20,000 Men a Year

Overview

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Pilot disobeys unsafe orders and loses his job. He then starts a flying school which receives a boost when the government launches a program which it hopes will produce 20,000 pilots a year.

Randolph Scott ("Brad") gets himself suspended after disobeying some dodgy orders whilst airborne, and ends up helping the US government to recruit new pilots operating a flying school. His young pal "Skip" (George Ernest) is desperate (but too young) to join in, and his sister "Ann" (Margaret Lindsay) thinks it's too dangerous too. Together, though, the pair decided to work on persuading her and, of course, Scott and Lindsay start to fall for each other. Meantime, the brother of the man who originally grounded "Brad" arrives at the training school. "Tommy" (Robert Shaw without any sharks) is a bit wary of flying and on one exercise, he passes out leaving them all in a precarious position. The last twenty minutes of this are quite taut but the rest of it is all pretty average fayre. The younger lad has a bit of oomph to him, but Scott never was my favourite actor. Always a bit too pretty and soporific, and here he is suitably numbed by the equally lacklustre Lindsay. Some of the aerial photography is quite interesting, but for the most part this is all just a bit procedural.