Script

After Wayne and Robert Fellows had formed Wayne-Fellows Productions in 1952, the duo worked on several films including Big Jim McLain, Plunder of the Sun, and Island in the Sky.^[6] In 1953, director William Wellman was releasing Island in the Sky when he learned that his screenwriter Ernest Gann was writing another aviation story. Gann shared the story with Wellman, and the director offered to make a sales pitch. Wellman relayed the story of The High and the Mighty to Wayne-Fellows Productions. Wayne purchased the story on the spot, agreeing to give Gann $55,000 for the story and the screenplay plus 10 percent of the film's earnings. Wayne also agreed to give Wellman 30 percent of the earnings to be the film's director, based on the condition that The High and the Mighty would be filmed in CinemaScope.^[7] It was a widescreen projection process that involved using an anamorphic lens to widen the image produced by regular 35 mm film. Wellman's experience was that the CinemaScope camera was "bulky and unwieldy", and the director preferred to station the camera in one place.^[8][9] Since The High and Mighty was set on an airliner with cramped quarters, Wellman did not need to worry about flexibility in composing shots.^[8] He hired William H. Clothier,^[10] with whom he had worked on many films, as cinematographer (assigned to the second unit sequences, only; Archie Stout, with whom Wayne had a long association, had already been assigned as primary cinematographer). Ernest K. Gann wrote the original novels on which both films were based, along with both screenplays, of which both films, including dialogue, were closely adapted.

The High and the Mighty depicts a dramatic situation in a civil transport aviation context. Jack L. Warner initially was opposed to the film, believing that audiences would not stay interested in a plot stretching more than 100 minutes involving the passengers in an airliner.^[11] William Wellman had reservations about the "intimate" storylines, which dominate the production, preferring to focus more on the airliner and pilots. Yet, after script deliberations set out the final screenplay, he endorsed the novel approach that harkened back to earlier films such as Grand Hotel.^[12][13]

The airliner

The Douglas DC-4 (N4665V) used to film the daylight flying sequences and the Honolulu "gate" sequence was a former C-54A-10-DC built as a military transport in 1942 at Long Beach, California, by Douglas Aircraft Company.^[14] When the exterior and flying sequences were filmed in November 1953, the airliner was being operated by Oakland, California-based non-scheduled carrier Transocean Airlines^[15](1946–1962), the largest civil aviation operator of converted C-54s in the 1950s, and named "The African Queen".^{[Note 2]} Ernest K. Gann wrote the original story while he was flying DC-4s for Transocean over the Hawaii–California routes. The film's fictional airline's name "TOPAC" was painted over the Transocean's red, white, and yellow color scheme for filming.

Transocean Airlines director of flight operations Bill Keating did the stunt flying for the film. Keating and Gann had flown together and the author recommended his friend for the job.^[16] During preproduction filming, Keating was involved in a near-incident when simulating the climactic night emergency landing. After several approaches, Wellman asked for "one more take" touching down even closer to the runway's threshold. Keating complied, taking out runway lights with his nose landing gear before "peeling off" and executing a go-around. Wellman quipped that the crash would look good in another film.^[17]

A second former C-54 equipped with a large double cargo door^[18] used to accommodate the loading of freight on pallets, was employed for all shots of the damaged airliner on the ground at San Francisco in the film's closing sequences. A propellerless, fire-scorched engine on a distorted mount, with a 30° "droop", was installed on the left wing of this aircraft to represent the damage which had imperiled the flight. Exterior airport scenes were filmed at the Glendale Grand Central Air Terminal,^[19] east of Burbank, California, where an outdoor film set was constructed to replicate the terminal gates at SFO in the early 1950s. Additional exteriors shots were taken at Oakland International Airport, including all boarding, engine run-up, taxiing, and takeoff scenes used in the opening sequences.^[20] The external night and damaged in-flight sequences were filmed in a studio where a large-scale filming miniature was photographed against backdrops. Passenger-cabin and flight-deck interior scenes were all filmed on sets built on a Warner Bros. sound stage.

Filming

Filming took place from November 16, 1953, to January 11, 1954, on a Goldwyn Pictures lot and Warners soundstages in Hollywood.^[1] Most of the cast sat in the passenger cabin for weeks during filming. Cast members recalled disliking the experience; Claire Trevor called it "a dreary picture to make".^[21] Some cast members passed the time by staying in character in between shots and doing cryptograms.^[21] During cold weather, the soundstage was not properly heated, and cast members suffered from the cold. Wayne and Stack did not face similar problems since they were filmed separately and comfortably in the cockpit set.^[22] Additional filming took place in San Francisco as well as at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Waikiki Beach in Hawaii.^[1]

At one point during filming, Wayne attempted to assert himself as director. Wellman argued publicly with him in defense of his directorial control, telling Wayne: "Look, you come back here behind the camera and do my job, and you're going to be just as ridiculous doing it as I would be going out there with that screwy voice of yours and that fairy walk and being Duke Wayne".^[23][24][25] Despite the initial issues on set, the two otherwise had a positive relationship and worked together on later films, including Track of the Cat and Blood Alley.^[24]

Aircraft feature prominently in The High and the Mighty, including two unusual aviation events: the U.S. Coast Guard's short-lived use of the B-17/PB-1G "Dumbo" rescue aircraft along with a brief launch clip of experiments with the U.S. Navy JB-2 version of the V-1 (an early kind of cruise missile) at an atomic missile test site. The postwar use of piston-engine aircraft in oceanic flights was a key element of the film, which required the use of a then-modern airliner.^[26]

Wellman, an accomplished pilot in real life, purposely maintained the point-of-view of the flight path of the seemingly doomed airliner traveling as the support staff in San Francisco would observe it: flying from the west to the east, from Honolulu to San Francisco, film frame right to film frame left, except during takeoff and landing. Similarly, the U.S. Coast Guard rescue plane was shown flying from San Francisco to towards the stricken airliner, film frame left to film frame right.

The film was initially budgeted at $1.32 million, but cost overruns led to a total cost of $1.47 million.^[2][27] For directing, Wellman received $100,000 as well as a portion of the film's profits. Wayne earned $175,000 in addition to a percentage of the film's box office receipts.^[2]

Casting

Casting for The High and the Mighty was problematic because there were no real "leading" roles, which resulted in many of Hollywood's major stars turning down roles that did not appear to be "big" enough for them. With stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy McGuire, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, and Joan Crawford rejecting parts in the film,^[28] Wellman ended up casting good but lesser-known actors in some of the roles. Spencer Tracy was offered the role of Dan Roman but turned it down because, Wellman said, Tracy found the script "lousy"; assistant director Andrew McLaglen claimed that Tracy's friends told the actor he was "in for an ego-bruising ride." It was thought that Tracy, a liberal Democrat, would receive the 'ego bruising' from Wellman a registered Republican. This led Tracy to excuse himself from the film. ^[21] Without Tracy, Jack Warner threatened to remove the Warner Bros. funding unless another prominent lead actor could be found.^[21][29] Wellman convinced producer and actor John Wayne to replace Tracy in the role.^[30] Wayne later said during and after production that he did not like his performance. McLaglen recalled: "He said, 'Well, it never had any love story.' I said 'It had the greatest love story that had ever been written.'"^[31] McLaglen and Wayne argued about Wayne's performance, but Wayne never conceded about his performance.^[32]

For the other major male lead, Wayne had promised the role to his friend Bob Cummings, who was a pilot and had Wellman's recommendation as well.^[28] However Stack went after the role and an interview with Wellman eventually convinced the director that a non-pilot could effectively portray the drama of a cockpit conflict.^[5][33]

Stanwyck's refusal was especially galling, as the director had always treated her as a "pet".^[12] Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez appeared in this film and several others with John Wayne.

The High and the Mighty and Island in the Sky shared many of the same cast and production crew. Along with Wayne, six other actors appear in both films: Regis Toomey, Paul Fix, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Ann Doran, George Chandler, and Michael Wellman.

Music

Composer Dimitri Tiomkin scored the film and composed the theme song "The High and the Mighty"; the song was also called "The Whistling Song" because John Wayne whistled the tune during production.^[34] Tiomkin's music topped hit parade charts and remained there for weeks, increasing the film's profile.^[35] A 1955 national survey of disc jockeys labeled the song as the "most whistleable tune".^[35] Hollywood producers learned that a publicized title song could have value in attracting audiences to movie theaters.^[36] Therefore, the song's "haunting strains" were played on the radio and on recordings in the years after the film's release.^[34] It was nominated for the Best Song at the 27th Academy Awards in 1955, but lost to "Three Coins in the Fountain" from the film of the same name.^[35]

Box office performance

The High and the Mighty had its premiere in Hollywood at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on May 27, 1954.^[31] It was commercially released on July 3, 1954. Although the choice of the new Cinemascope format limited theater use,^[3] it was also one of the most commercially successful films that year. Within two months of its release, the film was ranked first in box-office receipts and set the record for the "fastest return of negative cost" (screen jargon for making back production costs).^[12] Beyond the film's initial run in theaters, it grossed $8.5 million in total box office receipts and was the sixth most popular film of the year in North America.^[2]

Critical reception

At the time of the release of The High and the Mighty, it received mostly positive reviews. Variety wrote that the film "is a class drama, blended with mass appeal into a well-rounded show that can catch on with most any audience".^[38] Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times called the film "an enormously vital picture, amazingly associated with life's panorama today, and thus filled with a rare kind of tingling excitement, especially for a modern air-minded public".^[38] Joseph Henry Jackson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, said that the film has "a story that gives you no time to catch your breath".^[39]

The High and the Mighty also received some negative reviews, with Richard Griffin of the Los Angeles Times writing that another reviewer had criticized the cast: "All are fabricated characters—and that is the way they are played".^[39] The film's running time was also commented on by several reviewers who called it "an unbelievably long trip" and "the extreme length of its proceedings, which seems almost full flight time Honolulu-San Francisco".^[39]

Modern reviews of The High and the Mighty are mixed. Wayne biographer Ronald L. Davis described the film, "While its plot is somewhat synthetic, the special effects and performances make for an engaging film".^[36] David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews, called the film "bloated and overlong" and that it relies on "artificial, needlessly drawn-out speeches for its characters".^[40]

The film holds a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 13 reviews. ^[41]

Awards and nominations