Dive Bomber: Keep 'Em in the Air (2005) Online

This is a concise bit of commentary from Lincoln Hurst, Rudy Behlmer and Robert Osborne on the making of DIVE BOMBER and puts the film in the context of its time when America's entry into World War II was still just on the horizon. It's featured on the DVD release of DIVE BOMBER starring ERROL FLYNN, FRED MacMURRAY and RALPH BELLAMY.

It's quite interesting and it's too bad the film is so short. A good fifteen minutes could have made for a better discussion of the film itself. Osborne points out that Warners obviously made it as sort of a recruitment film for men anxious to get into the service and did their best to make the film as authentic as possible by shooting it on location at various locales, most notably the San Diego Naval Air base. Brought back memories of my own service at the San Diego base when I was a young Navy recruit.

As a companion piece to the film, it's a way of stirring interest in watching the film in which ALEXIS SMITH is introduced in a rather subordinate role as a gal who can't get much attention from men preoccupied with solving the problem of air altitude sickness during dive bomber maneuvers. The serious minded Flynn is quite a contrast to his usual role as the playboy on a girlhunt.

Worth watching if you have the DIVE BOMBER DVD which gives you a pretty awesome look at the Technicolor photography of that era.

. . . between themselves and sound clips from a movie, there's not even time to cover basic details. In fact, it's possible (if not probable) that they can perform their function here not ever having watched the film in question from beginning to end (especially in this century). Just throwing out the same tired tidbits of Hollywood gossip from the 1900s quickly consumes their time allotments, and many of these second-hand stories are generic enough that they can be and are recycled for movie after movie commented upon by these professional geriatric "talking heads." Anyone viewing DIVE BOMBER with fresh eyes cannot help noticing that cigarettes and sentimental cigarette cases are on-screen for about half its running time. This is especially ironic because most of the problems bedeviling America's chain-smoking Navy pilots are caused or worsened by their chain-smoking, a fact which their chain-smoking flight surgeons cannot see for all the smoke in the clinics and cockpits! The payola of Big Tobacco helps explain DIVE BOMBER's myopic smoking obsession, but to what can the talking heads' tunnel vision on this point be attributed? Are they all closet chain-smokers?