air Command (1955) is the supreme ideological example of the (for want of a better word) "USAF genre" movie. Washington's defeat in the Korean War thwarted plans to overturn socialism in the USSR and curb anti-colonial struggles via atomic intimidation, and created the stalemate between imperialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat we have come to call the Cold War. And in the Cold War, so far as Washington and its Madison Avenue and Hollywood drum-beaters were concerned, the newly inaugurated USAF had center stage. The gleaming technology and Triumph of the Will-flavored esprit de corps adumbrated in movies like this created the image of professional and self-sacrificing organization men. It was beside the point that the organization they ran, and still run, is an international murder machine pushing the violent rule of the world's final empire.Strategic Air Command is no sensitive treatment of such "organization" men, the men in the "gray flannel suit." It is, instead, about the satisfaction to be found when men (and their wives) embrace the shipwreck of their lives and careers on the rocks of a necessity called National Security.James Stewart played his finest roles in 1950s-era Hollywood movies. He played them in films directed by Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann. For Hitchcock he played men appalled to learn what transgressions they were capable of justifying and carrying-out. These were the films Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). For Anthony Mann he played rough and ready loners warring against their own egos and larger social necessities in Winchester 73 (1950) and The Naked Spur (1953).Anthony Mann in the 1950s moved away from tyro kitchen sink crime films like T Men (1947) and Raw Deal (1948) and into Freudian westerns like The Furies (1950). He finished as a director of historical epics on the scale of nineteenth century French history painting: Cimarron (1960), El Cid (1961), and most grandly The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).Strategic Air Command was manufactured by Paramount Pictures. It espouses "professional military conformity" writ very large. If anyone other than the Pentagon can be identified as the film's "auteur" it is screenwriters Beirne Lay Jr. (1909-1982) and Valentine Davies (1905-1961). Lay in particular, a former officer with the Army Air Corps during World War Two, made a career out of Air Power books and movies. He co-wrote 12 O'clock High (1948), that hymn to "maximum effort" and bureaucratic cold-bloodedness in the service of U.S. plutocracy, and then went to Hollywood to work on the script for the 1949 film of the same name. In 1952 Lay wrote the film Above and Beyond (1952), about the trials and tribulations of another friend of humanity, Colonel Paul Tibbetts. (Lay later wrote that perfect genuflection before the U.S. officer caste, The Gallant Hours (1960), a religious peroration on the career of Admiral Halsey.) In many ways Strategic Air Command is a fictional re-telling of Above and Beyond. The dramatic spine of both movies is the education of a husband and wife in their responsibilities as cogs in the great engine of national war-making. In both, the wives have the worst of it, waiting on the ground and learning to curb their tongues about secrecy and missed dinners. June Allyson seemed to only play these roles in the 1950s. In addition to Strategic Air Command, she played the valiant and saintly help-meet in The Stratton Story (1949), Executive Suite (1954), The Glen Miller Story (1954) (also starring James Stewart and written by Valentine Davies), and The McConnell Story (1955).James Stewart plays professional baseball player and Air Force reservist "Dutch" Holland. Recalled to active duty, his resentment against the USAF for destroying his civilian career is eventually broken by the glamour of the new jet bomber he learns to fly (accompanied by Victor Young's lushly carnal and languorous musical score.) Along the way he meets SAC's supreme commander, General Hawks. Hawks is clearly a fictional avatar of Curtis Le May. Hawks is played by veteran character actor Frank Lovejoy. Lovejoy, now long forgotten, appeared in hundreds of movies, including such Cold War gems as I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951) and Men of the Fighting Lady, a 1954 tribute to naval aviation during the Korean War."It all boils down to less danger of war," Hawks tells Dutch Holland. It all has to do with what we came to call deterrent and mutual-assured-destruction. Eventually the stifling moral cynicism of imperialists like General Hawks would be rejected, but until the Wall Street barons and the state that defends their rule is finally removed from power, the real SAC will thrive.Is Strategic Air Command worth watching? A feminist scholar could certainly make a career, or at least a dissertation, out of the films of June Allyson. A post-modern cultural theorist could find full employment deconstructing the fetishized imagery of strategic bombers sweeping toward gorgeous golden sunsets. (Indeed, Stanley Kubrick has already sent it up in the opening credits of Dr Stangelove.) What can communists get out of Strategic Air Command? Well, communists all love James Stewart movies, and better Strategic Air Command than 1959's The FBI Story. Chew popcorn to avoid grinding teeth, comrades.

thinker1691 There are many movie couples who appeared on the silver screen that were made for each other. Their special talent lent their persona's to the films they were in and the formula worked as they were thrust together time after time. That is the story here as James Stewart playing Lt. Col. Robert 'Dutch' Holland is paired with lovable June Allyson as Sally Holland. The film is a reoccurring one as many annoyed reservists of this day and age can testify. Having done his air service duty during W. W. II, Bob Holland has taken his civilian job seriously and plans a long and lucrative career as third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. However, what was suggested as a 'part-time' job with the U.S. Airforce Reserves, becomes a dream stealing task when his reserve status is activated. Frank Lovejoy plays Gen. Ennis C. Hawkes who doesn't care what Holland like to do, he 'has a job' to do and the ballplayer has become part of the military team. Barry Sullivan plays Lt. Col. Rocky Samford. Unable to get a release from the military, Dutch makes the best of a bitter situation, one felt by many other reservists, and learns to fly the newest aircrafts, traveling around the globe. A supremely haunting musical theme accompanies this movie and Stewart/Allyson fans accept it as a heart warmer. I would tend to agree. ***