Flight Angels ** (1940, Virginia Bruce, Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, Ralph Bellamy Jane Wyman) – Classic Movie Review 10,075

Director Lewis Seiler’s 1940 Flight Angels offers good nostalgia for wartime flying, pre-war in America’s case, and these are the brisk, cheery stewardesses (Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce) and capable, brave pilots (Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris) you hope to have around you in time of trouble.

Morgan plays Federal Airlines ace pilot Chick Farber banned from the air by flight controller Superintendent Bill Graves (Ralph Bellamy) for failing eyesight, but, aided by Mary Norvell (Bruce) and Nan Hudson (Wyman), he takes a job as teacher in the school for airline hostesses, though he plans to join Artie Dixon (Morris) to test fly a new army stratosphere plane.

Virginia Bruce in Flight Angels (1940).

Flight Angels is an amusing though unsurprising soap opera of lives at 8,000 feet, with a tried and tested mix of romance, comedy and melodrama, written by Maurice Leo, from an original story by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay.

Wayne Morris went on to be teamed with Ronald Reagan’s first wife Jane Wyman in Gambling on the High Seas (1940). Flight Angels is the fourth of seven films he made in 1940.

Also in the cast are John Litel, Margot Stevenson, Dorothea Kent, John Ridgley, Lucile Fairbanks, Maris Wrixon, Jan Clayton, Lyn Merrick, Phyllis Hamilton, Carol Hughes, Mary Anderson, William Hopper, Leona Roberts, Ferris Taylor, Dick Elliott, John Eldredge, Janet Shaw, Natalie Moorhead, Grace Stafford, Nell O’Day, Elizabeth Sifton, Jean O’Donnell, Victor Zimmermann, Eddie Acuff, Creighton Hale, Addison Richards, Rosella Towne and Jeffrey Sayre.

The film prompted Wayne Morris to become a pilot, and he joined the US Navy in World War Two, became a fighter ace, and was awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals in 57 combat missions.

Virginia Bruce replaced a reluctant Olivia de Havilland, who turned down the lead role, resulting in her suspension by Warner Bros.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,075

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