Despite an iconic Golden Age star and breathtaking aerial photography, "Strategic Air Command" is improbable, saccharine, and hopelessly dated. Tall, lanky, middle-aged Dutch Holland is forced to leave a lucrative baseball career when the U.S. Air Force recalls him to active duty. The thinly plotted storyline follows Dutch as he accommodates himself to new planes, deals with a whiny intrusive wife, and faces a couple of death-defying moments. However the plot is only filler in the gaps between fetish-like images of bombers and soaring shots of airborne planes cruising above the clouds; Tom Tutwiler is credited with the stunning aerial photography, while veteran cinematography William Daniels evidently lensed the earth-bound scenes, which are colorful and sharp.
At age 47, gray-haired James Stewart appears too old to be a baseball player and too old to be a bomber pilot. However, the always amiable star plays both roles with his trademark good nature, and, even when faced with burning engines, dangerous weather, and a discontented wife, he never breaks a sweat. Nine years younger and one foot three inches shorter than Stewart, June Allyson plays Sally Holland, a woman in desperate need of something to do. She hangs around the ballpark while her husband plays, then she hangs around the air base while her husband flies. When together, Sally does a lot of hugging (around Stewart's waist), weeping, and complaining. Oddly, the aging married couple is referred to by Sally's mother as "young people;" the comment is even odder, because Rosemary DeCamp, who plays the mother, was two years younger than Allyson, her daughter. The supporting players include Frank Lovejoy, Jay C. Flippen, and Barry Sullivan, but the veteran actors have little to do beyond listening to Sally or Dutch and strutting around in uniform, baseball or military.
The Stewart-Allyson marriage is rooted in the 1950's. Stewart is the breadwinner, and he makes all the decisions without consulting his wife, while she frets about the house, attends to party giving, cooks, worries about the baby, and waits for hubbie's return; even with little to do, Sally has a nurse to care for the baby. Although characteristically chirpy, Allyson is annoying throughout, which is no fault of the actress, but the character as written. Sally's constant phone calls to her husband interrupt Stewart during a physical and while in group training; she even calls the General personally for trivial personal reasons, and she boldly confronts him in person. If the military spent as much time dealing with officers' wives as in this film, they would need a separate division just to handle the phone calls and unplanned intrusions. Unfortunately, unless viewers have a fetish for B-36 and B-47 bombers, are die-hard fans of James Stewart, or students of 1950's domesticity, "Strategic Air Command" will be a tough slog to sit through.
At age 47, gray-haired James Stewart appears too old to be a baseball player and too old to be a bomber pilot. However, the always amiable star plays both roles with his trademark good nature, and, even when faced with burning engines, dangerous weather, and a discontented wife, he never breaks a sweat. Nine years younger and one foot three inches shorter than Stewart, June Allyson plays Sally Holland, a woman in desperate need of something to do. She hangs around the ballpark while her husband plays, then she hangs around the air base while her husband flies. When together, Sally does a lot of hugging (around Stewart's waist), weeping, and complaining. Oddly, the aging married couple is referred to by Sally's mother as "young people;" the comment is even odder, because Rosemary DeCamp, who plays the mother, was two years younger than Allyson, her daughter. The supporting players include Frank Lovejoy, Jay C. Flippen, and Barry Sullivan, but the veteran actors have little to do beyond listening to Sally or Dutch and strutting around in uniform, baseball or military.
The Stewart-Allyson marriage is rooted in the 1950's. Stewart is the breadwinner, and he makes all the decisions without consulting his wife, while she frets about the house, attends to party giving, cooks, worries about the baby, and waits for hubbie's return; even with little to do, Sally has a nurse to care for the baby. Although characteristically chirpy, Allyson is annoying throughout, which is no fault of the actress, but the character as written. Sally's constant phone calls to her husband interrupt Stewart during a physical and while in group training; she even calls the General personally for trivial personal reasons, and she boldly confronts him in person. If the military spent as much time dealing with officers' wives as in this film, they would need a separate division just to handle the phone calls and unplanned intrusions. Unfortunately, unless viewers have a fetish for B-36 and B-47 bombers, are die-hard fans of James Stewart, or students of 1950's domesticity, "Strategic Air Command" will be a tough slog to sit through.