Bill Pendleton, son of a wealthy shipowner, goes to fight in the war as a pilot. He has trouble concentrating on his studies and as a happy-go-lucky college student adept at both flying and football, he accepts a wager from his fraternity pals that he will propose to any girl in the college they choose. Mary O'Malley is chosen by his pals and, unaware of the wager, accepts Bill's fraternity pin. She is an old-fashioned coed who is secretly in love with him. Bill having proposed to her in earnest, is also in love. Mary, however, hears about the wager and thoroughly disgusted with Bill, leaves college and goes to China to join her missionary father. A remorseful Bill ends up being kicked out of college, and his father also disowns him. He decides to follow Mary to China in order to redeem himself. He stows away on the same ship that Mary is taking to China. When the Chinese revolutionary, Fu Shing, kidnaps Mary, Bill has to figure out how to save her. He enlists the help of his friend, Danny Daynes, an alcoholic war veteran now serving as a general in the Chinese army. In an exciting battle in the sky, Bill ends up rescuing Mary and her father from a band of revolutionaries.
The plot of The Fighting American was a romantic satire penned by William Elwell Oliver, the winner of a writing contest that Universal Studios held for college students. The working title was "The Throwback." A spectacular aerial stunt appeared in The Fighting American where two stuntmen fought on the wings of a Curtiss JN-4 with one stuntman falling off the wing. Instead of falling to his death, the falling stuntman doubled by former circus acrobat Russel Benton, swung in pendulum style onto the other wing tip. Two Curtiss JN-4s flew out of Clover Field near Houston, with one acting as a camera platform flown by Frank Tomick and the other aircraft flown by Leo Nomis.
Reception
The review in The New York Times considered The Fighting American as "pleasant nonsense". The review noted: "In the introductory title of "The Fighting American," the film presentation at the Broadway this week, Carl Laemmle, President of Universal Pictures Corporation, explains that the production is not one to tax the mentality of the spectators, who must look upon the narrative as nonsense." Reviewer Janiss Garza recounted in her review for Allmovie.com, that some aerial scenes in The Fighting American were exciting.
Survival status
Prints of The Fighting American exist in private film collections .
