Flight Nurse

Joan Leslie is a nurse in the United States Air Force. Her assignment is to supervise the wounded as they are ferried from the battlefields of Korea back to Japan and the hospitals. She's engaged to Arthur Franz, a helicopter pilot, but he's currenntly Missing in Action. She covers her anxiety by workig extra hard, which worries her assistant, sergeant James Holden, and the pilot and co-pilot of the plane she's assigned to, Forrest Tucker and Dick Simmons.

After the massive amount of Hollywood films during the Second World War, it's puzzling to realize that none of the majors made more than one or two Korean War films at the time. Probably they didn't think the fighting would last long enough, or the public be mindful enough. Republic Pictures, on the other hand, did several, including one in 3-D. It would not be until Altman directed M. A. S. H. -- which was, after all, a Viet Nam War film, and the TV series ran for eleven seasons that Korea was seen as more important than, say a Marines filibuster into Guatemala.

Allan Dwan does what he can, but Alan LeMay's script is filled with corn, and so is the dialogue. Neither am I fond of Victor Young's score, which alternates between a too-sweet romantic theme and a churchly organ solo. Still, the nurses are pretty ones, like Jeff Donnell, Kristine Miller, and Maria Palmer, th men are stalwart and casual, and the Lydecker Brothers pull off their usual fine fakery with a plane crash on the water.