Gordon Douglas's Bombers B-52

In recent years I have come to appreciate the craftsmanship of film director Gordon Douglas (see my posts of April 4 2016, Nov. 7 2014, Sept. 18 2014). He may not have been an artist at the level of John Ford but most of Douglas's films are beautifully crafted,  take place in the present day and detail the struggle to find one's place in society, balancing obligation and choice.  Bombers B-52 is about Air  Force mechanic Chuck Brennan (played astutely by Karl Malden) to give his wife and daughter (played by Natalie Wood) the best he can while still doing what he considers his duty.  The next generation is represented by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who is courting Wood against her father's wishes.

Brennan rejects lucrative corporate job offers and tries to make it up by going on a quiz show and answering questions about baseball.  When one of his Air Force buddies asks him how he came to know so much about baseball he said he came home one day and told his father that he had purchased a key to the pitcher's box.  His father told him that he had to learn about baseball or he would have to take ballet classes, so he quickly learned.  The irony of this was underscored later in the film when Wood and her mother are at a diner -- Brennan was outside getting the car fixed-- where there was ballet on TV and the grizzled cook was watching, intently observing that "her tour jete is not what it should be," emphasizing, in a low-key way, that ballet can be appreciated by anyone. The cook and the TV are off to the side of the widescreen frame, one of many elements in the shot.  When Brennan went on the quiz show the baseball questions were, rather strangely, all about "Casey at the Bat" and not about real baseball players. Still, Brennan won enough to buy his daughter a new convertible, though that didn't satisfy her desire for a higher status with her peers.

The beautiful widescreen cinematography was by William Clothier, who worked with Ford, Howard Hawks, Samuel Fuller, and Budd Boetticher, among others.  Douglas uses the wide frame intelligently, to capture the conflicts among the family as they try to find their place in the group and in society without diminishing their affection for one another.