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Show "Flight Command" Has Authentic Naval Air Service Background j By Commander Harvey Haislip, V. S. X. (Ret.), co-author and technical director of "Flight Command," starring Robert Taylor, and opening Sunday at the Rivoli Theatre. The motion picture industry early turned to the Navy as a background for adventure pictures. pic-tures. The service had much to offer a vast canvas dramatic and colorful; the salty, rolling gait of marching men in seagoing uniforms; uni-forms; pomp and circumstance, tradition and intriguing customs stemming from the frigate navy of the colonial era. Way back in 1912 while serving in the old South Dakota, an armored ar-mored cruiser of the Pacific Fleet, we were boarded off San Pedro 'by a moving picture director with a retinue of cameramen, assistants, assist-ants, and actors. Being only a "snootie" at the time, I knew nothing no-thing of the official procedure which permitted this invasion of a man-of-war and cared less. But all hands and the cook knocked off work and had a good time watching the show. Our captain, accustomed to unquestioned rule and living in the belief that everything every-thing in his ship, animate and inanimate, in-animate, belonged to him, finally was unable to stand any longer such lubberly inefficiency as he thought it. So he took the reins from the director's hands and supervised su-pervised the making of the scene himself. This probably was the first, attempt of the Navy to supervise su-pervise pictures made with its cooperation. co-operation. Armed Landing Several years later, while serving serv-ing in the Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, I again participated in the making of a moving picture. We staged an armed landing on what was supposed sup-posed to be an island populated by little brown men in nightshirts third group come pictures which the Navy considers undesirable. On these the department expresses express-es a disapproval. Loyalties Shown In "Flight Command,'' the air story previously mentioned, life at a great naval air station is shown. The thrills of taking off and landing on a carrier, squadrons squad-rons of small wasp-like fighters maneuvering in the air, sleeve target practice, search operations with human life at stake. Here again the loyalties and high standards stan-dards prevalent in the service are emphasized. The film is bound to interest young men in a life which offers so much in adventure, adven-ture, comradeship and the broadening broad-ening influences of travel. Young men who hitherto have only heard of the Naval Flying Service can, during the hour or more that the picture unreels, live it and be part of it. ing that no military secrets are divulged on the screen. Besides these, if the picture deals with any particular service such as the submarine branch or the air force, a qualified officer of that service is appointed to the . board. For example, in "Flight Command" the bureau Of aeronautics was vitally vital-ly concerned. So the script was read by no fewer than four qualified quali-fied aviators of that bureau and their recommendations were given decisive weight in determining what cooperation, should be given. Even though only a small part of actual shooting is done aboard ship, so many requests for assistance as-sistance come into the Navy department de-partment that cooperation on all is impossible. So a segregation of material is made. In the first category come pictures which reflect re-flect credit on the Navy and are of sufficient importance to be de1-sired; de1-sired; so outstanding, in fact, that the Navy is offered something of value. In such cases cooperation, not to interfere with regular fleet operation schedules, may be authorized. au-thorized. Such authorizations are very few in number. In the second classification come pictures which from the Navy's point of view are innocuous and have nothing to offer. On such scripts the Navy department may give an expression expres-sion of approval without extending extend-ing active cooperation. In the "North Americans are not masculine mas-culine enough,'' complains Dr. Allan R. Dafoe, who begins to feel himself outnumbered by the growing grow-ing quints. o "Harvard discovers a strange animal, said to be distantly related relat-ed to the cow." We had long speculated on the filet mignon in the 5 0-cent table d'hote. who, in the best movie tradition, tried to simulate head-hunters. The landing party was called away; boats splashed into the water; wa-ter; bluejackets, with bayonets fixed, sprang ashore when keels grated on the shingle, rifles cracked crack-ed and field guns barked all with blank cartridges, of course. The enemy was driven back into the jungle. It was all very exciting and great fun. Afterward the location lo-cation manager, a chap named Griffith, arranged a party for us at the studio where we had a look behind the scenes. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 192 5 blazed a trail in making a topflight top-flight feature picture of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, "The Midshipman," Mid-shipman," starring Ramon Novar-ro. Novar-ro. No effort was' spared to portray por-tray authentically life at the Naval Na-val Academy and aboard ships of the practice cruise fleet, and as a result the troupe was successful in capturing for the screen the true spirit of the service. Serving at the time as an instructor at the Academy, once more my interest inter-est was aroused in the possibility of carrying our Navy to the public pub-lic by means of motion pictures. But life is full of surprises and that motion picture unit soon found some of them. The director, direc-tor, Christy Cabanne, discovered that taking pictures of the Navy was not all beer and skittles. In the first place, the superintendent was against it. Unheard of using midshipmen to make motion pictures! pic-tures! Nothing in the regulation book about it! Was he supposed to be turning out naval officers or actors? Official Supervision But the smooth persuasion of Bill Orr, public relations man from M-G-M's New York office, reinforced by several officers of the Navy department who saw an advantage in publicizing the Naval Na-val Academy on the scale and with the good taste of such a production, produc-tion, finally swung the superintendent superin-tendent into line. He insisted, however, that an officer of the Academy staff be in, close supervision super-vision of every scene shot at Annapolis, An-napolis, and Captain H. A. Jones, who thereafter had an, important part in developing motion pictures pic-tures for the Navy, was given that assignment. Since then, the making of motion mo-tion pictures has been revolutionized. revolution-ized. With the advent of sound, it became standard practice to shoot a great part of every picture pic-ture inside huge sound-proof stages. Navy pictures are no exception. ex-ception. Rarely is it necessary now to take members of the cast aboard ship. A "second unit" consisting con-sisting of director, cameraman and technicians goes "on location" to get the background and atmospheric atmos-pheric shots which later will be used at the studio to complete the dramatic part of the story. This location wjork represents probably prob-ably not more than one-fifth of the production, but it is extremely extreme-ly important. Without it, the picture pic-ture would lack reality. For example, ex-ample, "Flight Command," of which I was co-author and technical tech-nical director, takes place at a naval air station, on board an aircraft air-craft carrier, and in planes of the Navy in full flight. Manifestly a certain amount of the real thing must be photographed if the picture pic-ture is to have reality. And for assistance such as this, sudios must ask the Navy department for aid. Valuable PuWicity The public the taxpayers who provide funds for the Navy's maintenance like to see their Navy and are entitled to see it. Because the great percentage of our population lives inland, the motion picture becomes the ideal medium for such visual presentation. presenta-tion. Recognizing this, it seems good judgment to assist motion picture companies presenting the Navy in an interesting and authentic au-thentic way, and it is important also to discourage the making of bad pictures. Much valuable publicity pub-licity can be obtained for the Navy by good pictures; a great deal of harm can be done by bad ones. Requests for aid in making motion mo-tion pictures are submitted to the public relations branch of the Navy department but 'no one officer offi-cer decides whether or not the substance of the script is "good Navy." Rather, a cross section of naval opinion is obtained by submitting sub-mitting the script to a board of six officers. The public relations officer is one; the morale officer, responsible for the entertainment and recreation of enlisted personnel, person-nel, another; the officer in charge of the recruiting service, deeply interested from a recruiting angle, an-gle, because good pictures will bring good recruits, bad pictures may scare them away; and an officer of-ficer from the intelligence department, depart-ment, primarily interested in see- |
