The Fighting Lady (1944) User Reviews

Fine Example of World War II Navy Documentary.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 21 October 2011]

This was directed by William Wyler and narrated by Robert Taylor (LT, USNR). It's an effective color film of some of the battles in which the carrier Enterprise was involved up to and including much of 1944.

For those familiar with the historical setting, some of it may be rudimentary. Reserve officers are known as "ninety-day wonder" and gossip is called "scuttlebutt." And some of the gun camera footage will be familiar, but much of it is new, at least to me. The newer footage isn't as good as the rest, which, I suppose, is why it's less often borrowed for use in other documentaries and in feature films like "Flying Leathernecks." Some footage of crashes on the flight deck have been borrowed and used repeatedly in other films.

It's an hour long and it covers three main battles of increasing intensity: a raid on Makin Island, the pre-invasion preparation of Kwajalein, and the battle of the Phillipine Sea. The last is generally referred to as "the Marianas turkey shoot," in that we lost some twenty-two airplanes compared to the Japanese three hundred and some. No mention of the airplanes lost while returning in darkness, or of Mitscher exposing his fleet by having the ships turn on their searchlights to guide the lost aircraft home. And the Japanese flyers are described as believing that aerobatics can save them whereas our aviators believe in smooth flying and straight shooting. The fact is that by this time most of the seasoned Japanese pilots had been lost and their airplanes were now flown by novices with far less flight time and training than our own. Not to mention that the Zero had about half the horsepower of the American fighters and were forced to rely mainly on the maneuverability of their aircraft.

The narration is reasonably accurate. When Lt. Taylor tells us that a destroyer is being strafed, we don't see some lowly trawler getting the business. He explains what a gun camera is and introduces us to the various duties of the crew as well as the aviators.

Between and before engagements there are the usual formulaic scenes of men receiving mail, baking bread, playing acey ducey, being bored, attending religious services, chowing down, and so forth.

World War II was not a war of choice. We were at peace when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Three days later, Hitler declared war on the United States. And this is a flag waver designed to boost morale at home and in the Armed Forces. And yet, at a remove of some seventy years, there's still something disturbing about the way Robert Taylor's voice conveys his contempt for the enemy. It's not just that he, or rather the writer, calls them "monkeys" but it's in the other, more subtle ways, in which the "Japs" are dehumanized. "That's one Jap ship that won't be taking more rice and saki to the soldiers". And "when our planes left, Kwajalein was burning verrry satisfactorily." And, "There's something grand about boring down on the base the Japanese have so jealously guarded." "That Mavis is a tough old bird," as ten men die a flaming death.

No blame attaches to Taylor, the writer or director, and certainly not to the men, some of whom we get to know before they are lost in action. The movie did its job in its time and is still a fascinating picture of a ship at war. The sad thing is not the movie or the ship but war itself, so heroic and so foolish.

Try to ignore the poor quality print and enjoy.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 2 March 2013]

"The Fighting Lady" is a documentary about an Essex class aircraft carrier during its tour in 1943-1944. The film is narrated by Robert Taylor--who was a lieutenant in the Naval Air Corps. Interestingly, there was a French version and it was narrated by Charles Boyer. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary. The ship was apparently the USS Yorktown--but not the original one (it was lost as a result of damage sustained at the Battle of Midway in 1942).

As you watch the film, you will no doubt notice that the print is in terrible condition, as the print is a bit blurry and the color is very faded. Perhaps it's made worse because originally it was shot on 16mm film stock.

The film is particularly interesting for historians, navy and aircraft buffs and perhaps for folks who lived through the war. Otherwise, I doubt if the average person would enjoy the film very much or rent it or buy it in the first place. It isn't that it's poorly made--it's that it's just very dated and the narration a bit dry. But, if you can look past this, it is a very good film from start to finish.

By the way, there were only two films nominated in this category for 1945--this one and "Resisting Enemy Interrogation"! Both are quite interesting and well made--and interesting peeks into the Americans in WWII.

One of the finest documentaries produced during WW-II

[robertguttman · 8 August 2009]

"Fighting Lady" remains, along with William Wyler's "Memphis Belle" and John Huston's "Battle of San Pietro", one of the finest documentaries produced during World War II. Although released by 20th Century Fox with a Hollywood soundtrack and narration by movie star Robert Taylor, the film itself includes no actors, special effects or "CGI". All the footage was filmed as it happened by Navy personnel, often under very dangerous circumstances.

I've always had a soft spot for this film because my father was among the U.S. Navy cameramen who filmed it. Of course his name doesn't appear anywhere in the credits because, like most of them, he was merely an enlisted man, and only the officers' names were ever mentioned. He took that famous shot of that Japanese torpedo bomber flying right overhead and then crashing into the sea; as well as the one of the crewman in the asbestos fire-suit fleeing the runaway Hellcat fighter, which then crashes into the superstructure right in front of the camera. (There were no telephoto lenses in those days, the cameramen really DID get that close to the action!) Doubling as rear gunner, he flew in the planes that raided Marcus and Truk, as well as during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and he took the pictures of the Kawanishi "Emily" flying boat being shot down into the sea. His was not the safest job in the Navy.

Considering the state of the equipment available, the quality of the film is outstanding. Color film was rare in those days, and the type available was so "slow" that it could only be used under conditions of bright light. There were no such things as cameras with automatic exposure control, so the cameramen had to judge the exposure setting and hope they got it right, often under combat conditions. Standard 35mm movie cameras were far to bulky, so all footage was taken with smaller 16mm movie cameras. 16mm film frames are 1/4 the size of 35mm film frames, so the resulting images had to be enlarged four times before they could be projected in the standard movie format of the day. That is the reason why the images often appear to be slightly fuzzy, an effect that Steven Spielberg spent a million dollars to replicate in "Saving Private Ryan".

There were no such things as "camcorders", and the movie cameras had no provision for recording sound. Consequently, all sound effects had to be added later, at the studio in Hollywood. Some time after he worked on "Fighting Lady", the Navy issued my father a "wire recorder" similar to the type featured in the movie, "The Two Jakes". The idea was that he would carry it with him into combat and use it to record the actual sounds of the battle while he was filming it. The recorder weighed 60 pounds and was powered by a wet cell battery, similar to the type used on motorcycles. My father had never seen anything like it and was very impressed with the technology. Unfortunately, the first place he had an opportunity to try it out was during the amphibious invasion of an island called Iwo Jima. He threw the bulky thing away as soon as he hit the beach!

"Fighting Lady" was very well received when it was released. One little-known aftereffect of that was that Admiral Lockwood, the commander of the submarines in the Pacific, requested that Edward Steichen's camera unit make a similar movie on one of his submarines. My father volunteered to accompany a submarine (the USS Spot) on a combat patrol in order to determine whether the project was feasible. It turned out that it wasn't. Conditions inside the submarine were too close and dark to film in color, and it was not possible to use additional lighting because they might blind crew members at a critical moment. In addition the submarine had to be ready to submerge at any moment, so no unnecessary personnel (meaning my father) were permitted on deck. It was a very eventful patrol, in which two enemy ships were sunk and the sub herself nearly lost. However, my father ended up with little to show for it, apart from a back injury that continued to plague him for the rest of his life.

After a very eventful war my father was invalided home from Okinawa, where he was currently serving with the 77th Infantry Division, having been wounded for the second time in the course of that campaign alone. Although he left the Navy a mere Second Class Petty Officer, his decorations included the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Purple Hearts, two Presidential Unit Citations, the Submarine Combat Pin and the Asiatic-Pacific campaign medal with 12 campaign stars.

He sometimes used to comment about how often those old films would be shown, of Kamikazes crashing headlong into ships or Marines landing on Pacific beach heads, in documentaries or as stock footage in movies, and yet it seldom occurred to the viewers to wonder about the men who photographed them.

A fitting tribute to the men that go down to the sea in ships....in harm's way

[smiley-39 · 10/10 · 20 February 2004]

Security being an important wartime measure, this aircraft carrier's name was classified as a result. However, most of the footage, above and below decks, about life aboard a carrier was filmed aboard the newly commissioned ESSEX class carrier, YORKTOWN. She was named and sponsored by Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt January 1943 after the "OLD YORKY" which was lost during the The Battle of Midway

The Navy Department reported that at least 75 percent of the documentary footage was shot aboard YORKTOWN, with the remaining footage shared between HORNET and TICONDEROGA. And one scene filmed aboard BUNKER HILL.

Before shaping a course for Panama and transit through the canal, and while still on her shakedown cruise in the Caribbean Sea Frontier Area, Commander Frank "Spig" Wead, the crippled naval aviator turned screenwriter was instrumental in getting YORKTOWN's captain, J.J. "Jocko" Clark to allow Twentieth Century Fox to film some background shots for the new war movie, "Wing and a Prayer", starring Dana Andrews, Don Ameche, and Charles Bickford.

The carrier transits and clears the Panama Canal and shapes a course out into the Pacific. So YORKTOWN along with her ESSEX class sisters would become, before Japan surrendered, the champions of the Pacific naval campaign. They were to carry the ball, the Sunday punch, all the way to Tokyo Bay.

Of all the combat photography recorded it was the aerial footage that was impressive for its time. With the strafing and bombing of ground targets on Marcus Island YORKTOWN's aviators receive their baptism of fire. They could now call themselves combat veterans. Then there is the strike against the large Japanese naval anchorage at Truk Lagoon in the Carolines.

Appearing on the film with members of his staff is Vice Admiral Marc A. "Pete" Mitscher. Also present with Mitscher but not named was Rear Admiral John S. "Slew" McCain. His grandson being Lt Commander John S. McCain III. The Viet Nam war veteran. Now serving as the Senator for Arizona.

There is a fine aerial shot of the carrier task force resting at anchor at Majuro Atoll in the Marshal Islands early in 1944. Three of YORKTOWN's sister ships are present along with the older battle-hardened veteran the venerable ENTERPRISE. Also at anchor the battleships INDIANA, and a NEW Mexico class battleship along with cruisers, destroyers and other support ships. Standing out and conspicuously painted white overall, BOUNTIFUL AH-9, a naval hospital ship.

During the assault on the Marianas Islands June 1944 the Japanese Mobile Fleet launched 373 aircraft to attack the U.S. Fleet. The combined squadrons of YORKTOWN and her sister carriers of Vice Admiral Mitscher's Task Force 58 intercepted the attack, with the loss to the enemy of more than 300 aircraft destroyed. So the Battle of the Phillipine Sea was to become just as famously known as, The Great Marianas Turkey shoot.

Plaudits then are well deserved for Edward Steichen but certainly no less to Dwight Long and other photographers who presided over the job of shooting thousands of feet of 16mm Kodachrome film stock. The film actor Robert Taylor was the narrator. His voice was crisp and clear and easy recognisable.

Twentieth Century Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck was not known to be very interested about releasing the documentary under the Fox logo. That's until he was persuaded to view it. He was impressed by what he saw. The story goes that he suggested giving it the title, "The Fighting Wench"! Who would not have cringed at such a brain dead title as that! An ungracious suggestion. Yorktown was indeed a great lady, as were her other sisters of the Essex class. So, recorded for posterity was a fine 60 minute documentary. The 1944 Oscar it received was well and truly deserved.

The Yorktown

[boblipton · 9/10 · 4 May 2021]

Here's the Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature of 1944, about the U. S. S. Yorktown, its crew, and its involvement in a running battle around Guam. Or, as Robert Taylor calls it in the narration, "a two-week turkey shoot." I wonder what Boyer called it in his French-language narration.

It's one of four Oscar wins for co-director William Wyler. Also credited as a director is Edward Steichen, one of two people born in Luxembourg I can name. He was mostly a photographer, in charge of that department at Conde Nast in the early 1930s, and at the Museum of Modern Art from 1947 through 1962. During the World Wars, he was in charge of aerial photography for the A. E. F. And the Navy. Robert Fritch may be credited with the editing, but surely it's Steichen who made the choice of shots, and left it to Wyler to figure out the rest of it. The movie includes some amazing battle shots, including the aerial fights through yellow skies, the ones of crew members trying to relax between battles, and the ones of wrecked planes landing on the Yorktown. Amazing work.

Great color WWII action

[Mr_Poppins · 9/10 · 20 September 2018]

Loved it! Forget the fact that this is a documentary - it is very interesting from beginning to end. Lots of color gun camera film throughout and shipboard crash landings. Very well done chronicle of a carrier and its mission in the Pacific during WWII.

The floating city

[nickenchuggets · 10/10 · 11 December 2022]

By World War 2, aircraft carriers had replaced battleships as the most important type of vessel in a military's navy. The main reason why is because they're essentially floating airfields that can travel thousands of miles and project airpower almost anywhere. This very informative and entertaining film from World War 2 shows the ins and outs of one of America's most esteemed carriers: the USS Yorktown. The film doesn't actually tell you the "Fighting Lady" is an alias of the Yorktown, since they were trying to keep the ship's identity a secret. Like any good war documentary, the film isn't just focused on what the ship does while engaged in naval warfare. It starts off by showing us the crew, and how everyone on the ship, no matter his rank or position, has a job to do. It takes a huge assortment of different roles to keep the ship in fighting order, which is why there are cooks, mechanics, janitors, gun operators, radar men, and of course, pilots. Not to make the other men seem less important, but the film itself states that the pilots are the lifeblood of the carrier. Because they're the ones trained to fly missions and take the fight to Japan, everyone else on the ship is constantly making sure they can make their jobs easier. Later on, we see how the ship takes part in an attack on Marcus Island in 1943 in order to decimate japanese resistance there. The following year, Truk Atoll, located in the Caroline Islands, is attacked by the ship's aircraft. It's around this time that you notice one of the film's best aspects, which is the gun camera recordings. Machine guns mounted in the wings of US planes were being recorded all the time, so actual footage of japanese positions, planes, and ships being shot up is displayed in amazing Technicolor. It's worth noting that there are a lot more bullets flying than you can actually see, since only 1 out of every 3 or so is magnesium coated. After participating in Operation Hailstone (the Truk attack), the ship engages in a battle in the Marianas, where pilots from the Yorktown shoot down over 300 japanese planes in one of the most lopsided battles in air combat history. After the Battle of the Philippine Sea, japan's air force is basically gutted. As the planes return after a job well done, the crew attempt to illustrate how many japanese planes they destroyed by painting rising sun emblems on the carrier, similar to how pilots in Europe would draw swastikas to keep track of destroyed German planes. However, the crew must never forget the lengths some other brothers in arms went to in order to achieve victory, as many Americans were killed in the fighting as well. Because The Fighting Lady won an Oscar for best documentary, it should be hardly surprising that this film is entertaining right up until the very end. The film's claim to fame is its impressive use of archive footage from the war, most of it I've already seen dozens of times already, but it still retains its power decades later. One scene has planes from the carrier attack and destroy a japanese Kawanishi seaplane (known as the Emily to the americans), which was a notoriously difficult plane to shoot down. The film also gives us a glimpse into the one thing that measures a naval pilot's skill more than anything else: landing on a carrier. It is extremely difficult, and some planes have entire sections of them torn away just for going too fast or not coming in perfectly straight. The serenity of the environments seems out of place because a war is going on, but they're no less impressive to look at. I love seeing the sky all red and orange as the crew of the ship are about to start a day of taking the fight to Hirohito. Overall, I can easily see that this film is a crucial part of history, since it goes over some of the things that an important vessel accomplished during the world's most costly conflict. While color footage doesn't typically fit world war 2, this film looks really great and that's part of the reason I rate it so highly.

In the Navy/You can see the seven seas

[lee_eisenberg · 5/10 · 29 July 2022]

Edward Steichen's Academy Award-winning documentary "The Fighting Lady" focuses on an aircraft carrier and its crew about to go into battle against Japanese forces. Obviously there's the usual dose of patriotism. A noticeable thing about this documentary is that it features John McCain Jr. (father of the Arizona senator).

I guess that one could justify the level of patriotism by the fact that in World War II, we declared war on the country that attacked us instead of targeting an unrelated country and leaving it in shambles (yes, I'm still talking about that).

Anyway, an interesting documentary, giving one an insight into the era's mentality. Probably one of the few times that we'll ever hear Kwajalein mentioned.

The intent and content of "The Fighting Lady 1944"

[stonyfield · 29 September 2001]

The Fighting Lady is an American made `docudrama' typical of much Hollywood's war years production. It is narrated by Hollywood star Robert Taylor who had enlisted in the US Navy during WWII. There is no central character, rather it is primarily the story of life aboard a typical American aircraft carrier during the middle war years in the pacific. It includes some spectacular color gun camera footage of strafing and bombing missions at the battles of Marcus, Truk, and Kwajalern and the Marians. It acknowledges US losses, but does not tell of their extent: our carrier aircraft losses at Truk, for example, were particularly severe. The movie seems to be preparing the US public for a possibly long and costly conclusion to the pacific war. It describes the campaign necessary to conclude the pacific war in some detail. It is a campaign that thankfully was cut short. It should be seen as essentially a propaganda film, and is worthwhile viewing especially from that perspective.

I'd love to get a copy ....

[tnuss · 10/10 · 4 August 2000]

First saw this when I was 9 years old. All I remember is the color film in the gun cameras and all the action. Sad to see that the movie isn't even listed in most data bases (thanks IMDb)!

Does anyone know how to locate a copy of this film?

I would definitely recommend this movie to persons of all ages

[glenandnola · 10/10 · 9 March 2007]

I must have been 9 or 10 years old when i saw this movie in my hometown of Simcoe, Ontario, Canada and remember being impressed with the brilliant colors of the ocean and sky. At that time as a kid living on a farm I had never seen an aircraft carrier and recall being amazed at the size of this ship. This past summer, without realizing it until I boarded the ship, I toured the actual carrier featured in this movie. It was decommissioned in 1983 and is now docked at Charleston S.C. It was here that I really discovered its immense size and climbed from deck to deck realizing the dedication of the officers and men must have had to keep this floating city operational. I seem to recall the high action and fast timing of this film. How I would love to see this wonderful movie again after all these years. Where can it be obtained?

Thanks for the help - I now have 2 copies!

[tnuss · 10/10 · 28 May 2001]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my request. I now have 2 copies of the movie and am very pleased with both. The copy I received from the Yorktown Association even included a film trailer that discussed what happened to some of the Navy personnel appearing in the film. Tom

stirring documentary of action in the south pacific.

[bill-528 · 16 July 2002]

i saw this film as a child during world war 2 and it has stuck in my mind all these years. i remember the brilliant color and the aerial photography. i grew up in a texas town that had an army basic training post and the theater that day contained many, many basic trainees from camp wolters who cheered and clapped at the pro-american action. i can't believe this film isn't shown on the history channel and i further can't believe it isn't available to the american public.