Dive Bomber (Warner Bros.) (1941)

PUBLICITY—DIVE BOMBER’ Aviation is the nation’s number one news topic, so your editor is sure to be interested in these features dealing with authentic facts about the navy’s air forces. U. S. Navy Cooperates in Production of Spectacular New Air Film, ‘Dive Bomber’ Wright Field at Dayton, Ohio, is one of the great aviation laboratories of the world. This is quite as it should be, of course, for it bears one of the most honored names in flying; a name that stands for pioneering within the industry that dominates the world today. Because men in all branches of aviation look to Wright Field and Dayton for advanced ideas and help in anything having to do with their work, Michael Curtiz, one of Hollywood’s betterknown motion picture directors, spent much time at the great Wright plant preparing himself for his latest film assignment. Returned to his home plant, the Warner Bros. studio, Cur Girl of the Hour Still Lex 53; Mat 104—15c ALEXIS SMITH'S success story is the kind that keeps Hollywood's Cinderella legend alive. Picked from the ranks of bit and atmosphere players, she plays the leading feminine role opposite Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray in the big Technicolor special, "Dive Bomber." Warner Bros. Donates Equipment to Navy The low pressure chamber and other highly technical flight surgery equipment built by studio technicians for Warner Bros.’ big superspecial Technicolor picture “Dive Bomber” are going into active service. All such equipment except that on loan from the Wright Field Laboratories at Dayton, Ohio, and certain other equipment from Pasadena’s Cal Tech is being turned over to the government as fast as it is cleared out of the Errol Flynn-Fred MacMurray starring picture. All of the devices and instruments used are practical and perfect, some even far in advance of equipment in use generally. The U. S. Navy technical experts, under Commanders J. R. Poppen of the Medical Corps, Washington, and Seth Turner and Charles Brown of the flight branch, insisted that things be right. tiz directed the picture. It is “Dive Bomber,” starring Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray, with Regis Toomey, Ralph Bellamy, Robert Armstrong, Allen Jenkins and a score of other actors in featured roles. It was filmed in Technicolor, and in a way was the most costly picture ever made. This cost will be visual rather than actual, although the studio has a goodly sum invested in it. The other millions, many of them, are represented by the physical backgrounds against which, and upon which, the action was filmed. equipment necessary for the filming. Every resource of United States naval aviation was made available to Warner Bros. and to director Michael Curtiz that the people of this and other lands may be made well aware of what the navy is doing in these stratospheric times. “Dive Bomber” is not a war picture in the sense that men and planes will be shown in battle conflict. The conflict of its theme is the fight men of science, medical science, are waging to keep ahead of the breathtaking mechanical development of aviation today. Fighting planes must go to stupendous heights to win victories in the air. Planes and motors have been built to do it. Physical man cannot stand the strain, without the help that is being given him at Wright Field and other places of advanced aviation science. This help comes from men of Military etiquette and regulations divide authority sharply when motion picture studios produce films in which army or navy personnel appear. No Hollywood director, not even a Cecil B. deMille, can give an order to an enlisted man or an officer and expect him to obey it. Being well aware of this in advance, no director of such a picture tries, although ordinarily the director is the one to tell everybody what to do, in front of the cameras and behind them. Naturally this greatly cramps a film director’s style. One most cramped, and _ this only because he’s a man of impulse, hard-driving, and a believer in the direct approach, was Warner Bros.’ Michael Curtiz. Curtiz directed the new Errol Flynn-Fred MacMurray naval aviation thriller, “Dive Bomber,” most of which was filmed on the U. S. Naval Air Base, San Diego, Cal. Three thousand sailors, 200 officer pilots and dozens of executive ratings appear in many of the scenes. Curtiz’s instructions to these men had to be relayed, as orders, through Commander Seth Warner, Lt. Com. Charles Brown, or other liaison officers assigned by the Navy Department in Washington to work with the director of the production. Because men of the army or the navy are in the service of the government, meaning ser. vice of the people of the United And the, Mike Curtiz Meets His Master—Uncle Sam's Navy a new profession, men called Flight Surgeons. Errol Flynn and Ralph Bellamy are Flight Surgeons in “Dive Bomber.” It was to study Flight Surgeons, their methods, and the reactions of their “patients” that Warner Bros.’ Curtiz visited the Wright Laboratories at Dayton, the Curtis plant in New York, Pensacola, Seattle and other points, before he went to work with his color cameras. Because the Navy cooperated in the picture, the Navy had the logical right to expect and demand absolute accuracy. The ground work being done to prevent altitude sickness, dread “black out” from. bombing dives, aeroembolism, flight fatigue, night blindness, and all the other unsolved things that beset men who fight 30,000 or 50,000 feet above the earth had to be shown in accurate and understandable detail. Flights of 10, 15, 20 naval bombing and torpedo squadrons will be shown. As there are 18 planes in the regulation squadron, nine in a division, and three in a section, the size and scope of these great mass flights can well be imagined. Curtiz declares, Errol Flynn agrees, it is the biggest and most important picture they have ever made together, and they’ve done some pretty big ones in the past. Curtiz is more than grateful that he had the help of Wright Field experts before he started it. Otherwise “Dive Bomber” would have been much more difficult to film. States themselves, neither Warner Bros. nor any other motion picture company can pay the men or officers for work performed on a film production. But there are other ways to show appreciation than to pay out money in hand. Property men with the “Dive Bomber” company handled more than 2,500 cartons of cigarettes during the time the troupe was at the San Diego base, and it was apparent that all the enlisted sailors had plenty of “tailor mades.”’ Some fine new motion picture projection machines were installed in new club rooms and barracks—facilities hitherto lacking because recreational needs come after housing and training in naval expansion plans. Although the Navy cooperated to the fullest possible extent in filming “Dive Bomber,” under the irrefutable theory that through such pictures the people themselves best can be shown what their Navy is doing in these times, not once was the rigid routne of pilot training interrupted or interfered with at the San Diego base. Only man thrown out of his usual pattern of habit was director Mike Curtiz himself. In the heat of directing a scene he often forgot that he wasn’t an admiral, not even a lieutenant junior grade. His announcements that “Now everyone comes to attention” brought no reaction at all. But when those orders came from a regular officer, that was another thing. be best at in the new Technicolor movie "Dive Bomber." Still DB 160; Mat 202—30c ENTERTAINING THE NAVY is the job that Alexis Smith proves herself to Fred MacMurray and Errol Flynn are co-starred as rival officers. Flynn, MacMurray Star In Flight Film at Strand ‘Dive Bomber’ Opening Friday is Thrilling Saga of the Air, Filmed in Technicolor Warner Bros.’ “Dive Bomber,” opening Friday at the Strand, is for many reasons, Hollywood’s “biggest” new production; “big” not only in importance of star names, budget, schedule and story, but vast in the technical problems it presented. First of all, it deals with a completely new _ subject, the work of specialists of which there are a mere handful in the country today. These are the flight surgeons, medical scientists out to solve the mysteries of the stratosphere. For planes and plane motors have been advanced so far by man that man himself is not physically or mentally equipped to keep up with them. Therefore the dread “black out” of dive bomber pilots, altitude sickness, pilot fatigue and other bewildering ailments, all serious, that have been revealed only since planes were made powerful enough to take man 20,000, 40,000 and 50,000 feet into the air. In “Dive Bomber,” filmed in new fast-action Technicolor, Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray are starred, supported by Regis Toomey, Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, and others, with beautiful young Alexis Smith as the leading woman. Michael Curtiz directed, from a story by Frank Wead and a screen play by Wead and Robert Buckner. Much of the exterior work on the picture was done at the U. S. Naval Air Base, San Diego, where every facility, every plane, was made available to the Warner Bros. company. Other work there was done aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, an aircraft carrier. Most difficult production problems was to get actual scientific equipment, all prac tical, such as that in use at the Wright Field Flight Surgeon Laboratories, Dayton, Ohio, where most such work in the country is done today. Some of this equipment was obtained on loan from Wright Field officials. The rest of it, such as a huge low pressure chamber, electroencephlagraphs, _ electrocardiagraphs, depth perception devices, oximeters, etc., had to be built right in studio shops. And all of it had to work. Four naval technical directors were on the job to see that things are right: Commander J. R. Poppen, one of the highest ranking naval flight surgeons, with 19 years experience in that field; Lt. Commanders Seth Warner and Charles Brown, and Lieut. Ray C. Needham of the Sara toga. More than two months was required for camera work alone, so many were the flight and other technical problems involved. Still DB 58; Mat 204—30c EYES ON THE SKIES, Fred MacMurray, Errol Flynn and Ralph Bellamy watch and check the results of a test flight in Warner Bros.’ exciting new flight picture, ‘Dive Bomber," filmed in Technicolor. 17