Airborne (1962) is a simple and earnest military drama regarding a young Indiana farm boy who joins up with the 82nd Airborne, and through a grueling training and more grueling friendship come to understand what it takes to actually be a paratrooper at Fort Bragg. Airborne full movie is currently a free classic film and public domain film, being broadcast in uncut versions in both black and white and colorized HD.
Movie Background Table
Movie Cast Table
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Bobby Diamond | Pvt. Eddie Slocum |
| Carolyn Byrd | Jenny May |
| Robert Christian | Pvt. Rocky Layman |
| Mikel (Mike) Angel | Pvt. “Mouse” Talliaferro |
| Bill Hale | Sgt. Benner (platoon sergeant) |
| Whitey Hughes | Sgt. White (assistant sergeant) |
| James Maydock | Pvt. Barnowski |
| George Marlowe | Pvt. Erski |
| Keith Babcock | Pvt. Gordblitz |
| Barbara Markham | Bertha |
Full Plot Summary
Airborne 1962 is about a film of a polite, naive Indiana farm boy, Eddie Slocum, who idolizes his Uncle Charlie a paratrooper of World War II. Eddie is determined to do what his uncle did, as he joins the U.S. Army airborne service and goes to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the base of the 82 nd Airborne Division.
First impressions and new arrivals.
When Eddie arrives, he is placed in a platoon with a very diverse group of recruits: volunteers and draftees of large cities and small towns. Their bare bones training, marching, calisthenics, obstacle courses, and classroom training, are shown in a montage on top of the opening credits in the real techniques of jump school of the time.
Among the men, two stand out:
Rocky Layman is a bully, loud-mouthed Chicagoan who makes attempts to gain authority by the first blow.
The small, fast talking Bronx recruit, calling himself a ladies man and offering much of the comic relief, is Mouse Talliaferro.
Holding the point is Sgt. Benner, a no-nonsense veteran platoon sergeant, and Sgt. White, a a little bit more easy-going and yet strict assistant sergeant (played by real stuntman Whitey Hughes). They beat into the recruits that the mission of the paratrooper is to land, prepared to go to war, and not to make a glowing landing.
Eddie with his sweet accent, 4-H education and his trusting disposition is a soft target. The urban men make fun of him and call him a country bumpkin, ridiculing his clothing, his etiquette, and his pure honesty. He is not the best or the smoothest one in the training, still, he continues and tries to be a teammate.
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Discipline, friendship and training.
The movie takes its time on jump training: tower training, parachute landing fall (“PLFs”) training, simulated aircraft exits, and the usual one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, check canopy! drill. Actual paratroopers are depicted in the background and the processes portrayed resemble real procedures used in an airborne school in 1960s.
Sgt. Benner and Sgt. White put the platoon to the test. They keep the men in line by enforcing sloppiness, insisting on mental agility, and letting the men know that being an airman involves more than being a braggart. Gradually, the majority of the group, Mouse, Barnowski, Erski and Gordblitz, people like Gordblitz, come to admire the hard work of Eddie although he is not the best.
Rocky remains hostile. He hates Eddie with his silent decency and that he starts being liked by others. Rocky walks around the barracks, boasts of toughness in the streets, and seeks avenues of embarrassing Eddie and anybody who sides with him.
Jenny May and off shift stress.
Eddie meets Jenny May, a cute and doe-eyed local country girl, on a weekend pass. His childishess, his shy, amiable honesty appeals to her, and the two soon have a romantic, coy affair, wandering, chattering, and writing letters to him as he trains again. Their courtship also provides a humane touch to the training-centred story.
Rocky, finding an opportunity to injure Eddie, uses a dance on post. He interrupts, takes Jenny May off Eddie and later ridicules Eddie about his heartfelt letters to Jenny May in front of the platoon thereby humiliating Eddie. Bullying is not only done by Rocky, but he also threatens and shoves around every man he considers weak.
This conflict reaches its peak when Rocky is caught talking ill of farmers and making fun of 4-H members calling them hayseeds and fools. Sgt. Benner is of a farm himself, and he challenges him out–he gets in his face, and dares him to say it again. Rocky retreats and it turns out that his machismo is insecure.
Benner assigns Eddie to repeat the 4-H pledge and informs the platoon that the values of the organization, which are: head, heart, hands, and health are all the qualities that a good paratrooper must live by. To enhance their heritage, he brings the men to the museum of the 82 nd Airborne Division where he is informed about the wartime adventures of the unit and he listens to the tale of Sgt. Alvin York, another so-called country boy who became a hero. The majority of the men, with the exception of Rocky, are genuinely impressed.
The initial leap and the changing point.
The platoon finally comes to the climax after weeks of ground work and tower training when they are able to make real jumps with a Fairchild C-119 flying boxcar over the Fort Bragg drop zone. The teachers explain it to them, as follows, Here we separate the men and the boys,–they who go out of doors and they who go back again.
There is excitement among the men as they prepare to jump, hook, and move up to the door. Eddie is frightened but he does not want to disappoint his uncle and his new friends. Rocky is also, despite his crass talk, obviously tense.
Disaster nearly comes almost on the jump. Rocky collides with Eddie in mid-air once they are under the canopy. The flight crash leads to a failure of the parachute of Rocky, putting him in fatal jeopardy of falling uncontrollably at a high speed. Eddie, who is much smaller and lighter, somehow gets hold of constricting himself to his utmost best to his shroud lines and failed chute, doing his best to re-spread the canopy and prevent Rocky falling.
Through hard work, Eddie is able to stabilize the chute of Rocky to enable him to land safely. The two hit the ground alive. The other platoon, whom Rocky bullies throughout the weeks, run over, not to taunt him, but to see whether he is alright. This is one of the firsts of Rocky: people are not scared of or hate him; they are genuinely interested in him.
The courage of Eddie and the concern of men shake Rocky. His shell is broken by the near-death experience. He comes to understand that the boy whom he had laughed at as a bumpkin has literally rescued his life, and is that the airborne fraternity that he was fighting against a reality.
Genre and Key Themes
Airborne is a military coming-of-age film, highly training-school and quasi-documentary in nature.
Key themes include:
Maturity and breastlothings rather than brutes.
Eddie is not the greatest jumper and the strongest fighter but his sincerity, his bravery and his faithfulness make him respected and redeem one of the lives.
Prejudice and empathy
The movie deals with urban-rural and social conflicts: a city bully despises a farm boy, only to find out that the strength and righteousness have nothing to do with the environment.
Teamwork and unit identity
Training at Fort Bragg is depicted as a test that makes them a team of the airborne unit, reminiscent of the 82nd tradition in the real world.
Military heritage and pride
The mention of WWII paratroopers, Sgt. Alvin York, and the museum of the 82nd Airborne help highlight the thread between the previous generation of heroes and new entrants.
Training portrayal to reality.
The movie is also a period piece on the methods of jump schools in the U.S. Army in the sixties, towers and PLFs, and even the live jumps in C-119s.
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Movie Review
One can say that Airborne 1962 film is rather small-scale, sincere, and a bit square, yet, to be fair, it is quite captivating when one is willing to watch military training videos or even old service films. Reviewers observe that the storyline is cliched, the coy farm boy that develops into a man, the bully that changes his ways of life, the local girl, she is sweet, but the naivety with which it is executed makes it all the more enjoyable.
Famous in the 1950s as TV western Fury, Bobby Diamond is delivered with wide-eyed naivete by some viewers as impossibly naive and by others as endearing of Eddie Slocum. Rocky by Robert Christian is an abrasive character that is convincingly so, and his ultimate mellowing is merited. The addition of humor to the otherwise respectful attitude displayed to the Army by Mouse by Mike Angel is not obtrusive.
The location shooting and the collaboration with the U.S. Army are the greatest strengths of the film providing Airborne with a semi-documentary feel which is characteristic of the movie especially in the opinion of many contemporary critics. It also renders the movie worthwhile as a history of early-1960s airborne school, despite certain details of uniform being erroneous.
Such negatives as critics note include that the romance with Jenny May is an appendix, and might have been cut to better concentrate on platoon and training dynamics. The budget is obviously small and not all performances are fluid. IMDb critic raises his/her finger, and states that the 82 nd airborne is missing a tenth of the mark as an official tribute, despite the fact that the film has the right heart.
Being a free classic movie and a public domain movie, however, Airborne full movie can be readily recommended to the audience interested in service-era curios, films about military training, or cozy coming-of-age narratives, in a very specific location and time. It might not be an exceptional war movie, but as a no-go-big-son-now boots-on-the-ground paratrooper story, it has got something to say.
Movie Tags
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