Twelve O' Clock High

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Twelve o'Clock High
original film poster
Directed by	Henry King
Produced by	Darryl F. Zanuck
Written by	Sy Bartlett Henry King Beirne Lay, Jr.
Starring	Gregory Peck Hugh Marlowe Gary Merrill
Music by	Alfred Newman
Cinematography	Leon Shamroy
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s)	December 21, 1949 (Los Angeles, California) (premiere)
Running time	132 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Twelve O' Clock High, a 20th Century Fox film production released in 1949, stars Gregory Peck, Dean Jagger and Hugh Marlowe, among others, and depicts the experiences of the United States Army Air Forces's 8th Air Force VIII Bomber Command in England in the 1942-1943 period when daylight heavy bombardment was trying to prove its concept of defeating German forces by airpower. Based on the wartime experiences of novelists Beirne Lay, Jr. and Sy Bartlett (who also wrote the screenplay), this has been described by USAAF veterans as one of the few films to accurately portray the reality of that difficult period of the air war. Lay had authored script for the pre-war film I Wanted Wings.

The fictional 918th Bomb Group is experiencing a morale crisis amidst increasing losses to flak and German fighters and tough-as-nails General Savage (Peck) is sent out by headquarters to turn things around. He succeeds in getting the group back into fighting trim, but as he identifies further with his airmen he suffers a mental and emotional breakdown in a fascinating character study. Dean Jagger won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Harvey Stovall, the group's perceptive adjutant.

The movie varies slightly from the original 1948 novel at the end. In the book, Jagger's character Harvey Stovall returns a "Toby" mug in the image of Robin Hood which he has purchased from a London curio shop in post-war England to the derelict 918th's Officer's Club's mantle (the crockery is faced to the wall to signify a mission the following day).To see a reproduction of the 918th Bomb Groups Toby Jug Visit http://www.twelveoclockhigh.biz In the film he merely mounts his bicycle and rides away from the abandoned airfield where he has been on a memory trip with the Toby parcel still in his bicycle basket.

Most of the filming took place at Eglin Air Force Base's Duke Field, (Auxiliary Field 3) in Northwest Florida with the Quonset hut that served as the briefing room in the film surviving into the 1980s as a base theatre. (It may still be there, but the base is closed to the public.) The famous opening scene in which a battle-damaged B-17 Flying Fortress bellies in after a mission was filmed, however, at the inactive Dothan Army Air Field in Alabama which is now utilized for United States Army helicopter pilot training as Fort Rucker. Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz was paid the then-unheard-of sum of $5,000 to perform the crash landing single-handedly. This sequence has been repeatedly reused in other productions.

Trivia - Several of the B-17s used in the film had been test sampling drones at the 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, and were subsequently being operated by the 3205th Drone Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base.

During the late 1960s, this film was used as an instructional aid for training British Army Officers at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the elements of the (then) employed theory of leadership (Adair) and its three key elements : the task, team maintenance and meeting individual needs. Only the first half of the film was used, not including the part where Savage (Peck) has his breakdown.

One scene was reshot in which General Savage chews out his clerical sergeant for sneaking aboard a mission as a gunner. Fox studios head Darryl F. Zanuck sent a note after viewing the dailies and strongly suggested that a toned-down approach would be better. The scene was redone in a lower key fashion with Gregory Peck agreeing that it was better underplayed.

When Stanley Kubrick made his dark Cold War farce Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in 1964, he borrowed the aircraft name flown by the misfit outcast crew, "The Leper Colony", for the B-52 piloted by Major "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) that fails to turn back and bombs Russia.

Duke Field has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency for discrete air operations into the 1990s.

[edit] Dialogue

The following dialogue is taken verbatim from playback of film on tape as broadcast on American Movie Classics, circa 1989. Nick Clooney, the host for this broadcast, mispronounced Eglin Field as "Elgin" Field every time he mentioned it.

Set-up: The pilots of the bomb group are all asking for transfers in response to General Savage's hard-nosed approach. General Savage is talking to Harvey Stovall:

Stovall - "General Savage, I'd like to tell you something else I think. I'm a lawyer by trade. I think I'm a good one. And when a good lawyer takes on a client he does it because he believes in the client's case, and that's all that matters. When I came over to England, I took on my biggest client. That client is the 918th Bomb Group - I want to see my client win its case. Does that answer what you had in mind?"

Savage - "On the button!"

Stovall - "What did you have in mind, exactly?"

Savage - "I need time - before those transfers go through."

Stovall - "Mm-hmm. How much time?"

Savage - "As much as we can get. Ten days, anyway."

Stovall - "Well, it will take those squadron adjutants at least two days to draw up all those requests. And, let's see, I believe in thorough, methodical work - everything in order. I've got a good deal of stuff on my desk here, so - it might be three days before I could get around to them."

Savage - "That's five."

Stovall - "Take a couple of days to check them - that's seven. Then those squadron adjutants are pretty sloppy sometimes, and I certainly don't want this group criticized for sloppy paperwork, do you General?"

Savage - "Couldn't permit it!"

Stovall - "So my guess is every one of those requests may have to go back to the squadron adjutants to be done over. By the time I re-check them it will be ten days anyway before they can be ready for signature."

Savage - "What a way to run an outfit. You red tape adjutants are ALL alike."

Stovall - "That's right, sir."

Savage - "But Harvey, there can be trouble in this."

Stovall - "I don't think so, sir. I never heard of a jury convicting the lawyer."

[edit] References

• Hagedorn, Dan; Hellström, Leif. Foreign Invaders—The Douglas Invader in foreign military and US clandestine service (Leicester: Midland, 1994). ISBN 1-85780-013-3
• Lay, Beirne Jr. & Bartlett, Sy. Twelve O'Clock High (New York: Harper & Brothers, March 1948).