Wings (film)
Encyclopedia
Wings is a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 about World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 fighter pilots, produced by Lucien Hubbard
Lucien Hubbard
Lucien Hubbard was a film producer and screenwriter. He is best known for producing Wings, for which he received the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Lucien produced and or wrote ninety-two films over the course of his career...

, directed by William A. Wellman
William A. Wellman
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...

 and released by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

. Wings was the first film, and the only silent film, to win the Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...

. Wings stars Clara Bow
Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...

, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Richard Arlen
Richard Arlen
-Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

. Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

 appears in a role which helped launch his career in Hollywood and also marked the beginning of his affair with Clara Bow. Ironically, out of all of the lead performances in the film, it was Gary Cooper's supporting role which would shoot him to stardom.

Plot

Jack Powell (Rogers) and David Armstrong (Arlen) are rivals in the same small American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 town, both vying for the attentions of pretty Sylvia Lewis (Ralston). Jack fails to realize that "the girl next door", Mary Preston (Bow), is desperately in love with him. The two young men both enlist to become combat pilots in the Air Service
United States Army Air Service
The Air Service, United States Army was a forerunner of the United States Air Force during and after World War I. It was established as an independent but temporary wartime branch of the War Department by two executive orders of President Woodrow Wilson: on May 24, 1918, replacing the Aviation...

. When they leave for training camp, Jack mistakenly believes Sylvia prefers him. She actually prefers David and lets him know about her feelings, but is too kindhearted to turn down Jack's affection.

Jack and David are billeted together. Their tent mate is Cadet White (Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

), but their acquaintance is all too brief; White is killed in an air crash the same day. Undaunted, the two men endure a rigorous training period, where they go from being enemies to best friends. Upon graduating, they are shipped off to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 to fight the Germans
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

.

Mary joins the war effort by becoming an ambulance
Ambulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...

 driver. She later learns of Jack's reputation as an ace and encounters him while on leave in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. She finds him, but he is too drunk to recognize her. She puts him to bed, but when two Military Police
Military police
Military police are police organisations connected with, or part of, the military of a state. The word can have different meanings in different countries, and may refer to:...

 barge in while she is innocently changing from a borrowed dress back into her uniform in the same room, she is forced to resign and return to America.

The climax of the story comes with the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel
Battle of Saint-Mihiel
The Battle of Saint-Mihiel was a World War I battle fought between September 12–15, 1918, involving the American Expeditionary Force and 48,000 French troops under the command of U.S. general John J. Pershing against German positions...

. David is shot down and presumed dead. However, he survives the crash landing, steals a German biplane
Biplane
A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two superimposed main wings. The Wright brothers' Wright Flyer used a biplane design, as did most aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage, it produces more drag than a similar monoplane wing...

, and heads for the Allied
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...

 lines. By a tragic stroke of bad luck, he is spotted and shot down by Jack, who is bent on avenging his friend. When Jack lands to pick up a souvenir
Souvenir
A souvenir , memento, keepsake or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. The term souvenir brings to mind the mass-produced kitsch that is the main commodity of souvenir and gift shops in many tourist traps around the world...

, he becomes distraught when he learns what he has done, but before David dies, he forgives his comrade.

With the end of the war, Jack returns home to a hero's welcome. When he returns David's effects to his grieving parents, David's mother blames the war, not Jack, for her son's death. Then, Jack is reunited with Mary and realizes he loves her.

Cast

  • Clara Bow
    Clara Bow
    Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...

     as Mary Preston
  • Charles "Buddy" Rogers as Jack Powell
  • Richard Arlen
    Richard Arlen
    -Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

     as David Armstrong. Arlen met co-star Ralston on the set and married her in 1927.
  • Jobyna Ralston
    Jobyna Ralston
    Jobyna Ralston was an American stage and film actress.-Early life and career:Born Jobyna Lancaster Raulston in South Pittsburg, Tennessee in 1899 to parents who named her after famed entertainer of the time, Jobyna Howland...

     as Sylvia Lewis
  • El Brendel
    El Brendel
    El Brendel was a vaudeville comedian turned movie star, best remembered for his dialect schtick as a Swedish immigrant. His biggest role was as "Single-0" in the sci-fi musical Just Imagine , produced by Fox Film Corporation...

     as Herman Schwimpf, a cadet who washes out and becomes an air force mechanic
  • Richard Tucker
    Richard Tucker (actor)
    Richard Tucker was an American actor. He appeared in 266 films between 1911 and 1940.He was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first official member of the Screen Actors Guild and a founding member of SAG's Board of Directors...

     as Air commander
  • Gary Cooper
    Gary Cooper
    Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...

     as Cadet White
  • Gunboat Smith
    Gunboat Smith
    Edward "Gunboat" Smith was an Irish American boxer and later a boxing referee.- Boxing career :Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He spent much of his youth in orphanages, working on farms and on the railroads. He joined the U.S...

     as Sergeant
  • Henry B. Walthall
    Henry B. Walthall
    Henry Brazeale Walthall was an American film actor.-Career:Walthall began his career as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway in a supporting role in William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in 1906–1908. His career in movies began in 1908, in the film Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, which also...

     as David's father
  • Roscoe Karns
    Roscoe Karns
    Roscoe Karns was an American actor. He appeared in nearly 150 films between 1915 and 1964.He played the title role in the popular DuMont Television Network series Rocky King, Inside Detective from 1950 to 1954...

     as Lieutenant Cameron
  • Julia Swayne Gordon
    Julia Swayne Gordon
    Julia Swayne Gordon , was an American actress. She appeared in 228 films between 1908 to 1933.Born in Columbus, Ohio, she starred in the first film version of the Lady Godiva legend in 1911...

     as David's mother
  • Arlette Marchal
    Arlette Marchal
    Arlette Marchal was a French film actress. She appeared in 41 films between 1922 and 1951. She was born and died in Paris.-Selected filmography:* Die Sklavenkönigin * Madame Sans-Gene...

     as Celeste
  • Hedda Hopper
    Hedda Hopper
    Hedda Hopper was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.-Early life:...

     as Jack's mother (uncredited)
  • George Irving
    George Irving (American actor)
    George Henry Irving was an American film actor and director who made over 200 films in his lifetime. Some of his best known movies were Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Hearts Divided, A Night at the Opera, Son of Dracula, Hangmen Also Die!, Once Upon a Honeymoon, and Maid's Night Out.-Death:Irving...

     as Jack's father (uncredited)

Production

The film, completed with a budget of $2 million, was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...

 (then called "Best Picture, Production") for the film year 1927/1928 (and was the only silent film to win), and won a second Academy Award for Engineering Effects. Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB3s and Curtis PW-8s.

The film was written by John Monk Saunders
John Monk Saunders
John Monk Saunders was an American novelist, screenwriter and film director.-Early life and career:...

 (story), Louis D. Lighton
Louis D. Lighton
Louis D. Lighton was an American screenwriter and producer. He wrote for 40 films between 1920 and 1927. He also produced 30 films between 1928 and 1951....

 and Hope Loring
Hope Loring
Hope Loring , was an English screenwriter. She wrote for 63 films between 1918 and 1931.She was born in England and died in Majorca, Spain. She was married to fellow screenwriter and producer Louis D...

 and edited by Lucien Hubbard, and was produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman
William A. Wellman
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation...

, with an original orchestral score by John Stepan Zamecnik
John Stepan Zamecnik
John Stepan Zamecnik was an American composer and conductor, most notably of "photoplay music."...

, which was uncredited. The movie was shot at Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

 between September 7, 1926 and April 7, 1927. A sneak preview was shown on May 19, 1927 at the Texas Theater on Houston Street in San Antonio. The Premier was held at the Criterion Theater, in New York City, on August 12, 1927.

The film is one of the first to feature a male-on-male kiss – a fraternal one – in the death scene near the end. It is also one of the first widely released films to show nudity. Clara Bow's breasts can be seen for a second during the Paris bedroom scene when army men barge in as she is changing her clothes. In the Enlistment Office, nude men undergoing physical exams, can be seen from behind, through an open door, which is opened and closed. This film was released a few months before the MPPDA list of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" was established.
Producer Lucien Hubbard hired director Wellman because of his World War I aviator experience. Arlen, Wellman, and John Monk Saunders
John Monk Saunders
John Monk Saunders was an American novelist, screenwriter and film director.-Early life and career:...

 had all served in World War I as military aviators. Arlen was able to do his own flying in the film and Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during the course of the production, so that, like Arlen, Rogers could also be filmed in closeup in the air. Lucien Hubbard offered flying lessons to all, and despite the number of aircraft in the air, only two incidents occurred, one involving Dick Grace
Dick Grace
Dick Grace was born in Morris, Minnesota and was an early stunt pilot who specialised in crashing planes for films. Grace was one of the few stunt pilots who died of old age. He was the author of several books including Squadron of Death, Crash Pilot, I am still alive, and Visibility Unlimited...

, a stunt pilot and the other was a fatal crash of a United States Army Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...

 pilot.

The original Paramount release was color tinted and had some sequences in an early widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 process known as Magnascope, also used in the Paramount film Old Ironsides (1926). Some prints had synchronized sound effects and music, using the General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

 Kinegraphone (later RCA Photophone
RCA Photophone
RCA Photophone was the trade name given to one of four major competing technologies that emerged in the American film industry in the late 1920s for synchronizing electrically recorded audio to a motion picture image. RCA Photophone was a sound-on-film, "variable-area" film exposure system, in...

) sound-on-film
Sound-on-film
Sound-on-film refers to a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog sound track or digital sound track,...

 process.

Reception

Wings was an immediate success, premiering on August 12, 1927 at the Criterion Theatre
Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Piccadilly Circus in the City of Westminster, and is a Grade II* listed building. It has an official capacity of 588.-Building the theatre:...

 in New York and playing 63 weeks before being moved to second-run theaters. One of the reasons for its resounding popularity was the public infatuation with aviation in the wake of Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...

's transatlantic flight. The critical response was equally enthusiastic as the critic of the New York Times noted that the realism of the flying scenes was impressive.

Academy Awards

On May 16, 1929, the first
1st Academy Awards
The 1st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 1927 and 1928 and took place on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, in Los Angeles, California. AMPAS president Douglas Fairbanks hosted the...

 ever Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. Wings was entered in a number of categories but in contrast with later awards, there was no Best Picture award. Instead, there were two separate awards for production, the Most Artistic Quality of Production, won by Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and the Most Outstanding Production, won by Wings as well as Best Effects, Engineering Effects for Roy Pomeroy.

The following year, the Academy instituted a single award called Best Production, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings had been the equivalent of that award, with the result that Wings is often listed as the winner of a sole Best Picture award for the first year. The title of the award was eventually changed to Best Picture for the 1931 awards.

Legacy

For many years, Wings was considered a lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...

 until a print was found in the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...

 film archive in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and quickly copied from nitrate film to safety film stock. It was again shown in theaters, including some theaters where the film was accompanied by Wurlitzer
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to simply as Wurlitzer, was an American company that produced stringed instruments, woodwinds, brass instruments, theatre organs, band organs, orchestrions, electronic organs, electric pianos and jukeboxes....

 pipe organs.

In 1997, Wings was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...

 by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In 2006, director William A. Wellman's son, William Wellman Jr., authored a book about the film and his father's participation in the making of it, titled The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture.

Restoration

As the original negatives are lost, the closest to an original print is a spare negative stored in Paramount's vaults. Suffering with decay and defects, the negative was fully restored with modern technology. For the restored version of Wings, the original music score was re-orchestrated. The sound effects were recreated at Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound is the sound effects, sound editing, sound design, sound mixing and music recording division of George Lucas' Lucas Digital motion picture group. Its main facilities are located in Lucas Valley, near Nicasio, California...

 using archived audio.

The restored and remastered version of Wings, presented in high-definition
High-definition
High-definition refers to an increase in display or visual resolution such as in:*High-definition television , television formats that have a higher resolution than their contemporary counterparts...

, will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 24, 2012, coinciding with the centennial anniversary of Paramount.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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