Highly Overrated But Still Good

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

An Exercise In Nonsense

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

. . . you would think that being buried alive would be the least of a TEST PILOT's concerns WHILE he's airborne. Yet, whether Spencer Tracy was in the air (as in this flick), on land (during the SAN FRANCISCO earthquake), or at sea (think CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS), poor Spence was seen as being as expendable as an Indian Pony in a John Wayne flick by the MGM film studio owning his contract in the 1930s. MGM's disclaimer at the beginning of TEST PILOT states that anything remotely resembling an actual airplane during this film is a figment of viewers' imaginations. Just as MGM would refuse to "give away" the Military "Secret" behind "Sherman's Neckties" the following year in its GONE WITH THE WIND debacle, this studio believed that Japanese Plotter Tojo could be lured into Sneak Attacking America IF the Roaring Lion folks ran a scroll stating that ALL of TEST PILOT's aerial action was just so much Hollywood trickery and that the U.S. Military had NO warplanes at its disposal. (Tojo, of course, swallowed MGM's bait hook, line, and Pacific Fleet sinker, making TEST PILOT the deadliest Real Life Disaster in Tinseltown History.)

I just watched this for the first time. It starts as a light romantic comedy and becomes deeper as the story evolves. The dialogue is especially well-written, fast-paced and witty. Myrna Loy's performance is a stand-out - not to slight Gable and Tracy in any way! - with nuance that grows more complex as the movie progresses. I was particularly impressed by the screenwriter's skill in developing the relationships among the three lead characters; Tracy's gradual love and respect for Loy; Gable's discovering the depth of his feelings for her; and her struggle to be the wife of a man who constantly puts himself in harm's way. It's the kind of measured (thoughtful, not boring) film that rarely gets made today, when the emphasis would be on the action scenes. Just an excellent, intelligent film all 'round.

I noticed this movie surfing around on TV and caught a glimpse of racing planes. My mom is from this era, married a test pilot(just after the war), who drank. So I asked her to watch it with me because she used to work for TWA in 1945 running weather data to the pilots. Amazingly neither of us had seen it before. We had a great time because this film has great acting (and lots of fast planes). It's no wonder they grabbed Clark for Gone With The Wind right after this film. He nails all his demanding scenes.very well. Their are moments of pure psychology in this one just like a lot of them from this period imo. Myrna Loy is pleasantly reserved and unpretentious and showed a wide range of acting. The script is quite clever, so it must of been easier for the actors to really act, and it shows. It's not hard to get absorbed in these characters. Spencer too, he's a pretty cool cookie here. During an exciting plane race, my mom asked how they filmed some of the plane stunts! I have no idea :-) very exciting indeed. Have fun.

This is the second of 3 films featuring Gable and Tracy. The leading lady changed each time. This time, it was Myrna Loy as a flier-struck midwest farm girl who wins the heart of dashing Gable. The relationship between Tracy and Gable is basically the same in all 3 films. Tracy officially is the odd man out in a triangle. However, when Gable and the leading lady are feeling like enemies, Tracy takes over to console and advise the wife or girlfriend. In "San Francisco" and "Boomtown", they go back and forth as buddies or arch-enemies. In this film, they remain buddies, but Tracy and Myrna share the morose certainty that Gable will not live long in his role as test pilot for experimental aircraft. Gable, on the other hand, seems not to care whether he dies or is permanently maimed. Neither does he care sufficiently about the increasingly morose fears of Tracy and Marna to quit his dangerous job and stunt flying. Afterall, he periodically makes a bundle of cash(which he usually parties away)and becomes a local celebrity. Clearly, the '30s public liked films featuring both Gable and Tracy. But Tracy got fed up with playing second fiddle to Gable and "Boomtown" was their last pairing.It is usually assumed that Gable's character is based on the autobiography of test pilot Jimmy Collins, also titled "Test Pilot", published just a few years earlier. However, a detailed discussion at the Turner Classic Movies web site considerably muddies this neat assumption. Seems MGM already had this project in mind and named in 1933. Thus, MGM did not credit the story as being based on Collins' life or book. Yet, one of the most harrowing scenes in the film, when the wings are torn off Gable's plane in a high speed dive, essentially duplicates what happened in Collins' fatal crash, just a couple of years before. Incidentally, Collins' grandson, also named Jimmy, recently had his grandfather's book reprinted. He himself was one of the top rock climbers in the world a few decades ago. Seems that daredeviling runs in the family.Ironically, it was Tracy, not Gable, who eventually dies in a test run, apparently his only one.(Was this perhaps a confirmation of FDR's message "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"?) However, the death of his friend and the resulting hysteria of Myrna finally convinces Gable that the highs he gets from constantly trying to cheat death are too great a price for those close to him. He retires to a ground instructor role. In retrospect, we wonder why Myrna's character agreed to marry Gable's character, knowing first hand how dangerous flying was at this time. Incidentally, in his fatal crash, Collins knew he was exceeding the design specifications of his aircraft. Setting a new record meant more to him than cheating death again. Appropriately, what was left of his plane nosedived into a cemetery(for test pilots?).Actually, this is my least favorite of the Gable-Tracy films, the others having more complicated plots. Dive bombing and crashing airplanes would become all too familiar in a few years. At this time, it was the test pilots of future warplanes who were the race car drivers of the sky. Hopefully, this film will be included in a future DVD Gable collection.