The High and the Mighty

The 70's were the era of the Disaster Epic.  Movies like "Earthquake", or "The Towering Inferno", or "The Poseidon Adventure", or the endless incarnations of "Airport" would showcase a natural or man-made disaster, an All-Star cast, and heroic efforts to make it out of the rubble, or the burning building, or the sinking ocean liner, or the endangered airliner alive.

But today I'd like to focus on a precursor to all those, a big-budget disaster epic 20 years ahead of the others, "The High and the Mighty".  Released in 1954, the storyline is that of an airliner, in the days before jet travel, taking off from Honolulu and headed to San Francisco. Flight time in those days was 12 hours, and over the course of those 12 hours we get to know the stories of the various passengers and crew.  Just past the halfway point of their journey, an engine fire causes a hole in one of the wings, and the loss of some of their fuel. We're then faced with the suspense of whether or not our heroes will make it to San Francisco safely.

"The High and the Mighty" had a most impressive pedigree.  Produced by John Wayne, directed by William "Wild Bill" Wellman (who directed the first Best Picture winner, "Wings"), and featuring a classic cast of stars - John Wayne and Robert Stack as the pilots, an array of recognizable character actors of the golden age (Laraine Day, Claire Trevor, Julie Bishop, John Qualen, and Paul Fix among them), and music composed by Dmitri Tiomkin (who provides one of the great romantic movie melodies of all time).

The acting is definitely hokie and overwrought in places, but they were for the most part actors who The Duke had worked with previously, and it's fun to see them all together in the same space. And you know that with himself at the controls, all will work out right in the end.