Where to watch Wings (1927)

Trivia & production notes

• Director William A. Wellman was hired specifically because he was the only director in Hollywood at the time with World War I combat pilot experience.
• The film took approximately nine months to complete, far longer than typical Hollywood productions of the era which usually took little more than a month.
• The production had to wait 18 consecutive days for proper weather conditions in San Antonio before aerial battle sequences could be filmed.
• Lieutenant Clarence S. "Bill" Irvine, sent from the Army Air Corps, engineered an airborne camera system to film close-ups of pilots and personally performed in one of the battle scenes after another pilot broke his neck.
• Actor Charles Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during production so he could be filmed in close-up while flying, matching the approach used with Richard Arlen.
• Clara Bow, Paramount's biggest star, was unhappy with her supporting role, describing it as "a man's picture" where she was merely "the whipped cream on top of the pie."
• Clara Bow openly altered her costumes by slitting the necklines and cutting off the sleeves of the wardrobe designed by Travis Banton, much to the designer's frustration.
• In one scene, actor Charles Rogers became genuinely drunk for his enlistment office role after drinking champagne, as he was 22 years old and had never tasted liquor before.
• Wings contains one of the first widely released instances of on-screen nudity, showing nude men from behind undergoing physical exams in an enlistment office scene.
• A scene depicting two male characters kissing has led some to interpret Wings as depicting cinema's first male-to-male kiss, though other films from the period have also been suggested for this milestone.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Wings (1927 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.