Test Pilot

source: Test Pilot

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about "Test Pilot" as some of the other people on this board. It has a great, tried and true cast - Gable, Tracy, Myrna Loy, and Lionel Barrymore. Good flying sequences, and very suspenseful scenes at the end. The first hour is lighter, and the dialogue is sharp - Gable is a flier who lands in the Kansas backyard of Loy. It's love at first sight, and they get married. Gable's best friend, Gunner, doesn't approve at first, but changes his mind later. Loy soon realizes that the life of a flier wife is one of worry and fear every time he goes up in a plane. But she loves him too much to leave. It's a very predictable film, and seen in today's world, darn strange that Gunner just hangs around Gable and then Gable and Loy all the time and has no other life. I usually try to watch movies in their world, in this case, 1938, but I found it difficult here. The acting is good - Gable and Tracy were a good team, Gable and Loy were a good team, and Lionel Barrymore gives a nice, underplayed performance. Tracy gives the strongest performance. The film became very melodramatic and the dialogue not as sharp as the first part of it. A case of too many cooks maybe. I just couldn't get into it.

A strange movie from 1938 that has a major white elephant sitting squarely in the middle of the plot that is impossible to ignore from a 2016 perspective. Clark Gable is the test pilot of the film's title, who falls hard for and marries farm girl Myrna Loy (Loy is about as convincing as a Wichita farm girl as I would be, but this is Myrna Loy we're talking about, so who cares?!!) Their courtship is treated as a screwball comedy, with Gable and Loy generating so much chemistry my television almost malfunctioned. But Loy struggles with the transition back to their everyday married life as she realizes the fear she feels every time Gable goes back to his job is something she has committed herself to for life. The white elephant in the room is the character of Gable's mechanic and buddy, played with a scowl by Spencer Tracy. I don't know how anyone could watch this movie and not at least entertain the notion that Tracy's love for Gable is more than platonic. He seems to have no interest in women, or indeed in any life that does not include Gable. It's almost as if he and Loy have a tacit understanding that they're in love with the same man and agree to help each other through the trials and tribulations that come with that. Gable is Gable. Loy has never been better. She wasn't challenged often and was even usually underused in my opinion, but this is her movie and she ably demonstrates her range. Tracy is utterly wasted. Indeed, if the homosexual subtext isn't intentional, then there is literally no reason for him to be in the movie other than to be someone to whom Loy can deliver her lines when she's not delivering them to Gable. A mood of death and impending destruction overshadows the whole film. Whether or not this was an intentional reaction to world events at the time, it seems appropriate given the gathering shadow of world conflict that was growing in Europe. "Test Pilot" received no Oscars but was nominated in three categories: Best Picture, Best Original Story (Frank Wead), and Best Film Editing (Tom Held). Grade: B+

This film is essentially about testing planes for the war that anyone who even had a passing interest in international affairs knew was unavoidable, World War Two. The plot deals with the experimental phase of flying military equipment, of which the United States had inferior quality and little quantity in 1938. In the interest of progress, test pilots were willing to take to the air and strain both themselves and their equipment beyond normal bounds. The mythology is enhanced by the prologue in terms of the lack of the publication of "the specifications of government aircraft." It is probably just as well since America's enemies generally had better aircraft before the American involvement, except perhaps for the C-47 and the B-17. This initial disclaimer only sharpens the fiction of the film. The movie is worth a look if one is even mildly interested in aircraft lore.

"Jules et Jim " had not yet happened ,at least as a movie.This is a love triangle but don't panic!Here Loy and Gable are married and Tracy is some kind of chaperon:his character is the only intriguing thing in a routine clichéd story.He has no life of his own.He lives in the shadow of his two friends:in a nutshell,he 's not far from being a saint as his last scene seems to indicate. Oddly,first hour is casual,carefree and almost tongue-in-cheek.Halfway through,with Benson's death,the tone turns drastically tragic.Fleming does not avoid clichés for all that.With his star Gable,he would do much better the following year.Much better indeed.

This is the second of 3 films featuring Gable and Tracy. The leading lady changed each time. This time, it was Myrna Loy as a flier-struck midwest farm girl who wins the heart of dashing Gable. The relationship between Tracy and Gable is basically the same in all 3 films. Tracy officially is the odd man out in a triangle. However, when Gable and the leading lady are feeling like enemies, Tracy takes over to console and advise the wife or girlfriend. In "San Francisco" and "Boomtown", they go back and forth as buddies or arch-enemies. In this film, they remain buddies, but Tracy and Myrna share the morose certainty that Gable will not live long in his role as test pilot for experimental aircraft. Gable, on the other hand, seems not to care whether he dies or is permanently maimed. Neither does he care sufficiently about the increasingly morose fears of Tracy and Marna to quit his dangerous job and stunt flying. Afterall, he periodically makes a bundle of cash(which he usually parties away)and becomes a local celebrity. Clearly, the '30s public liked films featuring both Gable and Tracy. But Tracy got fed up with playing second fiddle to Gable and "Boomtown" was their last pairing. It is usually assumed that Gable's character is based on the autobiography of test pilot Jimmy Collins, also titled "Test Pilot", published just a few years earlier. However, a detailed discussion at the Turner Classic Movies web site considerably muddies this neat assumption. Seems MGM already had this project in mind and named in 1933. Thus, MGM did not credit the story as being based on Collins' life or book. Yet, one of the most harrowing scenes in the film, when the wings are torn off Gable's plane in a high speed dive, essentially duplicates what happened in Collins' fatal crash, just a couple of years before. Incidentally, Collins' grandson, also named Jimmy, recently had his grandfather's book reprinted. He himself was one of the top rock climbers in the world a few decades ago. Seems that daredeviling runs in the family. Ironically, it was Tracy, not Gable, who eventually dies in a test run, apparently his only one.(Was this perhaps a confirmation of FDR's message "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"?) However, the death of his friend and the resulting hysteria of Myrna finally convinces Gable that the highs he gets from constantly trying to cheat death are too great a price for those close to him. He retires to a ground instructor role. In retrospect, we wonder why Myrna's character agreed to marry Gable's character, knowing first hand how dangerous flying was at this time. Incidentally, in his fatal crash, Collins knew he was exceeding the design specifications of his aircraft. Setting a new record meant more to him than cheating death again. Appropriately, what was left of his plane nosedived into a cemetery(for test pilots?). Actually, this is my least favorite of the Gable-Tracy films, the others having more complicated plots. Dive bombing and crashing airplanes would become all too familiar in a few years. At this time, it was the test pilots of future warplanes who were the race car drivers of the sky. Hopefully, this film will be included in a future DVD Gable collection.

I list this under my 'Best' category for the simple fact that it's one of the best 'Buddy' pics of all time. Tracy and Gable had already been on screen together, and both had already been award winners, but this one was just fun. The story allows them to play off themselves with great range, and adding Myrna Loy only helps. The interaction is coy, innocent yet feisty, and lays a lot of groundwork for what 'buddy' comedy films still strive for. Paced fairly well, with just a dash of drama, the film hits on all cylinders and is definitely a popcorn movie. If you like this one, don't miss 'Boomtown' either.

A weak film. To see its shortcomings, just compare it to Howard Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings," a masterful film made a year later dealing with many of the same emotional issues. For example, compare the death scenes in the two movies; "Test Pilot" is not in the same league. Clark Gable is too Clark Gable. He should have reigned in his persona a little more here; more subtlety in his character would have done the film a lot of good. But perhaps coming off of "Parnell," a good movie but a bomb at the box office where he did depart from his typical macho character, he was less willing to take chances. Here, he does his typical macho character to the hilt. Myrna Loy is severely miscast as a Kansas girl whose backyard Gable uses for an emergency landing. She just looks too elegant, refined. Seeing her yelling and getting all excited at a baseball game just seems so out of character for her; an embarrassing scene. And like Gable, she over-emotes during most of the dramatic moments. Subtlety goes a long way; just ask Spencer Tracy. Of the three stars involved, Tracy comes out the best. His acting is the most naturalistic. Too bad he doesn't have a character. Just what exactly is his character's deal? Why is he hanging around Gable so much, blowing kisses at him as he takes off, living with him even after he's married. Is he related to Gable or just gay? I for one really don't like the pairing of Gable and Tracy. All three films they made together are weak (the first 40 minutes of "Boom Town" are good, but the movie quickly falls apart after that). In each, Gable is the unabashed, reckless, macho man, while Tracy is the morbid, grumpy, moral compass. Both actors deserve better and get better on their own. Perhaps "Test Pilot" would have been a much more satisfying movie with just Gable or just Tracy; with them together, it doesn't get off the ground. A disappointment, considering all the talent involved, in front of and behind the camera.

A product of MGM in its heyday, written by Frank "Spig" Wead, about whom John Ford was to later make a movie ("The Wings of Eagles"), directed by Victor Fleming, a man's man who barked orders, played rough, and boozed it up. Manly Clark Gable is the test pilot who always wants to push the envelope, even though he met and married the devoted Myrna Loy overnight. Spencer Tracy is the sidekick, there to provide common sense, worry about Gable, and maintain Gable's airplanes. With credits like that, it can't be all bad. Yet the characters are familiar. We've all seen movies before in which the hero is involved in some dangerous pursuit and the woman wants him to quit, settle down, and have babies in a normal home instead of all this running around with roughnecks -- and the drinking and swearing and the exhilaration of the adrenalin rush and all those tootsies hanging around and in general everybody carrying on like animals in a zoo. And why doesn't he get a haircut? She wants him to become a farmer or a shopkeeper or something, and start going to church, and she wants to push the perambulator along the sidewalks. Now, usually -- are you following this? -- usually the sidekick is homelier than the hero, as is the case here, and frequently he's in love with the hero's pretty wife, devoted to her in fact, which is not the case here. It's not one of Tracy's better parts, hobbled as he is by a script that turns him into a sullen and disapproving partner before he becomes a sacrificial lamb who turns Gable's life around. It's too talky. I enjoyed the scenes of flight, even the mock ups. I mean, how often do you get to see an experimental model of the B-17 on the screen? Or a Seversky P-35, a kind of forebear of the legendary P-47 Thunderbolt? The airplanes are real. On the other hand, you can usually tell when something dramatic is about to happen -- an engine fails, a stall takes place -- because suddenly we're watching obvious models. There's a scene at a drunken party after one of the test pilots goes all the way in. Myrna Loy happens to mention the dead pilot's name, Benson, and Gable is suddenly enraged and shouts at her, "Who's Benson?" We get a similar exchange, more light hearted, in Howard Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings" a year or two later. ("Who's Joe?") I'd like to think of it as a case of independent invention but Hawks was notorious for ripping stuff off from himself as well as others.

Howard Hawks was a formidable talent with the typewriter and the movie crew. His other work, "His Girl Friday" and "Bringing Up Baby" are now considered classics of the thirties and of the genre,(screwball comedy), yet had the problem of not connecting with any significant success at the time. "Test Pilot" involves people who must choose not to be emotional because their very work involves cheating death with every job. So it becomes interesting to observe how a couple might handle their attraction for each other balanced by their need to deny fear at all times. One plot line here is similar to later pictures where the newly minted bride must turn to the local Army general with one question: how do I keep my man alive long enough to begin the marriage? Gable is not just a louse, but the biggest louse on the runway. Here louse would mean egomaniac: concerned only with himself and the job. He's got a best friend, Spencer Tracy, but they don't talk much about anything important. They signal instead with "well, you know what I mean..." and "yeah, sure, sure I do. Uh-huh" However the refreshingly good acting of Tracy underlines every scene that has him. Around this time, he took home the best actor Oscar for Captain's Courageous, a Metro picture directed by Victor Fleming, the Director of this film as well. Gable on the other hand, is so overstating everything, especially when his love interest Myrna Loy in on camera, that you wonder if he'll simply explode in all directions. She's just as bad matching him in near swoons and arms to the face movements. However the situations are sharp, multi-purpose affairs where you see the character learning if she can handle it or not. What's great is that watching it, you're not sure how things will turn out either. The psychology of the piece is complex and a bit dysfunctional, perfect for today's noir audience expectations, but probably unsettling for late-thirties audiences. The triangle is complicated by Gable's fascination with wrestling and controlling his rogue airplanes, something that Tracy and Loy only watch in equal amazement and attempt to reconcile with.