Island in The Sky (1953 Film) - Production

Production

The script was based on a true story about a flight on 3 February 1943, although, unlike the story of the film, the co-pilot did not die. In his autobiography Fate Is the Hunter – on which the movie of the same name is very loosely based – Gann related the true story and his role as one of the search pilots while serving with Air Transport Command at Presque Isle Airfield, Maine.

The rights to the story were originally bought in January 1950 by Robert Stillman Productions, and Gann planned to write the screenplay with Seton I. Miller. Frank Rosenberg was scheduled to produce the film, which would star Richard Widmark. When Stillman dropped the film, the rights were picked up in December 1952 by Wayne-Fellows Productions, the partnership of John Wayne and Robert Fellows, as their third of seven eventual productions – including another Gann story The High and the Mighty a year later, which Wayne also co-starred in. The two movies shared many of the same production staff and crew members, including director William Wellman.

Wellman had been a pilot with the Lafayette Flying Corps during World War I, where he earned the nickname "Wild Bill", and with the United States Army Air Service after the war. He was a veteran aviation movie director whose Wings won the first-ever Academy Award (1927–28). Wellman did the voiceover narration that begins the film, and his two sons, Tim and Mike, who were eleven and five at the time, played the parts of Andy Devine's sons. It is notable that the women in the film, Ann Doran, Dawn Bender and Phyllis Winger, appear only in brief flashbacks or, in Doran's case, in a telephone conversation. The lack of a romantic interest was noted by critics who considered the film a more authentic and gritty drama compared to the usual Hollywood war movie. Wellman, who generally was not well liked by actors and actresses (a feeling that he reciprocated), was known to prefer to work with men, and many of his films are set in all-male (or nearly all-male) worlds.

The role played by John Wayne in Island in the Sky goes against type, since he does not display the machismo for which he was often criticized. Instead, his portrayal of the downed aircraft's captain had been noted as believable and realistic. A strong ensemble cast of mainly studio B-actors actually contained a number of future stars, including Fess Parker, James Arness, Darryl Hickman and Mike Connors, who all went on to television fame. The film involves many realistic details, such as an ice pick kept handily embedded in a barracks wall so pilots can break the ice sheet on their morning wash water. The black-and-white cinematography by Archie Stout (dramatic scenes) and William H. Clothier (flying scenes) have been praised by critics.

Production began in late January 1953 and was completed on 2 March. Filming took place partly at Donner Lake, near Truckee, California in the Sierra Mountain range. The California Forestry Service cut down trees in that area to make aircraft runways in the four ft deep snow. Some background shooting also took place in San Francisco. Besides writing the screenplay, Gann, who was a commercial pilot for Transocean Airlines, served as the film's technical director and also piloted a C-47 for the second unit.

The hand-cranked emergency radio transmitter used by crew members to try to contact the rescuers they assume are looking for them was an actual piece of equipment, a BC-778/SCR-578/AN-CRT3 emergency transmitter affectionately called "Gibson Girl" after the 1890s drawings of Charles Dana Gibson. The narrow-waisted shape of the device allowed the user to hold it between the legs while cranking it – a necessity because it required 80 rpm to produce enough power to be usable, and was hard to crank.