Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Blistering performances.

. . . and his child co-stars positioned in a YMCA swimming pool next to him for a scene from ISLAND IN THE SKY feared for their lives, according to Bill Wellman, Jr., son of ISLAND's director (and brother to these two kid actors), in a rogue (as in, not acknowledged on IMDb) DVD extra, DOOLEY'S DOWN: THE MAKING OF ISLAND IN THE SKY. In fact, wee Mikey Wellman was so fearful that Pops Wellman had to rewrite this swim pool scene on the fly. Before joining the air search for John Wayne, who's stranded near the North Pole, Devine's character was supposed to race "his" (that it, director Wellman's) two young sons across the short side of the small "Y" pool. Mikey was so hesitant to flop into the same puddle with a walrus-sized critter that his Daddy-the-Director wrote in a "head start" to get his youngster a little bit out of harm's way. This anecdote is just a small part of DOOLEY'S DOWN. (The Wayne Family's Batjac Company churns out many such efforts, and uses them as pieces of multi-part "Making Ofs" for who knows how many flicks, such as the short about screenwriter Ernie Gann, which is an independent chapter of the "Making Of" for BOTH 1953's ISLAND IN THE SKY, and 1954's THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY.)

Not as good as it starts out. The initial idea is fine, the plane, off course is forced down due to ice. The early scenes in the aircraft are good. But from there on, just like the plane the movie crash-lands. It starts sinking when the plane is forced down; none of the crew except the pilots bother with belts, let alone sitting down. A forced landing in the snow and the crew is standing up in the cockpit door? It then "bursts into flames" when the overeager rescuing pilots have to be restrained from going searching for the Duke without any idea of what to do or where to go. The hokey comedy scene with the hotel? clerk is just misguided. The music score in the hotel scenes totally detracted from what might have been a great movie. Previous reviewers cover the rest. Bit disappointed, it could have been a really entertaining movie, rather than the cringe it turned out to be.

This is a typically adequate John Wayne mid-50s, mid-career action film which will probably last in the memory for just two reasons: a haunting death scene in the snowy wastelands of Canada, and the sight of Andy Devine in swimming trunks. Thankfully, Speedos weren't around in 1953, but it's still certainly a sight to see.John Wayne plays Captain Dooley, pilot of a transport plane who is forced to land in the vast snowy tundra. To make matters worse, the plane's battery is quickly fading, and bad weather is closing in… This kind of plot is such a bulk-standard commodity of 50s Hollywood that it's to the film's credit that it manages top hold the viewer's attention without ever becoming dull. Perhaps the film's biggest drawback is its use of studio sets that look unconvincing, especially when contrasted with the location shots. John Wayne broods and rages against the elements and hides his anxiety from the usual united-nations crew. A young James Arness plays one of the team of pilots searching for Wayne's downed plane and he looks like a kind of John Wayne-lite. Director Wellman, who would work on another Ernest K. Gann story, The High and the Mighty, with Wayne in 1954, manages to manufacture a reasonable level of suspense despite the failure to generate any life-in-peril sense of desperation amongst the stranded crew.

During World War II, in an ice storm, Captain John Wayne (as Dooley) and his small crew crash land their airplane over unpopulated, freezing North America. Can friends and colleagues like Walter Abel (as Fuller), Lloyd Nolan (as Stutz), James Arness (as McMullen), and Andy Devine (as Willie Moon) locate the downed crew before they succumb to the cold winter's wrath? "Island in the Sky" is a survival story which spends far too much of its time concentrating on the various rescuers, and not enough time on the struggling crew. Moreover, the time spent on the downed crew isn't satisfying. Although the temperature is said to be forty or seventy degrees below zero (at Fahrenheit, no less), the crash survivors seldom look really cold or uncomfortable. At times, it's painfully obvious they are "acting cold" while a wind machine blows "snow" at the camera. Mr. Wayne performs some William A. Wellman-directed scenes very well, however; especially during a missed rescue attempt. Mike Connors, Darryl Hickman, Fess Parker, and Alfalfa Switzer lend some occasional support. Also look for Mr. Devine in a poolside bathing suit, with what must be Wellman's children, Michael and Tim. *** Island in the Sky (9/3/53) William A. Wellman ~ John Wayne, James Arness, Andy Devine