THE FLYING FLEET (1929)

Six buddies are set to graduate from Annapolis together and are looking forward to becoming Navy pilots after selection in San Diego. Our focus is on handsome nice guy Tommy (Ramon Novarro) and his best friend Steve (Ralph Graves), a cocky so-and-so always looking to make trouble. On a drunken night before commencement, Steve and Dizzy come sneaking in after hours; Steve eludes discovery but Dizzy is caught and dismissed, leaving five. In San Diego, the glasses-wearing Specs (Gardner James) is cut for his eyesight but becomes a navigator. Meanwhile, Tommy and Steve enter into a rivalry for the lovely Anita (Anita Page) that will last for the rest of the movie, with each one playing tricks on the other trying to make time with her. During pilot training in Pensacola, Florida, Kewpie (Sumner Getchell) freaks out during his trial flight and is sent off to become a radio operator, and later Tex (Carroll Nye) crashes in the water on his first solo flight—I assume he is killed though it's not made clear. What is clear is that Tommy and Steve, who make the grade, still indulge in juvenile pranks, in the air and on the ground, and both still date Anita, and when a storm comes out of nowhere on a trans-Pacific flight to Honolulu, they are both put to the test with lives at risk.

I don't know how old this plot (of buddies in the military having problems over a woman) is—it certainly gets used by Hollywood quite a bit just before and during WWII—but I suspect it was familiar before this silent film (with background music and sound effects) adapted it. As Ben Mankiewicz said when he introduced the film on TCM, it's a bit like a 1920s Top Gun: guys in planes, girls in sexy outfits, and the possibility of tragedy just around the corner. Novarro and Graves are absolutely right for their roles, as are the other buddies. Anita Page has little to do except bounce back and forth between Tommy and Steve, though if you've seen any other movie like this before, there's no surprise about whom she ends up with. I was especially interested to see Carroll Nye, mostly known as the thick-sideburned Frank Kennedy, post-war husband to Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND, looking so young and handsome here as one of the friends. The line that made me go, huh?: after seeing girls out waterskiing, Steve says, "That’s what I call seafood!" The top picture is of Novarro and James; at right is Novarro being saved at sea by Graves. [TCM]