Leofwine_draca Anthony Mann and James Stewart paired up for numerous features in the 1950s, their best work being that in the western genre. STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND is something different, a look at the workings of a bomber command crew during the Cold War. Stewart gives an effortlessly likeable performance as the family man battling with duty at home and at work, while the all-colour production certainly looks nice and aeroplane fans will be delighted by the technology of the era. It's certainly watchable enough for fans of the actor and movies of the era. However, it's all a little too worthy, a little too dull. The drama that evolves is rather predictable in nature and all of the bits with June Allyson merely drag. You can't help but think a WW2-themed movie would have been more satisfying.

vincentlynch-moonoi Do you like a film with a good, solid plot? Well, then look elsewhere. This film is not about plot...at all. This film was designed to highlight the Strategic Air Command.There's a very loose story to hold the film together -- Jimmy Stewart plays a WWII era soldier who has become a baseball, only to be called back into the service to help get the SAC off the ground. His wife -- June Allyson -- has varying feelings about the call-back, but she is generally supportive of her husband. Eventually, an injury sidelines Stewart's character. That's about it.Lest you think there's nothing particularly impressive about this film, the flight sequences -- real flight sequences -- a stunningly photographed. In fact, that may be the best thing about the film! For a film with little plot, it has a very strong cast. Jimmy Stewart does a very nice job as a flier who is none to happy to be called back to service, but then gets wrapped up in the mission. June Allyson is bubbly June Allyson...type casting...although she has one dandy scene telling off a general! Frank Lovejoy is strong as the general; Lovejoy is little remembered, but was quite a good actor in his day. Barry Sullivan is along in a rather bland role. Jay C. Flippen and Harry Morgan -- too fine character actors -- are along and do nicely.Aside from the aerial photography, two things impressed me. First, you get a good look at the inside of some of the planes. Second, Stewart really was a military pilot, so it's interesting to see him in this role.Nevertheless, nothing makes up for a lack of plot, so I give this film a "6". If you have some special reason to watch a film on the topic, then you might enjoy it -- I did, my father was in the Strategic Air Command (albeit as a sergeant in the food service wing, but he was very proud of his service there).

Spikeopath Strategic Air Command is directed by Anthony Mann and written by Valentine Davies and Beirne Lay. It stars James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Lovejoy, Bruce Bennett and Barry Sullivan. Music is by Victor Young and cinematography by William H. Daniels.Film is inspired in part by the true story of baseball great Ted Williams, who after serving in World War II was drafted to serve in the Korean War just as his baseball career was taking off.There's sometimes a film you watch that you desperately want to be good because you can't imagine having to pan it. This becomes even more irksome when it's directed by and stars personal favourites. Sadly I find myself in that irksome frame of mind where Strategic Air Command is concerned, for in spite of the quality of Mann and Stewart, and some truly special "up in the air" sequences, picture is a bore.The flag waving and thematics involved are fine, these people deserve recognition, and it's great to have someone like Stewart, drawing from real life inspiration, leading out the story, but when on the ground the film comes off as an advertising reel for the Air Force that's punctured by military musings. None of which is very interesting.On the major side of plus points is the planes themselves, those B36/47 Bombers are a sight to behold, graceful yet menacing, and beautifully brought to life in Vista Vision and Technicolor. The "loyal wife of an airman" thread is neatly welded into the human story, with Allyson's chemistry with Stewart set in stone after their work together in The Stratton Story (1949) & TheGlen Miller Story (1954).Hardly a stinker, then, and Lay's story was Oscar Nominated, but it is a chore to get through, and one has to be suspicious of a film where the best thing about it is an aeroplane. 4/10

Robert J. Maxwell Interesting story of Dutch Holland (James Stewart) and his wife (June Allyson) and their involvement with the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force in the post-war years. Holland, an ex bomber pilot, is now a successful third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals and has just signed a contract for seventy thousand bucks. His career is interrupted when the Air Force activates his reserve status and he's hauled back in for 21 months. Holland has a lot of catching up to do but learns to love flying the huge B-36 and then the slim B-47. He's a good officer and reenlists, which perturbs his wife, but a bad shoulder forces him out of the Air Force and, presumably, he goes back to baseball as a coach or manager.The movie is practically a recruitment film for the Strategic Air Command, promoting self sacrifice for the sake of a nation on the brink of war. The incidents we witness are familiar from earlier war movies. All that's missing is the war itself.June Allyson plays June Allyson, the steadfast, common-sense wife, who endorses Stewart's first hitch but balks at the second. Some sit-com humor is gotten out of their adjustment to military life. They move from a prosperous-looking home into a standard typical spare functional monochromatic generic Monopoly Air Force house. The re-introduction to military routine is played for some sarcasm too. Stewart has gone for a medical check up but he's late. "Well, honey, they go over you from head to foot here, and they've only gotten down to my throat." There is the requisite cigar-chomping tough general, modeled after the brave but reckless Curtis LeMay who ran SAC at the time. The tedium of being checked out on various airplanes is omitted. And there is a soaring score by Victor Young that almost adds lift to the wings of those stone-heavy B-36s.Interesting airplanes, B-36s. The largest combat airplane ever produced. As in a training film, the story guides us through the vast interior of this machine, crowing a bit over the 80-foot-long "Holland Tunnel" that connects the fore and aft compartments. The thing was a dinosaur, of course, designed during WWII to deliver bombs from the US to Germany in case Britain fell, slow, ungainly and obsolescent almost from the beginning. The B-47 represented a new paradigm -- twice as fast and with a crew of only three men. And the B-36s replacement, the B-52, has had a service life of half a century. There are also a few proud shots of Globemaster transports, huge things, seen swallowing an 18-wheeler whole from its open maw, like a python swallowing a shoat. It seems impossible.Gorgeous shots of airplanes in flight. (In fact, the photography, by seasoned pro William H. Daniels, is superb.) Seeing this spacious bomber fly from Texas to Alaska and back without refueling generates a desire to be aboard. There's even a built-in coffee station. Maybe glazed donuts with sprinkles.I've seen it twice and enjoyed it both times despite the stereotypical script. The airplanes make the rest of it worthwhile.