‘Airmen’ the Latest in HBO’s String of Historical Pearls

“Something to Talk About” is a theatrical feature whose title also fits HBO.

For a dozen years, HBO has been making television movies that give viewers something to talk about, argue about and think about, far more so than have its cable and broadcasting network counterparts.

Add to that list Saturday night’s “The Tuskegee Airmen,” a stirring account of the nation’s first African American combat pilots, embattled pioneers who performed admirably in World War II while enduring as much racism from their fellow Americans as flak from their German enemies. It’s well worth your time.

And what an impressive run for HBO Pictures. It has made HBO--a subscription cable venture once known mostly for its monolith of tiresomely repeated theatrical movies--TV’s unofficial history channel. The theatrical movies remain, but they’re increasingly mingled with original comedy programs and HBO’s own movies, many of which are docudramas or monographs on notable figures in history.

HBO’s biographical movie subjects have included Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, CBS News icon Edward R. Murrow, South African leader Nelson Mandela, Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, singer Josephine Baker, former Ronald Reagan press secretary and shooting victim James Brady, controversial lawyer Roy Cohn, Teamster boss Jackie Presser, Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, slain Brazilian rain forest activist Chico Mendes and former heavyweight champ and now ex-con Mike Tyson.

The future looks as interesting, for coming Sept. 9 is “Truman,” based on David McCullough’s acclaimed biography of the nation’s 33rd President. Arriving in November will be a movie detailing the stormy romance of mob boss Sam Giancana and pop singer Phyllis McGuire. And scheduled for airing in 1996 is HBO’s version of “The Late Shift,” the Bill Carter book about the behind-the-scenes pursuit of Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” seat by Jay Leno and David Letterman.

The latter movie has the potential to be as humorous as the Emmy-laden “Barbarians at the Gate,” HBO’s biting account--and TV’s first full-fledged docucomedy--of an epic corporate takeover.

Not that HBO’s execution always matches its ambition. The higher the risk, the harder the potential fall. Thus, HBO movie makers have suffered their share of creative crashes--some of these failures gaining Emmy favor, it seems, only because of their high aspirations.

Mainstream TV rarely exhibits much courage. At the very least, though, HBO is the bravest of the timid, at times confronting straight-on the kind of volatile topics from which other TV programmers generally shrink. Recall, for example, “And the Band Played On,” HBO’s 1993 rendering of Randy Shilts’ book relating the early battle against the AIDS epidemic in the United States. And just recently it aired the since-Emmy-nominated “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” an opinionated replay of the scandalous Los Angeles case that polarized public opinion from coast to coast.

“The Tuskegee Airmen” won’t resonate nearly as loudly, even though its appealing triumph-over-tribulation theme has inspirational scrawled all over it. Only rarely does director Robert Markowitz succumb to a lump in the throat and fail to stem the schmaltz that inevitably gushes toward the surface of this story, one whose jolting reminder of racism surges with emotion.

This is at once social history and buddy movie, one that makes the training and combat experiences of a few college-educated fighter pilots a metaphor for the careers of all black airmen during World War II. They were awarded more than 850 medals and, we’re told, lost none of the B-17s they were assigned to escort on bombing runs.

It’s a gleaming record, and an ironic one considering the prejudice that black pilots faced from the white bomber crews they protected and from an Army Air Corps that had considered them incapable of operating sophisticated aircraft in combat. At the same time, many white members of Congress feared the social repercussions should these black airmen succeed.

Patriarch of “The Tuskegee Airmen” is Robert W. Williams, a persistent 72-year-old African American who flew 50 missions with the 99th Fighter Squadron depicted here and who for 43 years had been lobbying to have this ignored chapter of U.S. history transferred to the screen. Any screen. The project was in limbo when Robert Cooper, president of HBO Pictures, heard of it and made a deal to have it produced, ultimately with a script by Trey Ellis, Ron Hutchinson and Paris H. Qualles from a story by co-executive producer Williams.

At its center are composite characters Hannibal Lee (Laurence Fishburne), Billy Roberts (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Leroy Cappy (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) and Walter Peoples (Allen Payne), aspiring airmen who meet on a troop train carrying them to a segregated training base near Tuskegee, Ala.

Even before they arrive, they’re forced to vacate their seats for German prisoners of war, these white enemies getting preference over “colored” Americans.

Other humiliations follow, many emanating from a racist colonel (Christopher McDonald) who tries to sabotage the African Americans. Although a black lieutenant (Courtney Vance) champions their cause at Tuskegee, the airmen will face obstacle after obstacle, including some minor script problems that have them snarling cliches at the Germans they shoot down. “Say goodby, Mr. Kraut,” says Fishburne’s Lee inside his P51, for example, after blowing an enemy from the sky. “Give my regards to the Fuhrer .”

And to his white detractors. Obviously, the pilots of the 99th were determined to fly. Yet why they were equally determined to risk death for this nation--much of which despised and feared them because of their skin color--only they would be able to say.

Perhaps the answer is black pride or a sense that African Americans needed heroes other than Joe Louis. In that regard, a scene drawn from an actual incident has mechanical problems forcing two of the airmen to land their training planes near an Alabama field where a white-supervised black chain gang is cutting back grass from a road. When the pilots hop down and peel off their goggles to reveal their dark skin, the prisoners react with awe, as if witnessing a miracle. “They’s colored fliers,” one says, incredulously.

Although its combat sequences are done well, “Tuskegee Airmen” is mostly the sum of its strong performances, none better or more subtly seething than Andre Braugher’s as famed West Pointer Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis, the African American who headed the 332nd Fighter Group in Europe and went on to become a three-star general. His impassioned plea to doubting U.S. senators (“A fair and impartial opportunity is all we ask. . . .”) aborts a move to scuttle the black pilot program.

A montage of real-life black pilots ends “The Tuskegee Airmen.” Searching their young faces, you wonder how many survived combat and how those who did were greeted back home by white Americans whose liberty they fought to protect.

* “The Tuskegee Airmen” airs at 8:30 p.m. Saturday on HBO.