Trading most of the laughs for melodrama, this romantic adventure is based on a story by Hawks himself, with Grant as a pilot in South America flying the mail through the worst storms and fogs the Andes can throw at him.

Jean Arthur starts pulses racing when she arrives on the scene, and both she and seductress Rita Hayworth - in a movie that did much to further her career - have their sights set on clipping Grant's wings.

Nothing in the story is terribly original and, though the drama remains largely earthbound, there are still some rousing flying sequences, which won a special-effects Oscar nomination - in the first year for that category.