The McConnell Story (1955)

Celluloid Tigers In the Sky

In the 1955 feature film, The McConnell Story, Hollywood depicted the military career of Joseph P. McConnell Jr., the top American ace of the Korean War. McConnell was Pete Fernandez’s friend and former gunnery student. Over Korea and China, both men flew to fame in deadly air-to-air combat with the dangerous MiG15.

After the war, McConnell was sent to Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert for flight test work. In the summer of 1954, Fernandez, then stationed at George Air Force Base near Los Angeles, was loaned out by the Air Force to work on a Warner Brothers film biography of McConnell. The original title for the movie was Tiger In the Sky, but when McConnell died suddenly during production while testing out a new jet, the studio reworked the ending and renamed it The McConnell Story. (In foreign release, it retained the original title.) Fernandez served as one of the film’s two technical advisors, and he piloted “Joe’s” plane in most of the flying sequences.

Directed by Gordon Douglas, The McConnell Story is a typical 1950s Cold War movie, very patriotic and a bit stiff. Alan Ladd is good as Joe McConnell, if a bit aloof, as he always tended to be. June Allyson counterbalances him well with her earnest performance as his loyal yet concerned wife, Pearle, whom Joe nicknamed Butch. (The role is very similar to one she would later play as bomber pilot Jimmy Stewart's suffering but supportive wife in Strategic Air Command.) James Whitmore and Frank Faylen, superb character actors of that era, turn in their usual solid performances.

The McConnell Story was shot in dazzling CinemaScope “Warner Color.” Unfortunately for fans of aerial combat, the cinematic treatment of the Korean War is skimpy and average. The flying sequences are decent, but very brief. At least director Douglas chose to film actual planes in flight, as opposed to using stock footage. (Some of these combat clips would be resurrected two years later in Bombers B-52, another patriotic Cold War movie directed by Douglas.) Swept-wing American F84 Thunderjets are convincingly painted to stand in for the Soviet MiG15; the same type of celluloid “enemy” fighter would again be used in The Hunters, a 1958 film whose spectacular dogfights far outdo those of The McConnell Story, and in fact rival any air combat scenes ever filmed.

The McConnell Story’s standard “biopic” treatment of McConnell’s life is unremarkable; actually, the picture devotes much more time to Joe’s romance with his wife Butch than to any aerial combat action. It is more of a love story than a war movie, and the romantic theme is the most compelling aspect of the film when viewed today. In his love scenes, Ladd shows real passion. He and Allyson’s screen time together is made more dramatic by the fact that they were actually falling into forbidden love on the set -- both were already married -- even as they portrayed star-crossed lovers. Allyson was then wife to Dick Powell, who in 1954 was on location in Utah directing the ill-fated John Wayne movie, The Conqueror.

[The Conqueror was filmed downwind of Nevada’s Yucca Flats test site, where in 1953 alone, 11 atomic bombs were set off. Radioactive fallout was funneled into nearby Snow Canyon, where most of the outdoor filming took place. Shooting took 13 weeks, a serious enough exposure for cast and crew, but to make matters worse, 60 tons of the distinctive red soil was shipped back to Hollywood and used on the studio lot to match sets with the Utah desert. Exposure to the hot dirt continued for several weeks more. 91 of the 220 cast and crew members that went into the desert had contracterd cancer in the next two decades, and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and director Dick Powell.]

In spite of her affection for Ladd, June Allyson would not leave her husband, and told all to Powell at the time. Allyson remained friends with Ladd and kept in occasional telephone contact with him over the years as Alan spiraled downward to his unhappy death in the early 1960s.

For some time, it was unclear who flew “Joe's” F86 in the film. The Fernandez family always held it was Pete, which would be in keeping with the traditional role of a technical advisor, but the son of Korea ace Stephen Bettinger claimed on the internet that his father flew the Sabrejet in the movie. It turns out both families are correct. While a 2004 email to still-surviving Colonel Bettinger went unanswered, a “snail-mail” correspondence with aviation movie historian James Farmer seems to have straightened out the mystery. Farmer informed me that Bettinger told him years ago that he flew as “Joe” at the film’s end, during the exciting on-the-deck test flight sequence over the Mojave Desert. Fernandez flew “Joe’s” plane during the Korean War scenes.

THE HUNTERS (1958)

While serving as technical advisor on the The McConnell Story, Pete Fernandez met June Allyson’s husband, actor/director Dick Powell. Powell had been a quintessential 1930s song-and-dance man who in the 1940s retooled himself into a movie tough guy. Powell's definitive character in this later period was detective Philip Marlowe in 1944's Murder, My Sweet, a prototypical film noir. Capturing Marlowe’s vulnerability as well as his cynical hard edge, Powell’s performance as the streetwise Los Angeles shamus was author Raymond Chandler's favorite cinematic portrayal of his signature character. In the novelist’s opinion, Powell outshines a far more well-known celluloid version of Marlowe turned in two years later by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep.

In the mid-1950s, Dick Powell was focusing his energy on directing movies rather than starring in them. After filming ended on The McConnell Story, Allyson and Powell invited Fernandez, along with Pete’s wife and infant daughter, to visit them on their ranch in California’s Mandeville Canyon. During the time Fernandez was at Mandeville, Powell’s next film project was in development. It would be an adaptation of James Salter’s Korean air war novel,The Hunters, starring Robert Mitchum. Though Pete didn't participate directly in the making of The Hunters as he had with The McConnell Story, his counsel with Powell at Mandeville before shooting began probably influenced the movie’s extremely realistic scenes at the Korea forward airbase and in the sky.

Excerpt from “The Hunters,” by James Farmer, taken from Air Classics magazine, June 1988:

“Cleaver, above you, it’s the Crapshooter!” And so it begins. The skilled MiG pilot, with the red and white seven-eleven dice painted on his fuselage, pushes over into a dive on his next Sabre victim. But the high-rolling Red ace, known to the Americans as “Casey Jones,” hasn’t called out just any Yankee fighter jock. He’s latched onto “The Iceman” -- the original Iceman -- Cleve Saville, a skilled, cool-nerved professional, fighting and winning his second aerial war. It’s a brilliant contest while it lasts, but in the end the Iceman is simply more than Casey can handle.

There has been The Dawn Patrol’s Von Richter and Courtney, and God Is My Co-Pilot’s Tokyo Joe and Bob Scott, and now there was Casey Jones and the Iceman in Hollywood’s first personalized dogfight of the jet age. But while there may have never been enemy pilots known as Von Richter and Tokyo Joe, there was a Casey Jones....a fact any 4th Fighter Group Korean War veteran would be happy to confirm, though many of the Sabre drivers speculate he was Russian, not Chinese.

The picture was the 1958 Fox classic The Hunters, unquestionably the finest Air Force fighter film yet to come out of the jet age and, because of current budgetary restrictions, most likely ever will....a remarkable statement when one realizes Hollywood has had thirty years to do it better!

When asked about the film recently, Robert E. Wayne, The Hunters technical advisor, reflected, “I think I’m prejudiced, but I think the flying scenes were some of the best ever put on film.”

So who were The Hunters real stars, the eighty-plus skilled Air Force pilots who breathed spectacular screen life into James Salter’s Korean War air novel? To be sure, they were typical service types in many ways. They had seen a lot of the world, and many, a lot of war -- with more to come in the years ahead. They are a proud group of professionals, many of whose careers began in World War Two and would end only after tours in Vietnam. But for a few brief days, or in some cases weeks, in 1958 they were brought together before directors’ Dick Powell and Jim Havens cameras to document an era and a quality of flying yet to be surpassed....

Author’s review of The Hunters

Fans of James Salter’s novel The Hunters despise the cinematic version of the story. That is as it should be. I appreciate their loyalty to the author. Truth be told, the book is quite different from the film, very introspective in a way that the movie does not even try to be. Having not yet read the novel when I first saw the film, I was free to judge the picture on its own merits, After all the bad reviews I had encountered on the internet, I expected the worst. I am pleased to report that upon finally seeing it, I was pleasantly surprised.... except for the absolutely ridiculous ending!

The first 3/4 of the movie is superb. The Korea ground scenes and combat flying sequences are excellent. Back at the base, one sees all the drinking and mismatched uniforms and informality towards rank that characterized U.S. Air Force “flight suit culture” of the early 1950s in the combat environment of the Korean War.

Even the romantic interludes in Japan are not bad, thanks mostly to the icy dignity of May Britt, a beautiful blonde actress with high cheekbones and a great Ingrid Bergman accent who plays Robert Mitchum's love interest.

During the spectacular dogfight sequences in the middle part of the film, the cockpit chatter seems realistic, and there is an emphasis on teamwork in combat that is completely missing from aerial scenes in The McConnell Story. The dialogue between the men back at the base is funny and tough, and still seems sufficiently hard-bitten 45 years later.

The issue of Fear Of Flying, or FOF as the military labeled it, is obliquely addressed by the scared pilot, Lieutenant Abbott. FOF was a serious problem for the U.S. Air Force in the early part of the Korean War, and Abbott's battle fatigue is a good stand-in for the reticence many pilots felt about combat duty in Korea, especially those who were called back for a second tour after surviving World War Two. Abbott’s heavy drinking also shows the alcoholic tendencies that the fighter pilot life encouraged, a reality of that time and place.

Unlike most 1950s Cold War dramas, there is even a bit of doubt about war here: the Korean conflict gets called “lousy” three times within the first 20 minutes of the film. It's still a very gung-ho flick when it's time for battle -- and there is a Chinese atrocity scene thrown in, so there's no doubt about whom the bad guys are -- but in comparison with other 1950s aerial adventures, there is a small bit of ambiguity about the righteousness of making war.

The missions the Americans fly seem plausible (given the politics of the late 1950s, when the film was made; see below), and the “train” tactics used by the cinematic MiGs are historically accurate. The dogfighting sequences are wonderful, using U.S. Air Force F86s vs. F84s, which are painted as MiGs.

As always, Robert Mitchum is solid in his non-spectacular way. He's Cleve, the older World War Two vet and Air Force regular, a wifeless adrenaline junkie back for another go at it. “It's the only war I've got,” he twice tells his lover when she asks why he wants to fight. Robert Wagner is earnest and appealing as Lieutenant Pell, a young jive-talking hotrock. The real standout of the film is Don Egan, who plays the squadron’s commanding officer, Colonel “Dutch” Imil. Dutch is Cleve's old buddy from the Big One. Egan is a familiar 1950s character actor, and he is tremendous here. He really steals the show whenever the flyguys are back at the airbase; too bad we don't get to see him and Cleve in battle together.

Politically, the movie takes no chances. It repeats the 1950s mythology about those cheatin’ Chinese and their Manchurian “sanctuaries” across the Yalu River. (Why Japan isn't also called a sanctuary for the Americans is something I have never understood. It's a secure rear area, like China was supposed to be for the Reds -- though we now know that communist Manchurian airstrips turned out to be a lot less secure from attack than capitalist Japanese ones...)

Korean War triple jet ace Pete Fernandez was hanging out with The Hunters director Dick Powell before filming began: certainly, Pete alerted Dick to the fact that Americans regularly flew across the Yalu into China to bushwhack MiGs over their Manchurian bases, but of course, Powell couldn't put that in the film. The Air Force did not ‘fess up to such shenanigans until the 1990s, when releases of Russian archival material made the existence of these unauthorized air raids a moot point.

Even with the political impossibility of telling that part of the story back in the 1950s, director Powell still manages to slip in a few hints. One way he does this is to include a scene where Colonel Imil confronts his old buddy Cleve when the pilot returns to the UN side after going down “across the river.” It turns out that Imil is very understanding about Saville and Pell disobeying standing orders against flying across the unnamed river to rescue a downed comrade. This realistically reflects the wink-and-nod attitude many Air Force commanders had during the war regarding MiG poaching over China. Imil even shrugs off the loss of these two additional Sabrejets in enemy territory by saying that anyone could run out of gas. (Of course, it was way up north at the Yalu River where American pilots were in constant danger of using up their fuel.)

In the same scene, good old Dutchy also knowingly agrees to cover up the truth by signing off on Pell's false battle report, which claims he and Cleve were brought down by enemy ground fire. This scene has interesting historical resonance today, when we know that many U.S.A.F. operational losses and crashsite locations were falsely reported by surviving pilots in after-action reports to obscure the fact that they took place over China. (See Appendix I.)

They don't have Russian jet jockeys in the film, though Fernandez and his mates knew back at the time that they were fighting Soviet “honchos,” or top-gun pilots. This was also unfilmable in the 1950s for political reasons. The movie does have a crack Chinese ace that the Americans call Casey Jones, who has a distinctive 7-11 painted on his plane's fuselage. This is an accurate use of slang from the war, meant to denote the enemy's best pilot, or “engineer” of the MiG “train.” The cinematic Casey shoots down a couple of F86s every time he comes up against the Americans; he's meant to represent an enemy honcho, and this is very realistic. There were many Soviets and a few Chinese pilots who could handle their airplanes exceptionally well, as a long string of downed U.S. jets attested to. In classic war movie fashion, however, our boys deal with this Sabre-killer in the climactic final air duel.

On the whole, the first 3/4 of the film stands up quite well, even after all these years. T was the part that jet ace Pete Fernandez would have had influence upon, the air combat sequences, and the realistic dialogue and drinking culture depicted in the Korea base scenes. Considering his friendship with Powell in the years before and during the making of The Hunters, it appears obvious that Pete helped Dick shape his vision of what finally appeared on the screen.

OK, now for the bad news, and it is very bad news from a film lover's perspective. As soon as the action leaves the sky, about an hour and twenty minutes into the show, the movie tanks badly. At the climactic moment, the entire storyline goes completely awry, and surely this is responsible for the movie's poor reputation. I will not waste time relating all the absurd details, but it involves three U.S. pilots going down in the same location, a rather improbable feat in jets traveling nearly the speed of sound. Once brought to terra firma, the two Bobs -- Mitchum and Wagner -- commence a ludicrous rampage. They run around the enemy countryside, killing off Chinese patrols with their pistols, stealing machine guns and food, hiding out in caves and barns, tossing around hand grenades, being helped by friendly civilians, etc. The Americans eventually sneak back to their own lines.

It is all rather foolish and completely unbelievable, which is a shame after the earlier realism. Maybe it all seemed like a good idea back in 1958, but today, it's as out of place as a pie fight would have been. Twenty-five of the film’s final thirty minutes of valuable screen time! One can imagine this film stock having been used instead to delve further into the psychology of the fighter pilots, or to portray more air combat or adding scenes of nervous tension back at the base. This would have been far more original, and stayed truer to James Salter's novel as well. I believe that had director Powell done this, his work would today be thought of as a film classic that holds up well all they way through, instead of suffering as it does in obscurity with a justified reputation for being severely dated.

I'm a huge Robert Mitchum fan, but let's face it: the clichéd war-movie ending was put in as box-office pandering The studio was paying Mitchum the big bucks, so they were damn well going to highlight Bob's tough guy reputation, even if it meant doing so in a hackneyed way. It's not unlike the motorcycle chase tacked onto the ending of the movie The Great Escape. Before agreeing to star in that film, Steve McQueen, a motorcycle virtuoso, insisted on a finale that allowed him some macho screen time on a bike, though this fantasy adventure sequence had no basis in fact. (Part of the problem is that Mitchum and Wagner’s foolish excesses in The Hunters are not nearly as entertaining as McQueen's crazy cycle stunts were!)

Fans of Salter's novel justifiably abhor the picture for its ending, if for no other reason. Certainly, nothing like it exists in his novel. But for all that, due to the superb first 3/4 of the movie, this film is still a must-see for students of the Korea air war, and a good-see for just about anyone else.

CORROSION CORNER

The celebrity that came into Pete Fernandez's life in the spring of 1953 lasted a few years, but slowly drained away after The Hunters. A brief and modest wealth in the 1950s allowed him to buy a Cadillac, then an imported German automobile, but this soon also faded. By the mid-1960s, the once famous flyboy had quit the Air Force, split up with his pretty wife and was living with his mother while grinding out a living as an anonymous blue collar guy, flying cargo freelance all over Latin America. The last fifteen years of Pete's career were flown out of Miami International Airport's “Corrosion Corner.” This notorious airdrome was home to flying wrecks piloted by rogues working for unscrupulous transport companies, druglords and the CIA. The rust bucket air cargo operations of Corrosion Corner also became a rickety airbridge between Miami and the rest of Latin America whose existence was pivotal to South Florida becoming the hemispheric economic powerhouse it is today.

AND IN THE FUTURE...?

Who knows, there may be another film yet to come one day that touches on the life of Pete Fernandez. Given the success of Air America, a Mel Gibson/Robert Downey Jr. comedy about CIA pilots flying cargo and drugs all over Southeast Asia, one would think there is a movie to be found in the equally hilarious and politically charged “flying circus” that called Corrosion Corner its home in the 1960 and 1970s. We will see.