Film

A Yank in the RAF (1941)

Director: Henry King

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Producer Darryl Zanuck provided the outline for this tiresome WWII yarn about lending a hand 'over there'. Power plays an experienced civil pilot who, because the pay is good, agrees to ferry a bomber to England. In London, he bumps into old flame Grable, a showgirl doing volunteer ambulance work on the side; and determined to stick around to win her back (she tired of his other women), he cynically joins the RAF. Cockily convinced that the war effort needs his knowhow, he meanwhile leads Grable an unhappy dance by his unreliability and busy skirt-chasing. Redeeming himself through a heroic deed or two, he originally died in action; preview audiences refused to buy this; so now he ends apparently reunited with Grable, but still, in his own wry but apt term, 'a worm'. As perfunctory in its action sequences as in its personal relationships - with a couple of song-and-dance routines for Grable thrown in to crowd-please - it is unpersuasive, to say the least.

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