The screenplay for The Way to the Stars was written by noted dramatist Terence Rattigan, based on a scenario co-written by Rattigan with USAAF Captain Richard Sherman.[3] The film is a significant reworking of Rattigan's 1942 play Flare Path. Rattigan, then a Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant, was posted in 1943 to the RAF Film Production Unit to work on The Way to the Stars and Journey Together.[4]
The title The Way to the Stars is often assumed to have been taken from the Latin motto of the RAF, Per ardua ad astra. However, the literal translation of the RAF motto is "Through adversity to the stars". The title of the shortened American version, Johnny in the Clouds, is derived from the poem recited in the film as a tribute to a dead aviator.
Plot
The film opens on an abandoned airfield, the fictional RAF Station Halfpenny Field, and the opening scenes reference people and objects which will be shown later. A similar approach is used in the opening and closing scenes of an abandoned airfield in the later 1949 film Twelve O'Clock High,[5] which is set on the fictional RAF Archbury.
In a flashback, Pilot Officer Peter Penrose is posted in the summer of 1940 as a pilot to the fictional No. 720 Squadron[N 1], RAF, an operational bomber squadron flying Bristol Blenheims at a fictional new airfield, RAF Halfpenny Field. Penrose is a very new and inexperienced pilot who has only flown Blenheims for 15 hours. He is assigned to B Flight, under Flight Lieutenant David Archdale.
When No. 720 Squadron's commanding officer, Squadron Leader Carter (Trevor Howard, in his second but first credited film role), is shot down, Archdale takes over. While Penrose develops into a first-class pilot, he meets Iris Winterton, a young woman living with her domineering aunt at the Golden Lion Hotel in the nearby town. Archdale marries Miss Todd, the popular manager of the hotel, who is known to everyone as Toddy. The Archdales later have a son, Peter.
By May 1942, the squadron is now flying Douglas Boston bombers. When Penrose shows signs of strain from extensive combat, Archdale has him posted to controller school but is himself shot down and killed over France while Penrose is on his last mission. Penrose had been courting Iris, despite her aunt's disapproval, but Archdale's fate weighs heavily on his mind. Not wanting Iris to suffer if the same thing happened to him, he stops seeing her.
No. 720 Squadron is sent to the Middle East, but Penrose remains behind as a ground controller for a United States Army Air ForcesB-17 Flying Fortressbombardment group, which takes over the airfield. He befriends USAAF Captain Johnny Hollis and Lieutenant Joe Friselli. On 17 August 1942 the American airmen participate in the first attack by the USAAF on Occupied France, later ruefully acknowledging that they underestimated the difficulties involved. Afterwards, Penrose is posted to flying duties with an RAF Avro Lancaster bomber squadron.
In 1944, now a squadron leader and Pathfinder pilot, Penrose makes an emergency landing at Halfpenny Field, where he once again meets Iris. Iris had decided to leave her aunt for good and join up. Toddy persuades a still-reluctant Penrose to propose to Iris, saying that she did not regret her own marriage in spite of her husband's death. Hollis, who has formed a platonic relationship with Toddy, is killed while trying to land his battle-damaged B-17 with a hung up bomb aboard, rather than safely bail out and risk crashing into the local village or another town.
The film ends with American and British airmen leaving the Golden Lion Hotel, watched by Toddy, as David's voice recites the poem "For Johnny".
Two poems supposedly written by David Archdale were used in the film. They were written by John Pudney earlier in 1941 or 1942.[7] The first poem is Missing. Archdale is portrayed as reciting it to Toddy shortly before their marriage, after his close friend Squadron Leader Carter is killed in action. Archdale tells Toddy that "I try and say things I feel that way sometimes. Sort of hobby" and tells her that she is the only person who knows he writes poetry.
"Missing"
Less said the better.
The bill unpaid, the dead letter,
No roses at the end,
Of Smith, my friend.
Last words don't matter,
And there are none to flatter
Words will not fill the post
Of Smith, the ghost.
For Smith, our brother,
Only son of loving mother,
The ocean lifted, stirred
Leaving no word.
The second and better-known of the two poems in the film is "For Johnny", depicted as having been found by Peter Penrose on a piece of paper after David Archdale's death. Penrose gives it to Toddy Archdale, who later in the film gives it to Johnny Hollis' friend Joe Friselli to read after Hollis is killed.
"For Johnny"
Do not despair
For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound
As Johnny underground.
Fetch out no shroud
For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears
For him in after years.
Better by far
For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head
And see his children fed.
Production
During the war, Rattigan served in the Royal Air Force as a tail gunner and used his wartime experiences to help inspire his earlier stage play, Flare Path. In 1945 he was released from the service to help rewrite it with Anatole De Grunwald as The Way to the Stars screenplay. Although Michael Redgrave and John Mills were the leads, the film offers very early performances of two actors, who would become international film stars in later years: Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard.[8]
Filming was mainly in North Yorkshire, and some of the locations remain little changed.[9]RAF Catterick was used to film the RAF Halfpenny Field scenes,[10]Bedale was used for street scenes outside the pub in the local small town, the Golden Lion Hotel in Northallerton was used as the pub and Constable Burton Hall was used as the USAAF headquarters.[11]
Footage of B-17 Flying Fortresses landing and taking off was filmed at RAF Grafton Underwood in Northamptonshire.[12] One of the USAAF aircrew involved recorded in his diary seeing B-17s of the 384th Bombardment Group (Heavy) and ground scenes including the crash of Captain Holliss' B-17 being filmed at Grafton Underwood.[13]
There was a real airfield with a name resembling the fictional RAF Halfpenny Field, RAF Halfpenny Green in Staffordshire. However, it was not used in any way for this film.[15] Unlike RAF Halfpenny Field, RAF Halfpenny Green was used for training pilots and not as a bomber airfield. It is now home to Wolverhampton Halfpenny Green Airport.
Reception
On its initial British release, the film was popular, with one reviewer in June 1945 stating that "it must rank as one of the outstanding British films of the war years".[16] However, it performed poorly in the US, where it was released post-war under the title Johnny in the Clouds, with a prologue added.[17]
According to Kinematograph Weekly, the film performed well at the British box office in 1945.[18][19] The 'biggest winners' at the box office in 1945 Britain were The Seventh Veil, with "runners up" being (in release order), Madonna of the Seven Moons, Old Acquaintance, Frenchman's Creek, Mrs Parkington, Arsenic and Old Lace, Meet Me in St Louis, A Song to Remember, Since You Went Away, Here Come the Waves, Tonight and Every Night, Hollywood Canteen, They Were Sisters, The Princess and the Pirate, The Adventures of Susan, National Velvet, Mrs Skefflington, I Live in Grosvenor Square, Nob Hill, Perfect Strangers, Valley of Decision, Conflict and Duffy's Tavern. British "runners up" were They Were Sisters, I Live in Grosvenor Square, Perfect Strangers, Madonna of the Seven Moons, Waterloo Road, Blithe Spirit, The Way to the Stars, I'll Be Your Sweetheart, Dead of Night, Waltz Time and Henry V.[20]
Later reviews considered the film "... one of the more thoughtful of British war movies ..."[21] and an "excellent drama about a British airfield and the men stationed there, focusing mainly on personal relationships in wartime.".[22] The British Film Institute describes the film as "one of the most effective and understated films about the conflict made during the Second World War, though it features no combat scenes and only three (brief) shots from inside a cockpit". The BFI Screenonline reviewer stated that the film "effectively comments on the traditional emotional reticence of the British by weaving a critique of it into the fabric of the story, turning it into a theme of the film. The introduction in the film's second half of the American flyers (as exemplified by the wise-cracking Bonar Colleano, making his film debut) further emphasises this. It also puts into relief the film's main focus: Penrose's development from callow youth into a burned-out, emotionally detached pilot and his eventual return to life and love".[23]
