Product Details
- Starring: John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O'Hara, Ward Bond, Ken Curtis
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- Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
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- Binding: VHS Tape
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- Director: John Ford
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- EAN: 9786301978590
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- Format: NTSC
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- ISBN: 6301978595
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- Label: MGM (Warner)
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- Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
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- Number of Items: 1
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- Product Group: Video
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- Publisher: MGM (Warner)
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- Release Date: 1992-04-01
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- Studio: MGM (Warner)
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- Theatrical Release Date: 1957-02-22
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- Title: Wings of Eagles
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- UPC: 027616051332
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Avg Customer Rating: 
Product Description: John Ford had a big emotional investment in The Wings of Eagles, and his favorite star John Wayne rewarded the director with one of his strongest performances. The subject is Frank "Spig" Wead, Naval aviation legend turned Hollywood screenwriter, who had written Ford's very good 1932 movie Air Mail and his magnificent WWII elegy They Were Expendable (1945). On the latter, Ford made the extraordinary gesture of putting Wead's screenplay credit on the same main-title panel as his own. Ford was fond of exploring the theme of "victory in defeat." Wead's life was made to order for that. The hell-raising flyboy shenanigans, and his flailing marriage to a scrappy Irish redhead (The Quiet Man's Maureen O'Hara reporting for duty), were abruptly curtailed by a fall that left him with severe spinal damage. He should never have been able to walk again, but he fought his way back to limited mobility and built a new career as a writer. And when WWII broke out, Wead talked his way into uniform once more and made a key contribution to the Pacific air war. It would be satisfying to report that The Wings of Eagles is a triumph--that the broad comedy of the early reels cuts brilliantly against the raw pain of the Weads' marriage, the grief of a family broken and mended and broken again, the film's specters of death and deep frustration. There are powerful moments--especially the complex, scalding scene of the newly injured Spig dismissing Min (O'Hara) from his life. But the low comedy is very low, the visual style sometimes stark but more often just drab, and the screenplay is very choppy about the passage of time. Ford-Wayne pal Ward Bond turns up as a crusty movie director with a walking stick full of booze, an office full of Western memorabilia, and the nudge-nudge moniker "John Dodge." --Richard T. Jameson
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