OPERA HOUSE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 47, 25 February 1941, Page 7

OPERA HOUSE

“MEN AGAINST THE SKY” Hailed as one of the most exciting dramas of modern flying to emerge from Hollywood in many years, "Men Against the Sky,” commencing to-day at the Opera House, has as its background the behind-the-scenes activities of a modern aircraft plant engaged in filling Government plane orders. Draft rooms, assembly and construction lines, wind tunnels, testing fields —against all of these unfolds the gripping drama of three men and a girl. Edmund Lowe is ideally cast as an aggressive aircraft manufacturer competing against other national companies in building a swift army plane model for a foreign Government. Playing his chief engineer and designer is handsome Kent Taylor. Richard Dix portrays a discredited pilot and dare-devil His only friend is Wendy Barrie, his loyal sister, herself a draftsman. These four people's lives become linked together, through a chain of unusual circumstances, in the gigantic task of building the supership. Wendy manages to get a job with the company, falls desperately in love with the good-looking engineer, Dix, striving hard to make a man of himself again, submits through his sister a radical idea on wing design which aids in the perfection of the mighty ship. Dix’s ruin of all their dreams by crashing the finished craft during test manoeuvres, the resultant break between his contrite sister and the man she lover, the frantic efforts of the fast- talking manufacturer to construct another model with additional finances, and Dix's final redemption by nobly sacrificing his life that the pursuit might pass the final test flight, highlight the vivid story.