Twelve O'Clock High
Short description
Twelve O'Clock High follows Brigadier General Frank Savage, who is sent to England in 1942 to take over a bomber group worn down by heavy losses during the early daylight raids over Germany. The unit has earned a reputation for bad luck, and its crews are demoralized. Savage imposes strict discipline to rebuild the group into an effective fighting force, a task that costs him personally as the pressure of command mounts.
Henry King directed the film, which came between The Black Swan and The Gunfighter among the films he made. Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay Jr. wrote the screenplay, Darryl F. Zanuck produced, and Gregory Peck stars as Savage. Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill, Millard Mitchell and Dean Jagger appear in supporting roles, with Jagger playing Harvey Stovall, whose return to the abandoned airfield frames the story.
Released by 20th Century Fox, the film earned about 3 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.7 from roughly 17,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 7.2 from 165 votes. A critics' rating of 8.4 from 25 reviews places it above both audience scores. It runs 132 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The term "Twelve O'Clock High" refers to the combat crews' protocol for locating approaching enemy aircraft, referencing an imaginary clock face where the aircraft is at the center, and whether the opponent is above, at the same level, or below the aircraft. Thus, a call of, "Bandits, twelve o'clock high!" was a warning of impending danger.
- Many of the ground scenes were filmed in Chino, California, at an airport that was used to train military pilots during the war, where a replica of a control tower, a copy of the 8th Air Force base in England, was built. The airfield was used in the postwar period as a dumping ground for old fighters and bombers, and was later used for the penultimate scene of the film "The Best Years of Our Lives".
- The aerial combat scenes were cut and spliced together with footage from World War II newsreels.
- The crash of the B-17 bomber near the runway at the beginning of the film was not planned. Pilot Paul Mantz was paid $4,500 to crash the bomber, and Mantz himself survived. Until the 1970s, this was the largest sum of money ever paid to a stuntman for performing a single stunt.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
