(Credit: RKO Productions)
Thu 11 September 2025 18:45, UK
Hollywood in the 1950s was a strange place to be.
While the economy boomed with post-war glee and the world seemed infatuated with the Tinelstown industry of cinema, to be working within that industry had some serious pitfalls.
The ‘Red Scare’ was a time when the arts, along with a number of other sectors, were being routinely shaken down in the name of Senator Joe McCarthy as he attempted to heat up the Cold War and find Communist sympathisers in America’s booming industries. It left a lot of people scared.
As the end of the war moved into the 1950s, things intensified, and what was at first a general threat to get in line with American values had now become a serious issue for anyone hoping to work in Hollywood and hold opposing views to those of those in charge. The Hollywood Blacklist would form one of the darkest moments of US free speech, with Donald Trumbo being among the most famous of the ten men who were kicked out of the industry.
Hollywood soon became full of creators now looking to clear their name, directly or indirectly, by making patriotic movies that celebrated America and its victories. One such man was the billionaire and aviator, Howard Hughes, who combined his passion for aircraft with his desire not to be seen as a “red under the bed” to help create Flying Leathernecks. Shot in colour so that Hughes could also use real-life combat footage, the picture is a fast-paced and scything look at war.
The picture pits two military men against one another as they try to take command of an air unit during World War 2, putting their opposing ideas and values against one another. With the movie’s main piece surrounding the decision to champion the greater good over the lives of individuals, the morals of the picture feel absurdly conservative, and rarely falter from the main drive that the country is more important than the individual.
What’s perhaps most interesting about this picture is that it didn’t just see two different ideologies clash on-screen, but off it too. John Wayne, who plays Major Kirby in the movie, is the brutal leader who is able to send his troops on suicide missions as long as the mission objective is completed. While his co-star Robert Ryan, playing Capt Griffin, is an easy-going and friendlier leader who sees the humans behind the decisions being made. The ideals were reflected as the studio lights went down, too.
Ryan, reportedly selected by director Nicholas Ray because, as a boxer, he was the only actor who could “kick Wayne’s ass”, was a pacifist despite having served in WW2. Meanwhile, Wayne, who never served in the military, was a staunch conservative Republican and was a vocal supporter of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which helped to blacklist fellow industry workers for their apparent un-American views. It meant the two men were left appalled by one another.
Ryan never went as far as to commentate on the differences he shared with Wayne, likely because in 1951, as the movie was released, Sen Joe McCarthy was nearing his unimpeachable pomp, and to speak out against Wayne was to lay a blackmark against your name. Or it might have been that, as a noted pacifist, he simply saw no need to engage with Wayne beyond what he deemed necessary.
What we can be sure of, though, is that this bristling tension transferred onto the movie screen. The picture is fraught with energy from the start as the two men seemingly size one another up for the entire movie. Even as their values align in the story, Ryan’s performance feels sinewy and tight, ready to explode and perhaps release one of the trained left hooks he had spent his youth practising. The two men never did come to blows, but they also never spoke or worked with one another again.
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