The Aviation Film that Won the First Best Picture Oscar

In 1929, the first ever Academy Awards ceremony took place in Hollywood. The ceremony was very different from the Oscars we watch today. It wasn’t broadcast on television or radio. Tickets cost $5 (about $92 today). Award winners were announced three months in advance. Many won for their work in general, not a specific film.  However, certain things remained the same even then. One of those things was the coveted prize of Best Picture.

The award went to Wings, a 1927 silent film. It is among the most important films ever made. Set during World War I, the film explores a range of topics, including the reality of fighting in the trenches, aerial combat, the relationship between commanders and troops, and the psychological effects of war. 

Paramount released Wings just a few months after Charles Lindbergh’s successful transatlantic solo flight in May 1927. Enthusiasm for aviation was at a fever pitch. Wings received instant acclaim from audiences and critics. The cast is a list of Hollywood legends: Clara Bow, Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen, and Gary Cooper. It was Cooper’s first feature role.

With its incredible aerial combat scenes, Wings set the standard for all aviation films. Director William Wellman was an actual WWI fighter pilot, giving the film a skillful hand with the subject matter.

To add realism to the film, Wellman wanted his two male leads to actually pilot their own aircraft as much as possible. This was not a problem for Richard Arlen. He served as a flight instructor in the Royal Flying Corps during the first world war. Buddy Rogers, however, took an intensive two-weeks of flight training to learn the basics. Both actors always flew with an experienced U.S. Army pilot in the back seat—just in case.

To place the audience in the thick of the action, Wellman and chief cinematographer Harry Perry mounted cameras on various locations on the aircraft to capture the aerial scenes from every angle. The results were stunning and still hold up today. It's no surprise that the film also won Best Engineering Effects (similar to Best Visual Effects).

One of the signature films of the silent era, Wings remains one of Hollywood’s sterling achievements of any era. For the aviation history enthusiast or the movie buff, Wings is not to be missed.

This blog was adapted from it’s original version, written by Peter Jakab and published to promote Hollywood Goes to War: World War I on the Big Screen, a year-long film series showing Hollywood’s finest feature films on World War I. In 2025, Amelia Grabowski updated the blog to remove the promotion of the event series. You can read the original version via Internet Archive.