The High and the Mighty is a 1954 American aviation disaster film, directed by William A. Wellman, and written by Ernest K. Gann, who also wrote the 1953 novel on which his screenplay was based.

Former captain Dan Roman, the flight's veteran first officer, known for his habit of whistling, is haunted by an air crash that killed his wife and son and left him with a permanent limp.

The captain, John Sullivan, suffers from a secret fear of responsibility after logging thousands of hours looking after the lives of passengers and aircrew.

After nightfall, as the airliner passes the point of no return, Agnew confronts fellow passenger Ken Childs, accusing him of having an affair with his wife.

The men struggle and Agnew pulls out a pistol, intending to shoot Childs, but before he can do so, the airliner swerves violently when it loses a propeller and its engine catches fire.

That, combined with adverse winds and the increased drag of the damaged engine, means that the airliner will eventually run out of fuel and be forced to ditch.

As the airliner approaches rain-swept, night time San Francisco at a perilously low altitude, the airport prepares for an emergency instrument landing.

The airliner narrowly surmounts the city's hills and breaks out of the clouds with the runway lights dead ahead, guiding them to a safe landing.

After the tumult dies down, he joins the aircrew inspecting their damaged engine and informs Dan that only 30 gallons of fuel remained in their tanks.

[6] In 1953, director William Wellman was releasing Island in the Sky when he learned that his screenwriter Ernest Gann was writing another aviation story.

Jack L. Warner initially was opposed to the film, believing that audiences would not stay interested in a plot stretching more than 100 minutes involving the passengers in an airliner.

Yet, after script deliberations set out the final screenplay, he endorsed the novel approach that harkened back to earlier films such as Grand Hotel.

[17] A second former C-54 equipped with a large double cargo door[18] used to accommodate the loading of freight on pallets, was employed for all shots of the damaged airliner on the ground at San Francisco in the film's closing sequences.

A propellerless, fire-scorched engine on a distorted mount, with a 30° "droop", was installed on the left wing of this aircraft to represent the damage which had imperiled the flight.

Additional exteriors shots were taken at Oakland Municipal Airport, including all boarding, engine run-up, taxiing, and takeoff scenes used in the opening sequences.

[23][24][25] Despite the initial issues on set, the two otherwise had a positive relationship and worked together on later films, including Track of the Cat and Blood Alley.

[26] Wellman, an accomplished pilot in real life, purposely maintained the point-of-view of the flight path of the seemingly doomed airliner traveling as the support staff in San Francisco would observe it: flying from the west to the east, from Honolulu to San Francisco, film frame right to film frame left, except during takeoff and landing.

With stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy McGuire, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, and Joan Crawford rejecting parts in the film,[28] Wellman ended up casting good but lesser-known actors in some of the roles.

[32] For the other major male lead, Wayne had promised the role to his friend Bob Cummings, who was a pilot and had Wellman's recommendation as well.

[28] However Stack went after the role and an interview with Wellman eventually convinced the director that a non-pilot could effectively portray the drama of a cockpit conflict.

Along with Wayne, six other actors appear in both films: Regis Toomey, Paul Fix, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Ann Doran, George Chandler, and Michael Wellman.

The High and the Mighty served as a template for later disaster-themed films such as the Airport series (1970–79), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), The Hindenburg (1975), and Titanic (1997).

Variety wrote that the film "is a class drama, blended with mass appeal into a well-rounded show that can catch on with most any audience".

[38] Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times called the film "an enormously vital picture, amazingly associated with life's panorama today, and thus filled with a rare kind of tingling excitement, especially for a modern air-minded public".

[38] Joseph Henry Jackson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, said that the film has "a story that gives you no time to catch your breath".

[3] Following the recovery of the lost reel, The High and the Mighty, after its meticulous restoration, was rebroadcast on television in July 2005, the first broadcasts of the film in 20 years.

Together with Island in the Sky, it was released as a "special collector's edition" DVD with new cover art in August of the same year by Paramount Home Entertainment.