China Clipper

Aviation drama from Warner Brothers and director Ray Enright. Pilot Dave Logan (Pat O'Brien) starts a company with the intention of making transoceanic flight not only a reality, but a safe and reliable service. To this end he drives his engineers and test pilots to the brink, as well as pushing away his own wife Jean (Beverly Roberts). Also featuring Humphrey Bogart, Ross Alexander, Henry B. Walthall, Marie Wilson, Joseph Crehan, Joe King, Addison Richards, Anne Nagel, Milburn Stone, Frank Faylen, Pierre Watkin, and Wayne Morris.

This is a mediocre B-movie that will hold some interest for aviation buffs. The presentation of O'Brien's character is so off-putting as to make him unbearable, and you cheer when someone socks him in the jaw. Bogart shows some of his future promise as a cool-as-ice test pilot with an easy smile and no small amount of charm. Ross Alexander isn't bad either, playing a loyal friend to O'Brien. Alexander would come to a sad end, taking his own life less than six months after the release of this movie, at age 29. Silent screen legend Henry Walthall, playing an elder engineer affectionately called "Dad", would die of a heart attack in the middle of production, grimly mirroring a plot point in the film. Walthall was 58, but looked twenty years older. They lived rougher in those days.

PanAmerican was asked about participating in the making of the movie before it was made. Pan American declined. So the movie was made "fictional." Pat O'Brien of course represents Juan Trippe. Ross Alexander represents Capt. Hugh Wells. Humphrey Bogart represents Capt. Ed Musick. Ed Musik Jr. and grandson Chuck Musik both flew later for Eastern Airlines.

Today, Dinner key still exists in Miami. The former PanAmerican terminal is now Miami City Hall. The hangars are still there at Dinner Key and are mostly in disrepair; used for boating interests.

Besides the excellent Golden Gate picture, I believe there is also a shot of the Bay Bridge, but you have to look quickly.

This film essentially begins right after Charles Lindburgh's successful flight from New York to Paris after which an enterprising pilot by the name of "Dave Logan" (Pat O'Brien) comes up with the idea of building an airline which can deliver mail, cargo and eventually passengers from Miami to Havana. It's during this time, however, that his ambition gets the better of him and he not only alienates himself from his friends but he also loses his wife "Jean Logan" (Beverly Roberts) in the process. Yet rather than stepping back to reconsider his approach he doubles down and becomes totally obsessed with expanding his new airline even further. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an okay film for the most part but the plot relied too heavily upon creating drama between Dave Logan and everyone around him and it got rather annoying after a while. Admittedly, I thought Pat O'Brien--and to a limited extent both Humphrey Bogart (as "Hap Stuart") and the aforementioned Beverly Roberts--acquitted themselves quite well but even so the previously mentioned drama seemed a bit too contrived and for that reason I have rated this film accordingly. Average.

Bogart temporarily left the field of crime to portray a more respectable type in his subsequent effort, "China Clipper." On its simplest level "China Clipper" relates a routine story of an airline owner's (Pat O'Brien) desire to put into operation a trans-Pacific airline… Soap-opera dramatics take over quickly as O'Brien's dedication to his project costs him his wife, his friends, and the clichéd obligatory, for this genre, death of an elderly associate designer...

Bogart's undistinguished role was that of a wise-cracking pilot, frequently engaging in verbal sparring with O'Brien and fellow pilot Ross Alexander, who eventually makes the record-breaking flight across the Pacific in the film's finale...

"China Clipper" is merely artificial drama, but it has a certain value for its generally well-integrated use of newsreel and stock shots of the actual "China Clippers" in operation... One particularly exciting shot is of the mammoth plane flying over an as-yet-uncompleted Golden Gate Bridge with its gigantic opposing spans reaching out into empty air, waiting patiently for its final connecting links

This film is about Pat O'Brien's insanely driven goal of creating an international airline service in the very early days of commercial aviation. No matter how successful his new airline becomes, Pat pushes his men harder to be even bigger and better. Unfortunately, he has a heart of stone and is so doggedly fixed on his goals that he treat everyone around him like dirt--never thanking people and ignoring his insanely patient wife. At times, he truly seems disturbed, as he shows signs of Paranoid Personality Disorder--lashing out at even the simplest requests from loyal employees. In so many ways, the film seems like an airplane version of MOBY DICK, as Ahab-like O'Brien is barely human! Despite this and the way O'Brien barks out his lines (this was his style in many films, by the way), the airline works--even though again and again they seem on the verge of failure. The biggest and most daunting goal, though, is not his air conquest of South America but the creation of the first clipper service to China.

Despite sounding rather dull, I did enjoy the film a lot--and much of this is that I am a huge fan of early aviation films. You actually learned a lot AND enjoyed a typically breezy 1930s-era Warner Brothers programmer. By the way, if you like this, O'Brien played nearly the same earnest-style person in many other films of the 30s--though I have never seen him as mean and unlikable as he was here! By the way, one of the supporting actors is a younger Humphrey Bogart and a highlight is when he busts O'Brien in the mouth--boy was THAT a great scene!