'S A TRAGIC AIR COMMAND

STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND (1955)
dir: Anthony Mann

'S A TRAGIC AIR COMMAND
Panic #12, December 1955/January 1956
w: Jack Mendelsohn
a: Wallace Wood

When television was released to a mass audience and became a threat to movies, they decided to compete with various wide-screen gimmicks. Paramount had VistaVision.

Cinerama was the first of these shot with three strips of film and used with three projectors. Their first features were travelogues.

Cinemascope was an easier and more accessible widescreen gimmick used by most studios, the first feature of which was The Robe, a bibilical epic. It spawned several imitations, which brings us back to VistaVision, an optical process by which the film was shot vertically.

Panic spends two and a half pages of a seven-page spoof talking about this rather than the content of the movie.

Robert “Dutch” Holland (Jimmy Stewart) is a professional baseball player in spring training. His wife Sally (June Allyson) has come to watch him play. An old war buddy, “Rusty” Castle (James Millican) , who he fought in the Air Force with, comes to see him.

Rusty is modelled after comic strip character Smilin' Jack. His strip had plugs for local aviation shows in the margins, which are lampooned here.

Dutch thinks Rusty's there to reminisce, but instead he finds he's needed to fight in the Air Force again. He reluctantly re-enters with the support of his wife, and is mistaken for a civilian on the first day.

Funny imagining it now that ball players were once paid $70K and houses were 45K