Wings (1927): The First Best Picture Winner

Wings (1927) won the first Academy Award for Outstanding Picture — the precursor to what subsequent ceremonies would call Best Picture. The Paramount Pictures production was directed by William A. Wellman, a former WWI combat pilot who had served with the Lafayette Flying Corps. His personal experience with aerial combat shaped the film's authentic visual approach to aerial warfare. The picture remains foundational to war cinema — and its aerial sequences are still cited by combat-film directors as benchmark examples.

The Wellman background

William A. Wellman (1896-1975) was 31 years old when Wings began production. He had served as a fighter pilot during WWI with the French Lafayette Flying Corps — a volunteer American unit that flew French aircraft before the U.S. officially entered the war. He had been shot down once, survived, and returned to combat. He had personally seen the kind of aerial dogfighting that the film would depict. His commitment to authentic combat photography came from his actual combat experience.

The production scale

Wings was the most expensive American silent film at the time of its production — approximately $2 million in 1927 dollars (roughly $35 million in 2024). Paramount allowed Wellman extraordinary resources because the studio recognized the film as a prestige property aimed at the emerging awards competition that the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had announced.

The aerial sequences required real airplanes, real pilots, and real combat-style flying. Wellman convinced the U.S. Army Air Corps to lend approximately 220 aircraft to the production. The pilots performing the dogfights were active military aviators. The aerial combat sequences were filmed at and around Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, with the Air Corps cooperating on flight permissions and pilot availability.

The famous aerial cinematography used camera mounts on the airplanes themselves — a technical innovation that Wellman developed with his cinematographer Harry Perry. Cameras were mounted directly on the wings, tail surfaces, and gunner positions of the combat aircraft. The resulting footage was viscerally immediate in ways that no previous war film had achieved.

The story

Two American men from a small town in Michigan — Jack Powell (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) and David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) — both love the same girl, the wealthy Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston). When the United States enters WWI, they both volunteer for the Army Air Corps. The film follows them through pilot training, combat deployment, and the eventual mortal conflict of war. Clara Bow co-stars as Mary Preston, Jack's hometown sweetheart who serves as a Red Cross ambulance driver behind the lines.

The Clara Bow performance

Clara Bow was 22 years old and at the absolute peak of her career when Wings was filmed. She was the era's defining female star — the "It Girl," the embodiment of flapper-era American femininity. Her Mary Preston role is smaller than the male leads but emotionally central. The most-cited Bow sequence in Wings is her brief appearance in a French nightclub scene — a moment of unrestrained physical comedy that demonstrates her particular charm.

Wings was Bow's third film for Wellman (after It, 1927, and The Plastic Age, 1925). Wellman would later say that working with Bow was unlike working with any other female star — she brought a physical presence and a spontaneity that scripts couldn't fully prepare him for.

The Best Picture Oscar

Wings won the first Best Picture Oscar at the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony in May 1929 — a ceremony covering films released between August 1927 and July 1928. The competition included The Last Command, The Racket, Seventh Heaven, and others. Wings won partly because of its production scale, partly because of its critical reception, partly because of its sustained narrative ambition across nearly 2.5 hours.

The first Best Picture Oscar is the only Academy Award won by a silent feature. The arrival of sound in October 1927 (with The Jazz Singer) had effectively ended the silent era within months. By 1929, when the Wings Oscar was awarded, the medium had already moved on from the format the film had perfected.

The Gary Cooper cameo

Wings includes a small role for a 26-year-old actor named Gary Cooper — playing Cadet White, a pilot who briefly trains alongside Jack and David before being killed in a flight accident. Cooper's scene runs approximately 90 seconds. The performance launched his career. Within two years he was a major Paramount star. Within five years he was one of the most-paid actors in Hollywood. The Wings sequence is the foundational moment of his screen career.

The aerial combat sequences

The film's aerial sequences remain among the most influential in war cinema. The dogfights between American Spad fighters and German Fokker triplanes were filmed at altitude with multiple cameras capturing different angles. The cumulative effect — sustained aerial combat seen from inside the cockpits, from outside the airplanes, from the ground watching the dogfights overhead — gave audiences a visual immediacy with combat aviation that no previous film had matched.

Subsequent war-film directors have consistently cited Wings as a primary influence. Hell's Angels (1930, also in the library) extended Wings's aerial-combat approach with more ambitious set-pieces. The Dawn Patrol (1930), Hell Divers (1931), Crimson Romance (1934), and dozens of subsequent aviation films inherited specific Wings conventions.

Public-domain status

Wings is in the public domain through Paramount's complicated post-1956 rights handling. The film is freely available in multiple restoration prints. The 2012 Paramount restoration (created from preserved original elements) is the highest-quality version available — and includes a new musical score with sound effects synchronized for modern viewing.

Where to start

Watch Wings in the 2012 restoration if possible. The 144-minute runtime is substantial but justified — the film's accumulating emotional weight requires the long-form development. The aerial sequences reward careful attention; what looks routine to modern viewers (we're used to CGI air combat) was actual aviation history captured on film.