Wayne plays real-life Naval aviator Spig Wead, who serves in World War I and tries to convince his superior officers that air combat is the real future of warfare.Īfter he’s promoted to squadron commander, Wead falls down a flight of stairs, breaks his neck and wakes up paralyzed. This barely counts as a war movie, and it’s probably the worst of the movies that Wayne made with director John Ford. Wayne gets to dig a bit deeper as an actor than he’s usually asked to, have the most convincing romantic encounter he ever played in a movie and Douglas gives one of his most intense performances in a career full of teeth-clenchingly great roles. It’s all a bit overheated, but that’s why it’s great. Eddington commits a shocking act of violence and betrayal, but the movie redeems him in an act of combat heroism. Kirk Douglas co-stars as Rock’s buddy, Paul Eddington, a Navy officer of alarming volatility.

Torrey’s got a romance with divorced Navy nurse Lt.

Rock Torrey was married to the Navy, so he divorced his wife and abandoned his son, Jeremiah (Brandon de Wilde). Otto Preminger’s movie is a giant soap opera tale of Navy politics. Pete Mitchell for “Top Gun: Maverick.” Think about that one. Yet, Wayne is younger in this movie than Tom Cruise is now as he brings back Capt. Rock Torrey, a Navy officer whose career went off track after he disobeyed orders to chase a Japanese submarine after Pearl Harbor and got his boat torpedoed. You might think Wayne was getting too old to play the lead role as Capt.

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