Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
There's a good docu in Pioneers in Aviation. I asked for the title because the
development of aviation in America is an interesting subject, and the only thing I
knew about William Boeing and Donald Douglas were their names on modern jets and WW2
combat planes. As it turns out, these two pioneer entrepreneurs had fascinating lives
and exemplified some of the best traits of 20th-Century American industrialism. Their
competition was a beneficial one, even when Douglas would steal the market for a particular
kind of aircraft after Boeing had pioneered it. During wartime, the big companies banded
together in an industrial 'socialism' that shared resources, engineering talent and
facilities. Their creative mass production of war materiel probably won the air-power
dominated war.
The sections of the docu devoted to the two businessmen are fascinating, and can boast
some special footage of contract signings and on-camera speeches to the company staff. The
executive producer of the show is named Douglas and may be a son or grandson, but it's
difficult to tell as there are no liner notes or other clues as to how the docu came about.
Pioneers in Aviation is not very professionally produced. The voiceover is stiffly
written, and footage not directly from the Douglas family looks terrible, as if it was
cribbed from other docus. The music score is also
uninspired and thin, using Scott Joplin for the teens, Benny Goodman for the war years, etc.
Outside the core material specifically directed at Douglas and Boeing, Pioneers in Aviation is
severely padded. Since the time frame starts at the turn of the century and goes well into
the 60s, the producers have seen fit to give us the whole history of the country in digest form.
It's important to tell us that the Stock Market crash had a big impact on the aviation industry,
but we get a minutes' worth of bad stock footage for generic coverage of the event. Likewise,
there's a lengthy Cliff's Notes replay of WW2 that goes on forever in the second half, and is
edited so that the Japanese surrender is happening before the war in Europe ends, etc. Finally,
the show suffers from Cable Docu disease: it begins and ends with endless repetitive voiceover
setups and farewells to the subject, all over repeats of footage from the show. They even throw
in the dumb old joke footage of the various crazy 1905 aircraft that fall apart rather than fly.
The on-camera interviews with historians are well shot and organized into the material. The producers
chose spokesmen who help us get to know the interesting subject gentlemen Boeing and Douglas. If
this material were edited into a more-focused half hour or forty minutes, this would be a good show.
Technically, Pioneers in Aviation is okay for quality, with a clear but uninspired mix. The
encoding is adequate, but the many familiar newsreel shots look like they came from 8mm, when
we've seen them many times before looking better. The
credit roll rushes by like one of Boeing's aircraft, but the disc (readily available on Amazon)
doesn't seem to have a distributor. Instead, there's a webpage with the same name as the film's
copyright -
Buy: