Backdrop fallback

Men Against the Sky

Men Against the Sky

Share

Men Against the Sky

1940

1h 15m

4.6(7 votes)

Drama

Overview

A draftswoman, the sister of an aging, alcoholic pilot, secretly uses her brother's ideas to solve design problems for an experimental military plane in an attempt to save the company and salvage her brother's reputation.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

RKO Radio Pictures

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Richard Dix

Richard Dix

Phil Mercedes

Kent Taylor

Kent Taylor

Martin Ames

Edmund Lowe

Edmund Lowe

Dan McLean

Wendy Barrie

Wendy Barrie

Kay Mercedes

Granville Bates

Granville Bates

Mr. Burdett

Grant Withers

Grant Withers

Mr. Grant

Donald Briggs

Donald Briggs

Dick Allerton

Charles Quigley

Charles Quigley

Flynn

Selmer Jackson

Selmer Jackson

Capt. Sanders

Lee Bonnell

Lee Bonnell

Capt. Wallen

Creative team

Directed by: Leslie Goodwins
Written by: John Twist
Nathanael West
Produced by: Howard Benedict

Similar Movies

The Great Love

The Great Love

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

As young children, Otto and Ana become best friends, leading to the marriage of Ana's mother to Otto's father. When Otto and Ana become teenagers, they begin a sexual relationship, which they hide from their parents. The two fall deeply in love and seem destined to spend the rest of their lives together. However, their relationship is tested when Otto's mother dies and the two are separated.

The Rules of the Game

The Rules of the Game

The Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.

Turbulence

Turbulence

Young married couple Zach and Emmy decide to take a hot air balloon trip across the Italian Dolomites to rekindle their relationship. When they and pilot Harry are joined by a third passenger, Julia, events unfold in ways they could never imagine five thousand meters in the air.

Top Gun

Top Gun

For Lieutenant Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell and his friend and co-pilot Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw, being accepted into an elite training school for fighter pilots is a dream come true. But a tragedy, as well as personal demons, will threaten Pete's dreams of becoming an ace pilot.

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Days of Thunder

Days of Thunder

Talented but unproven stock car driver Cole Trickle gets a break and with the guidance of veteran Harry Hogge turns heads on the track. The young hotshot develops a rivalry with a fellow racer that threatens his career when the two smash their cars. But with the help of his doctor, Cole just might overcome his injuries-- and his fear.

First Man into Space

First Man into Space

The first pilot to leave Earth's atmosphere lands, then vanishes; but something with a craving for blood prowls the countryside...

Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies

Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies

The story of Ace Eli Walford, a 1920s stunt flyer who barnstorms around the country, taking his eleven-year-old son Rodger with him as he goes from town to town. The place is rural Kansas, and the time is midsummer in the early nineteen-twenties, not long after World War I. Eli (Cliff Robertson), a barn storming pilot who has the emotional make-up of an 11-year-old, and Rodger (Eric Shea), his 11-year-old son who possesses the wisdom of the ancients, set off to see the world, which means flying all the way to San Willow. To Eli, San Willow seems to be as fabled as Xanadu and quite as remote. In essence, "Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies" is about the adventures of Rodger and Eli getting from nowhere to nowhere. Eli, a killer with the ladies at first, always leaves them unsatisfied. He seems to have a sex problem. Rodger spends a lot of his time getting his dad out of scrapes. He also drinks, smokes and goes to sleep at night crying for his deceased mom.

The Starfighters

The Starfighters

A young Air Force lieutenant falls in love with fighter planes while his father, a Congressman and war hero, yearns for him to fly heavy bombers.

Anflug Alpha 1

Anflug Alpha 1

Experiences and problems of an air squadron: Commander Milan has reached the age limit for pilots and must come to terms with the fact that he will have to give up flying from now on. Lieutenant Lenz loses control of the plane during a flight and is seriously injured during the parachute rescue, in the worst case scenario he remains paralyzed. He doesn't want to tie his girlfriend Anka to him, but she sticks by him. Young Kullas comes into the squadron to replace Lenz. His predecessor's accident makes him afraid and he tries to find out what courage means to him. Lieutenant Herzog loves the teacher Sigrid. She returns his love, but it is difficult for her to choose a "hero" once again. Two years earlier, her husband was killed defusing a bomb. But Herzog does not want to give up his job. The fifth, Captain Wendland, is a party secretary. He takes flying just as seriously as his concern for his comrades.

Now or Never

Now or Never

A pilot who has not flown in years due to an accident has to deal with unexpected visitors and financial woes on the day he decides to return to the sky.

Black Pendulums

Black Pendulums

Shortly after a tragic accident that took the life of her girlfriend, Ambre, a young writer, has a coffee with Jade, her editor and childhood friend. All their lives, the two women were inseparable and full of ambition, but their friendship is now overwhelmed by resentment and guilt. To overcome their grief, they must give up what was once their greatest strength.

The Aviator

The Aviator

A biopic depicting the life of filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes from 1927 to 1947, during which time he became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate, while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Red Baron

The Red Baron

Richthofen goes off to war like thousands of other men. As fighter pilots, they become cult heroes for the soldiers on the battlefields. Marked by sportsmanlike conduct, technical exactitude and knightly propriety, they have their own code of honour. Before long he begins to understand that his hero status is deceptive. His love for Kate, a nurse, opens his eyes to the brutality of war.

Intacto

Intacto

An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.

The Thing from Another World

The Thing from Another World

Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.

Vixen!

Vixen!

In a Canadian mountain resort, Vixen Palmer resides with her naive pilot husband Tom. While he's away flying in tourists, she sleeps with practically everybody including a husband and his wife, and even her biker brother. However, the only one she won't bed is her brother's friend... who is Black.

The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff

At the dawn of the Space Race, seven test pilots set out to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings momentous challenges.

Wind Chill

Wind Chill

Two college students share a ride home for the holidays. When they break down on a deserted stretch of road, they're preyed upon by the ghosts of people who have died there.

Recommended Movies

Fate Is the Hunter

Fate Is the Hunter

An airline executive refuses to believe that pilot error, by his friend, caused a fatal crash and persists in looking for another reason.

Flight

Flight

Commercial airline pilot Whip Whitaker has a problem with drugs and alcohol, though so far he's managed to complete his flights safely. His luck runs out when a disastrous mechanical malfunction sends his plane hurtling toward the ground. Whip pulls off a miraculous crash-landing that results in only six lives lost. Shaken to the core, Whip vows to get sober -- but when the crash investigation exposes his addiction, he finds himself in an even worse situation.

On a Wing and a Prayer

On a Wing and a Prayer

After their pilot dies unexpectedly mid-flight, passenger Doug White must safely land a plane and save his entire family from insurmountable danger.

No Highway in the Sky

No Highway in the Sky

James Stewart plays aeronautical engineer Theodore Honey, the quintessential absent-minded professor: eccentric, forgetful, but brilliant. His studies show that the aircraft being manufactured by his employer has a subtle but deadly design flaw that manifests itself only after the aircraft has flown a certain number of hours. En route to a crash site to prove his theory, Honey discovers that he is aboard a plane rapidly approaching his predicted deadline.

The Tarnished Angels

The Tarnished Angels

In the 1930s, once-great World War I pilot Roger Shumann performs as a daredevil barnstorming pilot at aerial stunt shows while his wife, LaVerne, works as a parachutist. When newspaper reporter Burke Devlin arrives to do a story on the Shumanns’ act, he quickly falls in love with the beautiful--and neglected--LaVerne.

Flyboys

Flyboys

The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.

El Chicano

El Chicano

A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.

The High and the Mighty

The High and the Mighty

Dan Roman is a veteran pilot haunted by a tragic past. Now relegated to second-in-command cockpit assignments he finds himself on a routine Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight that takes a terrifying turn when disaster strikes high above the Pacific Ocean after the point of no return.

Island in the Sky

Island in the Sky

A C-47 transport plane, named the Corsair, makes a forced landing in the frozen wastelands of Labrador, and the plane's pilot, Captain Dooley, must keep his men alive in deadly conditions while awaiting rescue.

Hardball

Hardball

An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.

Fearless

Fearless

After surviving a plane crash that kills many others, Max Klein develops a sense of invulnerability, leading to radical, compulsive actions. Can a psychologist and a fellow guilt-ridden survivor bring him down to earth?

Hello

Hello

An emotionally unavailable flight attendant meets a potential love interest and later finds out that her "perfect guy" has ulterior motives. As the clock ticks down on New Year's Eve, she must fight to keep her murdered ex-boyfriend's secrets or find herself dead.

The Attack

The Attack

An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

The Carpetbaggers

The Carpetbaggers

Jonas Cord is a disagreeable young tycoon who's building planes, directing films, and catting around on the corporate make in 1930s Hollywood.

Hungry Hearts

Hungry Hearts

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

The Great Waldo Pepper

The Great Waldo Pepper

A biplane pilot and WWI veteran takes up barnstorming and later a movie career in his quest for the glory days he misses.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing

During a raid on Germany, a British bomber crew is forced to bail out after their plane is damaged. They land in Holland, where they're aided by Dutch civilians.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

Flash of Genius

Flash of Genius

In this David vs. Goliath drama based on a true story, college professor Robert Kearns goes up against the giants of the auto industry when they fail to give him credit for inventing intermittent windshield wipers. Kearns doggedly pursues recognition for his invention, as well as the much-deserved financial rewards for the sake of his wife and six kids.

Fast Girls

Fast Girls

A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.