Lafayette Escadrille American war film released in March of 1958 by Warner Brothers Pictures, starring Tab Hunter, David Janssen, and Will Hutchins, and featuring Clint Eastwood in an early supporting role. It was the final film in the career of director William A. Wellman.
The film is about a spoiled, rich kid (Tab Hunter) from Boston, who had gotten in serious trouble with the law, and fled to France, where he volunteers to join the Lafayette Escadrille and flies for France in the First World War. While off duty, the young man meets and falls in love with Renee (Etchika Choureau), a common streetwalker with some sensitivity; she quits the oldest profession and takes a job, reforming for her American lover's sake. As he is a malcontented young man whose father beat him, he resents any kind of authority. A strutting, arrogant French officer (Marcel Dalio), irritated by the young man's inability to understand commands in French, strikes him. The young man knocks the officer to the ground, a very serious offense, but before he can be jailed, his pals smuggle him out of camp. He then spends a great deal of time hiding in Paris in his sweetheart's apartment. Later, he redeems himself by serving in the US Air Corps when America comes into the war. Clint Eastwood's role, as George Mosely, is essentially a walk-on.
While the aviation scenes were well received, they weren't enough to overcome a mediocre story and flat acting. The film was roundly panned by critics and totally disowned by those still alive who had flown as part of the fabled Lafayette Escadrille and the Lafayette Flying Corps, who were understandably upset at their portrayal. Wellman had frequently claimed to be a member of the Escadrille, but that was simply not the case, and he later admitted he had only been a member of the larger and less well-known Lafayette Flying Corps. This was to be William Wellman's last directorial effort; it had started out to be a paean to his memories of the storied squadron, but ended up a target for insults, accusations, and lawsuits, not the least of which were directed against Warner Brothers Studios for their heavy-handed interference. William Clothier filmed the spectacular aerial sequences, evocative of those in Wellman's earlier silent classic Wings, though this film falls far short of the classic status of the 1928 Oscar-winner.
The plot of "Lafayette Escadrille" is dissimilar to the 2006 film Flyboys, which tries to tell the story of the Escadrille as background to an unrequited love story, while dealing with some of the lesser-known elements of the squadron's history.[1]