Watch Secret Service of the Air For Free

It is a performances centric movie

A different way of telling a story

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

***SPOILERS**** Hot shot pilot for the China Clipper co. Lt. "Bras-Balls" Bancroft played by future US President and leader of the free world Ronald Wilson Reagan is recruited by his good friend Tom Saxby, John Litel, as an undercover agent for the US Secret Service. Brsss' job is to stop a ruthless gang smuggling aliens of all types and from all nations illegally into the United States.Using the cover of a convicted counterfeiter Brass is sent to federal prison and made Earl "Ace" Hemrich's played by Bernard Nedall,who was convicted of flying illegal aliens into the country, cell-mate. With "Ace" letting Brass in on a prison break the next day Brass goes along with him only to later, after crashing out of jail, getting re-captured and sent to do hard time on the notorious "Rock" Alcatraz. But instead of being sent to the "Rock" Brass is released and given clearance by his boss Saxby to get a job as a pilot for the L.A Taxi co. that Ace used to fly in illegal aliens for.****SPOILERS**** Things get very "bally" for Brass-Balls when Ace escapes from prison and gets back to see his boss of the air freight company Jim Cameron, James Stephenson, that Brass is working for. At first talking his way out of trouble in him convincing Cameron that he made a deal with the government to get out of prison and later slugging it out with a number of his goons-including Ace- to show that he's all right Brass ends up getting Cameron together with a number of illegal aliens on his plane to fly back, from Mexico, to the states. Where unknown to Cameron the Feds as well as FBI Agents are waiting to arrest him when the plane lands.

Criminals bring illegal aliens into the U.S. from Mexico. Many of these illegals are criminals. When the plane is nearly captured by a Secret Service agent, the agent and the passengers are all killed.A young pilot (Ronald Reagan) is asked by the Secret Service to get in with the smuggling ring; to do so, they have to give him a criminal record. The government frames him and he spends some time in prison, and afterward, he connects with the criminals and gets into the gang.Well-paced B movie from Warners and entertaining. Reagan as always is pleasant and likable, and not yet a star. That and politics would come later.

According to Secret Service Of The Air Ronald Reagan as Brass Bancroft was brought into the service because of his skills as a pilot flying the Trans-Pacific run. Later on in the four film series his pilot skills were not necessarily needed, but this was a B picture series and back then who cared.An Treasury man on a counterfeiting case got wind of an illegal immigrant smuggling racket and pays with his life in a particularly nasty way being thrown out of an airplane along with the other illegals on that flight. After that the Treasury Department takes the lead on the case and you can see why Reagan is recruited into the Secret Service.This film introduced Reagan in the role of Brass Bancroft and by the time he had finished his fourth film he was doing other and better things with films like Dark Victory and Santa Fe Trail under his belt and Knute Rockne and Kings Row to come. John Litel as his supervisor and Eddie Foy, Jr. as his sidekick were also introduced.James Stephenson is the villain here, a really smooth and deadly piece of work. He did a really good job here, almost like he'd come down from another classier film to appear here.Reagan is breezy, credible, and likable as a fast talking, fast thinking undercover hero. Some of the other Brass Bancroft films were infinitely worse, this one is all right.

Secret Service of the Air (1939) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Warner "B" flick about a pilot (Ronald Reagan) who joins the Secret Service so that he can take down some smugglers. I wasn't expecting too much out of this film but like Warner's gangster pictures, this film contains just about everything you could possibly fit into a 61-minute movie. You get a prison break, car chases, shootouts, bar fights, a silly love story, brawls, various plane chases and much more. I wouldn't exactly say Reagan gives a good performance but he is fun to watch. The film eventually runs out of steam and never gets too deep but overall this is a pretty entertaining movie.