Trailer
Plot summary
Jack Powell spends his days working on his sports car and dreaming of flying, unaware that his neighbor Mary Preston is in love with him. He is smitten with Sylvia Lewis, who has eyes only for David Armstrong. When war comes, Jack and David enlist to train as combat pilots in the Army Air Service, and the two rivals leave their hometown for a rigorous camp. Mary joins the war effort as an ambulance driver and hopes Jack will notice her. Jack believes Sylvia favors him, though she has told David her feelings. In France the two men fly against the German Empire.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Margery Chapinas Peasant Woman (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wings (1927)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Financier Otto Kahn arrived on the set while director William Wellman was filming the Saint-Mihiel battle, threw off Wellman's explosion timings and seriously injured several extras; Wellman ordered him off the set, and Kahn then told him he could have whatever he needed to finish the picture.
- Despite the large number of aircraft in the air, only two incidents occurred during the filming: stunt pilot Dick Grace broke his neck falling out of the cockpit after a controlled crash, and an Army Air Service pilot died in a crash.
- 2nd Lt. Clarence S. "Bill" Irvine, who became Wellman's adviser, engineered an airborne camera system for aerial close-ups and planned the dogfights; when a pilot broke his neck, Irvine performed in one of the battle scenes himself.
- Because the aerial battles needed ideal weather, the production once waited 18 consecutive days in San Antonio for proper filming conditions.
- Clara Bow detested the wardrobe that Paramount designer Travis Banton made for her, so she slit the necklines and cut the sleeves off her costumes.
- To convey speed and danger, William Wellman filmed aerial footage against cloud banks, reasoning that motion reads as relative to an immobile background; against clouds his planes could "dart at each other" and "swoop down and disappear in the clouds".
- Wings was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, then called Best Picture, Production, and remains the only silent film to have won it.
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, which won Unique and Artistic Production, was considered an equal top winner of the night, but the academy dropped that category the next year and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor it could give.
