Island in the Sky ** (1953, John Wayne, Lloyd Nolan, Walter Abel) – Classic Movie Review 9223

Director William A Wellman’s 1953 aviation adventure Island in the Sky is a wordy and predictable, but still sturdy air rescue drama about Captain Dooley (John Wayne)’s World War Two wartime crew who have to try to survive after their Douglas C-47 Skytrain plane makes a forced emergency landing in the freezing uncharted wildlands near the Quebec–Labrador border.

The most impressive contribution is the black and white photography by Archie J Stout (dramatic scenes) and William H Clothier (flying scenes), then comes the detailed aircraft crash realism, then Wellman’s manly direction, and then the acting. Last and least is the rather unexciting script by Ernest K Gann, based on his own 1944 novel. It is inspired by a true story about his World War Two flying career when he and other pilots searched successfully for a lost fellow pilot in the wilds of northern Canada.

Gann, a commercial pilot for Transocean Airlines, was the film’s technical director and piloted a C-47 plane for the second unit.

Also in the cast are Lloyd Nolan, Walter Abel, Allyn Joslyn, Andy Devine, James Arness, Jimmy Lydon, Harry Carey Jr, Hal Baylor, Sean McClory, Wally Cassell, Gordon Jones, Frank Fenton, Robert Keys, Paul Fix, Sumner Getchell, Regis Toomey, Jim Dugan, George Chandler, Louis Jean Heydt, Bob Steele, Darryl Hickman, Mike Connors [Touch Connors], Carl Switzer, Cass Gidley, Herbert Anderson [Guy Anderson], Tony De Mario, Tom Irish, Fess Parker, John Indrisano, Dawn Bender, Ann Doran, Gene Coogan, Ed Fury and Phyllis Winger.

In what is necessarily virtually an all-male movie, the actresses Ann Doran, Dawn Bender and Phyllis Winger appear only in brief flashbacks

Island in the Sky is directed by William A Wellman, runs 108 minutes is made by Wayne-Fellows Productions, is released by Warner Bros, is written by Ernest K Gann, is shot by Archie J Stout dramatic scenes) and William H Clothier (flying scenes), is produced by John Wayne and Robert Fellows, and scored by Emil Newman and Hugo Friedhofer.

It was shot between January and March 1953 at White Mountains, Arizona; Donner Lake, Truckee, California; Hawley Lake, Arizona; Mount Baldy, Arizona; and Warner Brothers Burbank Studios, Burbank, California. The California Department of Forestry cut down trees in the Truckee area to make aircraft runways in the four-foot snow.

The hand-cranked emergency radio transmitter used by the crew to try to contact rescuers was an actual piece of equipment, BC-778/SCR-578/AN-CRT3 emergency transmitter.

Island in the Sky and the following year’s The High and the Mighty (1954) are two of the earliest all-star disaster films. Both films are aviation dramas and share many of the same crew members and production staff, and both are early John Wayne co-productions starring Wayne. Gann wrote both screenplays.

Both films were out of circulation for two decades through legal issues, but they were restored, screened on TV in July 2005 and released as special edition DVDs in August 2005.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9223

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