CANAL ZONE (1942)

Ginger Bar is an air base near the Panama Canal, sometime in 1941, where new bombers are delivered to be flown to Africa to support the Allies in the war (I assume; more on this fuzzy plot point later). The pilots, part of a civilian corps, are trained to navigate through some dangerous South American mountains on the way, and once they get to Africa, many of the pilots opt to stay and join the forces there, so there's always new trainees at Ginger Bar. Chester Morris is the main training officer and there is mutual respect between him and his men until the arrival of cocky playboy John Hubbard. Not caring that the men have to rely on each other to stay safe, Hubbard turns out to be an obnoxious loner, proclaiming that he's there not for patriotic reasons, but "to get a bang out of life." His flying is undisciplined, and when he mocks one pilot (Lloyd Bridges) because he idolizes his brother for fighting on the front, Bridges punches Hubbard out. Hubbard also begins a mild flirtation with Morris's gal (Harriet Nelson) and tries to impress her with some hot dog flight moves. Morris busts Hubbard down to grease monkey status until he can show some cooperation. Nelson talks Morris into reinstating Hubbard, but the next day, a hungover Hubbard messes up a flight and accidentally collides with another pilot (Larry Parks), the only man who actually looked up to Hubbard, killing him. He is grounded again, but when Morris and another pilot get in trouble during a night flight during a storm, Hubbard may finally get his redemption when he sneaks out to save them.

The plot of this film is standard issue for wartime movies, the taming of a cocky dangerous jerk so he becomes a team player crossed with a romantic triangle. The context is a little weird here. The movie started shooting just days after Pearl Harbor and was based on a 1937 story, so it seems likely that it was not planned as a full-fledged story about Americans in the war effort. The pilots (even Morris) are clearly presented as civilians, but if they're flying planes to Africa, they're being used in the war effort. Before Pearl Harbor, they would have been used by the British. So the context for the film's events is left deliberately vague, though many current-day viewers probably wouldn't notice. Being a B-movie, the production values are not top rank, but with the setting limited to the air base, that's not a problem. Models and miniatures are used for virtually all the flying scenes, but they're pulled off nicely. Morris is very good as the boss, not quite as tightassed as some of his B-movie ilk. Good supporting performances come from Larry Parks, Lloyd Bridges, and a very young Forrest Tucker. Hubbard comes off as thoroughly unlikable and utterly lacking in charm, and his brief stabs at romance with Nelson are stilted, partly because Nelson herself is rather weak—she would find fame a few years later as the wife of bandleader Ozzie Nelson on TV's Ozzie and Harriet. But the lackluster showing of Hubbard and Nelson don't really hurt the film that much. A fairly interesting example of the kind of movie being made as Hollywood was figuring out what its role would be in the war effort. Pictured are Tucker and Bridges. [YouTube]