ALL SCI-FI Forum Index ALL SCI-FI
The place to “find your people”.
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

War Eagles (1938-1939)
Goto page Previous  1, 2
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi Movies and Serials from 1900 to 1949
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17020
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Sat Feb 19, 2022 1:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

What a great observation, Steve! Cool

I guess the blond Nordic Vikings would be considered kinsman of the Aryan Germans, so having them bring down the invading Nazis in this story would be ironic indeed.

I found this on Amazo, today. By gum, I just ordered the damn thing, and I'll post copies of a few pages on this thread.


________________

WAR EAGLES - The Unmaking of an Epic - An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters Paperback – January 17, 2011

by David Conover (Author), Philip J. Riley (Author)

This latest addition to Philip J Riley's Alternate History of Classic Filmonsters series is a collaborative effort with fellow film historian David Conover that delves into one of the most famous unproduced motion pictures of all time, Merian C. Cooper's legendary WAR EAGLES!

Planned as a full Technicolor production at MGM in the late 1930s, WAR EAGLES would have eclipsed Cooper and long-time SFX partner Willis O'Brien's KING KONG as the greatest fantasy epic of the period had it not fallen victim to pre-war studio politics and the rise of Hitler's Third Reich on the eve of World War II.

Long considered a lost film effort, Conover's research has actually uncovered a richly detailed pre-production history, complete with never-before-published artwork, storyboards, test footage frames and more, direct from studio archives and the estates of technicians and artists who actually worked on the film.

Also included is the full, never-published final draft of WAR EAGLES by Cyril Hume — screenwriter of MGM's Tarzan series and the sci-fi masterpiece
FORBIDDEN PLANETalong with Merian C. Cooper's original treatment and production designer Howard Campbell's notes and budgets for the ill-fated production.

For decades, stop-motion fans and film researchers considered an early, coverless draft attributed to Willis O'Brien — but actually written by Harold Lamb and James Ashmore Creelman — to be the only existing script for WAR EAGLES.

But Conover's discovery of the original typescripts at the USC film library in 2003 turned up 7 more drafts and multiple revisions that eventually led to the final Hume draft.

Pre-production artist Duncan Gleason began detailed storyboarding and illustration based on this draft and it is very likely that it would have become the actual shooting script.

Detailed models and sets were built, and Technicolor test footage featuring stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and his crew (including Kong/Mighty Joe Young creators Marcel Delgado and George Lofgren) was shot.

The exciting tale of a lost race of Viking warriors astride giant prehistoric eagles doing battle with Nazis over the skies of modern day Manhattan almost reached the screen until the reality of impending war halted production in 1940.

David Conover is a film writer and historian who began his quest to uncover the history of WAR EAGLES as a 13-year-old reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. He was a columnist and reviewer for the Louisville Eccentric Observer for 9 years, and his work was syndicated widely during that period as well.

He is also the Vice President and Programming Director for WonderFest, an international modeling, toy, film, and FX expo that takes place annually in Louisville, Ky, where he lives with his wife, daughter, and a tiny piece of the stegosaurus model from the original KING KONG.

If you ask him, he'll show it to you, along with the final page of Cyril Hume's WAR EAGLES script. He's not crazy, just enthusiastic.

________________________________

I wish the author of the review below from Amazon would join All Sci-Fi. He's my kinda guy! Cool
________________________________

Review by: Sauropod

5.0 out of 5 stars — Solid research re-creates a lost classic
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2012


For years I'd heard about the aborted War Eagles project masterminded by legendary showman, producer, entrepreneur, documentary filmmaker, and adventurer Merian C. Cooper. Until now I knew little about it.

This book tells you everything you need to know about the conception, evolution, and eventual abandonment of this would-be epic. It includes the complete shooting script, rare stills, behind-the-scenes memoranda, and more. The author, clearly embarking on a labor of love, has left no stone untuned in his quest to solve the mystery of War Eagles.

That said, I'm not sure I agree that War Eagles would have been the masterpiece its partisans make it out to be. The script is entertaining but corny, lacking the majestic simplicity of Cooper''s King Kong. And the visual effects would have pushed 1940-era technology to its limit and perhaps past its limits. Cooper's insistence on shooting the film in Technicolor might have resulted in an overly fake, "diorama" look, as evidenced by a couple of surviving color stills.

It's not clear to me that O'Brien's techniques, which were heavily dependent on glass paintings and miniature sets, would have held up to scrutiny in full color. As it stands, it wasn't until The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1957 that stop-motion/rear-projection effects were successfully executed in color, and Sinbad's effects genius Ray Harryhausen used an entirely different approach that obviated matte paintings and most miniature sets.

One thing that surprised me was how similar War Eagles is, in outline, to James Cameron's Avatar. In a sense, War Eagles finally did get made, albeit with CG effects rather than stop-motion, and in a science-fiction (not fantasy) setting.

This book will entertain and enlighten anyone interested in the lost projects of Willis O'Brien, Merian Cooper, and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

________________________________

If took me a moment to realize that the comparison of War Eagles to Avatar was dead right! Warriors riding on winged creatures, battling an invading force which uses machines against the good guys! Very Happy








_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi Movies and Serials from 1900 to 1949 All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2
Page 2 of 2

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group