JET PILOT is a horrible little movie and one of the worst I've seen from the Duke. It's an overlong slow fest that plays out as a cliched romance between old-looking USAF pilot Wayne and the youthful and gorgeous Janet Leigh. A bunch of boring flight scenes get in the way and add nothing to the film apart from a bloated running time. By all accounts this is a film that Howard Hughes was obsessed with, delaying it for years before it was finally released and flopped, but even so there's no spark of life here, no interest in a cringeworthy story. The nadir is the endless sexist attitudes displayed towards Leigh's character, such as the embarrassing 'wolf whistles' when she's removing her clothing.

The aerial footage is nice, but once people start talking, the film goes into a tailspin. The plot seems as though it was made up as they went along (on a few occasions, I thought a reel must be missing) and I don't think I'm giving anything away (like there was any suspense anyway) by saying John Wayne must really love Janet Leigh to stay with her after she pistol whips him. Twice. It's unintentionally hilarious but unbelievably bad. I always like Hans Conreid, but he doesn't show up until the very end. All of the other actors in the film have a wooden presentation, as though they brought in actual air force officers to appear in the film. And if the U.S. military really hatched a plan like this, there should be courts martial all around.

Howard Hughes original intension was to do another Hell's Angels for the Cold War Era. Remember that film was equally famous for the aviation shots as for the debut of Jean Harlow as sex symbol.

Well if sex and flying worked before, why not again. Hughes filmed some really great aviation footage and then worked to build a story around it, one with some sex. So he reworked the plot of Ninotchka and adapted it to the wild blue yonder.

The reason originally for the delay in release was that we were making great strides in aviation post World War II. So he re-shot and re-shot the aviation sequences and then eventually lost interest. Jet Pilot was released seven years after it was originally filmed and by then the planes really looked out of date. Our's and the Soviet's. One of the players, Richard Rober, in fact was killed in an automobile crash in 1952.

The only thing you can say about Jet Pilot is that the Russians were far in advance of us on feminist issues. Why then would you have the shapely Janet Leigh filling out a flight suit after allegedly going off course and landing in the USA?

Air Force Colonel John Wayne interrogates Janet about the latest in Soviet technology, but then he gets other things on his mind. After a while he's got the hots for her so bad, he marries her and they go back to the USSR to see what he can find out about their aircraft.

Does it sound pretty silly to you? Even for a propaganda film I doubt this one affirmed anyone's Americanism. Remember this was released on top of The Conqueror and between them they put and end to Wayne's seven year reign as number one at the box office.

By the way at the time this was being filmed, Howard Hughes was panting after Janet Leigh the same way he'd earlier panted after Ava Gardner. He got MGM to send her to RKO for three films, this, A Holiday Affair and the musical Two Tickets to Broadway. Poor Janet.

And poor everyone else connected with Jet Pilot.