Word: peck
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Twelve O'Clock High is the story of a stubborn flying general's mission: rebuilding a bomber group whose shattered morale under heavy losses threatens to 1) discredit precision daylight bombing, and 2) undermine the whole aerial offensive against German-held Europe. Brigadier General Frank Savage-(Gregory Peck) goes at the job with the cold passion of a martinet and the inner torment of a man of good will. He breaks subordinates, cancels privileges, harangues his crews ("Consider yourselves dead"), disgraces misfits, puts the outfit through elementary training paces and woos such resentment that every pilot accepts...
...Greer Garson, Rosalind Russell, Ann Sothern, Errol Flynn, George Murphy, Gregory Peck, Walter Pidgeon...
Skinner places his pigeons in a small closed box with a button in one wall. The birds must peck at this button at least once every five minutes to be paid off with food. The eager but ignorant pigcon, however, not knowing he will get the same reward with less exertion, will hammer away rapidly for great lengths of time to get his dinner...
...more difficult process for the birds comes up when the apparatus is set so that a delay between two pecks is necessary for a meal pay-off. He eventually gets wise to this when he discovers that turning around between the first and second peck, or walking across the eage and back, buys him a free meal...
...direction, the picture moves with somnambulist deliberateness and Dana Andrews continues his ponderous new style of acting like a mutinous galley slave. The other principals behave in harrowing situations like mechanical toys that need winding. A new actor, Jeff Chandler, registers a slow magnetic power similar to Gregory Peck's, and is apt to become at least half as popular. Stephen McNally, oddly the only one in the movie who tries for a Jewish accent, misses it spectacularly...