From the Rental Vault: Twelve O'Clock High (1949)

Distance in time compresses the past. From our 21st-century perspective, World War II took only a few calendar pages, hopping from Pearl Harbor to D-Day to the atomic bomb without too much thought for what happened in between. The Axis were doomed to lose; historians who asses their economic and military capabilities can demonstrate that so clearly it seems unthinkable anyone would miss it.

But those days, weeks and months were not quick flips of a calendar page for the people who lived them, and the men who fought against Adolf Hitler's "Fortress Europe" saw no foregone conclusion as they bled and died assaulting it. Sometimes the survivors carried scars inside as grievous as the wounded wore outside. The 1949 Twelve O'Clock High offers the story of a fictionalized American bombing group and the cost that fighting during the war's darker days of 1942 exacted from its soldiers.

Gregory Peck is Brigadier General Frank Savage, given command of the 918th Bomb Group when his friend, Col. Keith Davenport, proves incapable of continuing. The 918 has gotten the reputation a a hard luck squadron and the Army Air Force fears if the tide isn't turned it could affect not only other groups but even the possibility of continued fighting against the Axis. Savage comes in as a hard case, believing that the pilots and crews of the 918th's B-17s need to be challenged in order to regain the kind of pride in their unit and their work that can make them effective again. His rough edges contrast with Davenport's compassion, and all of his pilots request transfers to other units. But he's sold the group adjutant, Major Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger) on his plan, and the transfer paperwork is delayed while Savage pushes forward. Eventually he begins to see fighting spirit renew in the others, but will he be able to bear the weight that he's brought on himself to make that happen?

Peck was nominated for an Academy Award and probably would have won in almost any other year they handed out Oscars, but he was up against Broderick Crawford in All the Kings' Men, who took the statuette. He was also up against Kirk Douglas in Champion, Richard Todd in The Hasty Heart and John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima, which goes to show you how tough it was to win an Oscar for 1949. The granite voice and stern authority Savage shows come naturally, but it's Peck's skill as an actor that convey the desperation behind his pushing and the gradual build of stress while maintaining the tough exterior. When he finally begins to learn he may have pushed himself too far it's a complete shock to him that such a thing is even possible, even while we could see it happening. Peck and many others consider To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch his finest role and it probably is, but Frank Savage is played so well that it would headline any lesser actor's résumé.

Actual combat footage is used in the only battle scene, towards the end of the movie, but the Air Force reconfigured several B-17's to match their wartime appearance to be used in takeoff and landing sequences. But the movie doesn't need a bunch of battles to support its story; the one is enough because some of the most important combat is internal in the men who are flying the planes and those who are commanding them. The whole cast, made up of lesser-known names and up-and-comers of the time, builds a solid foundation for Peck's work in their more reactive roles. Jagger took home a Best Supporting Actor award for his work, the only one he earned in a career that held almost 100 different roles in movies and television. It's his 1949 discovery of a certain jug in an antique shop that sparks a trip to the now-abandoned airfield and the memories of 1942, but his portrayal of Stovall through the rest of the story gives Peck the ways to develop Savage's narrative arc.

About the only false note in Twelve O'Clock High is the main marketing campagn. "A story of twelve men as their women never knew them" is the poster tagline -- ridiculous, because the story is about 85 percent Peck, five percent Jagger, five percent Hugh Marlowe as the initially disgraced Lt. Col Ben Gately and five percent everyone else. The poster also pictures Peck roguishly smiling at an attractive nurse, suggesting the kind of romance marketing departments thought movies needed. The uncredited Joyce Mackenzie plays the only nurse with any speaking part (in fact, the only woman with lines in the entire movie), and her sole conversation with Peck is seen through a window.

But that kind of silliness is on the studio, not the people who made the movie, and it wouldn't be the first studio to be really really dumb. At least they were smart enough to release Twelve O'Clock High, so we can forgive them their numbskull marketing in order to watch Peck's great performance and director Henry King's great movie.