the B-17s for the film. Caidin chronicled the adventures of the crossing in the book Everything But The Flak. The War Lover was shot in 1961 and released in the United States on 25 October 1962. The film opened in London in June 1963. Some short but rare footage of actual air combat is included – especially the attacking Messerschmitt Bf 109G armed with 20 mm cannon firing at the B-17s. The film also makes use of the crash landing footage from the 1949 film Twelve O'Clock High. Mike Reilly, a stuntman doubling for Wagner, was killed during the production of The War Lover when he fell to his death in a parachuting accident. In 2003, Sony Pictures colourised the film but to date the colour version has never been released on video. Reception The War Lover was unfavourably compared to other wartime aviation epics like Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Bosley Crowther of The New York Times focused on the lack of interesting characters in the film. "But the fellows who sit in the cockpit of the one plane on which the actions center are a dull pair and are rendered even duller by poor acting and weak direction. Steve McQueen is the emotionally-mixed-up pilot who tries to steal his co-pilot's girl. Robert Wagner is the co-pilot and Shirley Anne Fields is the girl. Altogether they make what at best is an average drama of love and jealousy into a small and tepid expose of one man's absurd cantankerousness." In a similar vein, the review of The War Lover in Variety noted, "...the central character emerges more of an unappealing symbol than a sympathetic flesh-and-blood portrait.... The scenario seems reluctant to come to grips with the issue of this character’s unique personality – a 'war lover' whose exaggerated shell of heroic masculinity covers up a psychopathic inability to love or enjoy normal relationships with women." References Notes Citations Bibliography Brown, Gary. "The War Lover." Warbirds Worldwide Special Edition, December 1997. Caidin, Martin. Everything But The Flack. New York: Popular Library, 1964. Dolan, Edward F. Jr. Hollywood Goes to War. London: Bison Books, 1985. . Harwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Buff's Guide to Aviation Movies". Air Progress Aviation, Volume 7, No. 1, Spring 1983. Orriss, Bruce. When Hollywood Ruled the Skies: The Aviation Film Classics of World War II. Hawthorne, California: Aero Associates Inc., 1984. . Wagner, Robert and Scott