Battle Hymn (film)
| Battle Hymn | |
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| Directed by | Douglas Sirk |
| Produced by | Ross Hunter |
| Written by |
Vincent B. Evans Charles Grayson |
| Based on |
Battle Hymn 1956 autobiography by Dean Hess |
| Starring |
Rock Hudson Anna Kashfi Dan Duryea |
| Music by | Frank Skinner |
| Cinematography | Russell Metty |
| Edited by | Russell F. Schoengarth |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures Co. Inc. |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3.9 million (US) |
Battle Hymn (aka By Faith I Fly) (1957) is a Technicolor Universal-International feature film starring Rock Hudson as Colonel Dean E. Hess, a real-life United States Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War. Hess's autobiography of the same name was published concurrently with the release of the film. He donated his profits from the film and the book to a network of orphanages he helped to establish. The film was directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Ross Hunter and filmed in CinemaScope.
Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dean Hess (Rock Hudson) was a minister in Ohio. The attack prompts him to become a fighter pilot. Hess had accidentally dropped a bomb on an orphanage in Germany during World War II, killing 37 orphans. At the start of the Korean War, Hess volunteers to return to the cockpit and is assigned as the senior USAF advisor/Instructor Pilot to the Republic of Korea Air Force, flying F-51D Mustangs.
As Hess and his cadre of USAF instructors train the South Korean pilots, several orphaned war refugees gather at the base. He solicits the aid of two Korean adults (En Soon Yang (Anna Kashfi), and Lun Wa (Philip Ahn) and establishes a shelter for the orphans. When the Communists begin an offensive in the area, Hess evacuates the orphans on foot and then later, after much struggle with higher headquarters, obtains an airlift of USAF cargo aircraft to evacuate them to the island of Cheju where a more permanent orphanage is established.
Lt. Col. Hess was a technical advisor to Universal to ensure that the final production did not stray far from his original biography. Nonetheless, the inevitable "Hollywood" screenplay prevailed. Hess had a hand in vetoing the studio's first choice to play him: Robert Mitchum, having reservations about the actor's character. Unable to film in Korea, locations shifted to Nogales, Arizona that provided at least a modicum of similar landscape. On Soon Whang, Director of the Orphans Home of Korea arrived in the U.S. along with 25 orphans who would reprise their own lives on film.
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Wikipedia