HERO JOHN GLENN could be the next President of the United States, but relative unknown Chuck Yeager should be. That is the true message of The Right Stuff--a message missed by those who think that the film will do more for the former astronaut's Oval Office ambitions than the rather uninspiring candidate himself.
Glenn is certainly getting a lot of mileage out of the movie, whose release was timed perfectly to reach the voters before the seven-way battle for the Democratic title begins. Although the producers protest coincidence, their work has given the Ohio Senator what none of his competitors has gotten-cover spots on Newsweek and Time, and, in general, beyond that nation's news pages.
And more important than the fact that Glenn is getting publicity is that he appears to be getting good publicity. The millions of Americans who sit through the 200-minute thriller will either regain their excitement for Glenn the great American, or discover it for the first time. With most of author Tom Wolfe's bitter ironies squeezed out of the screenplay, viewers get an image coated with almost as much sugar as the Life original account of Glenn's 1962 earth orbit.
Glenn can do no wrong. He's honest, he's clean, he loves America, he hates the "darned Russians." His character is great enough to win over even the most skeptical audience. At a packed opening weekend Boston showing, the crowd hissed Glenn's very appearance at the start of the screening, but was wildly cheering him by the time he hold his intimidated wife that he was behind her "one hundred percent" if she wanted to stand up the Vice President of one United States.
But being "Mr. Clean Marine" is not enough not even for the moviemakers. The question is does Glenn have if-that elusive concept of boldness and skill definable only as "the right stuff?" And what is it, anyway? Here the film equivocates.
In the cabinet meeting where President Eisenhower and congressional leaders learn about the Soviet flight into space, the politicians debate over what Americans would make the best astronaut. Two advisors run through a checklist of daredevils and stuntmen-trapeze artists, hang-gliders, human cannonballs-as the best people to launch into the atmosphere. The implication is that such a person is not-as our hindsight a freak. It is for public relations reasons, not need of certain skills, that Eisenhower finally demands, "I want test pilots."
And the test pilots that NASA gets for its guinea pigs are not true leads in the field. When recruiters go to Edwards Air Force Base to lure the flyers into becoming astronauts types who can't even get the respect of the waitress at Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club. When they approach the ringleader, Chuck Yeager, he laughs and calls it work for a lab animal.
YEAGER is the sobering backdrop to all the fanfare that lionizes Glenn and his crew. He was the first man to break the barrier, a feat he pulled in 1947, and he continues to push technology to the limit, returning to the cockpit to each time his speed record is broken. The public doesn't care about Yeager. (A military officer squelched initial publicity of the sound barrier accomplishment for "security reasons.") And, Yeager doesn't care about having a public. He just wants challenge.
Yeager's view that a real pilot was above astronaut work proved deadly accurate. The highly competitive Mercury VII crew ceased their infighting over which of them would be first in space only when it become apparent that none of them but a monkey instead, would lead the way. It is almost sad to watch the seven proud pilots ultimately realize that their work required little skill beyond stamina, and to demand technical modifications giving them more control-necessary only for their pride not for the mission.
The contrast is sharpest in the closing scenes of the movie, when six of the seven astronauts have made it into space. While the NASA crew is being wined and dined at an elaborate Texas barbecue, Yeager rides to Edwards Air Force Base and steps into a new jet fighter. The Soviets, he says, have set a new speed record, and he is determined to break it. As the astronauts comfortably watch a Sally Road feather dance from their banquet hall seats. Yeager goes too for too fast and loses control. But in an act more heroic than any earth orbit he survives a crash landing and wails away from the smoldering metal heap smiting.
A similar perspective on Glenn arises in today's contest. Every major public option poll shows him running about even with chief interplay rival Walter F. Mondale and he is widely described as "the only Democrat who can beat Reagan." Yet the question remains, as Mondale has put it, whether Glean is really a "true Democrat." He made it to the Senate largely on his glory, not on the grass roots meeting-hall, Humphreyesque training that Mondale and others boast. He has troubles appealing to the traditional Democratic constituencies of minorities and labor. If anything, The Right Staff clearly separates the appearance of that admirable trait from its actual presence. And is widens the gap in the image of John Glenn.
