Cat Ballou (1965)

As far as Western spoofs go, Cat Ballou is neither as goofy as 1953's Red Garters nor is it as raunchy as 1974's Blazing Saddles. In fact, it's surprisingly middle of the road. Which is odd since it's the movie Lee Marvin won an Academy Award for.

In 1894, Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) is on the way back to her father's ranch in Wolf City, Wyoming. On the train she meets a drunken phony preacher named Jed (Dwayne Hickman) and his cattle rustler nephew Clay Boone (Michael Callan). She inadvertently aids them in escaping from the Sheriff, thus beginning her slide into becoming notorious outlaw Cat Ballou.

When she gets back to the ranch, she's shocked to find it falling apart. The Wolf City Development Corporation, led by Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny), wants the water rights to the ranch and are willing to do anything to obtain them.  Percival is planning to build a slaughterhouse, which will create jobs in town theoretically. The WCDC even goes so far as to hire killer Tim Strawn (Marvin with a silly metal nose and even sillier mustache) to terrorize Cat's father. Cat tries turning to the rustlers for help, but neither one of them are gunmen. Cat then tries to hire notorious gunman Kid Shelleen (Marvin again), only to find that he's a drunk who can't even hit a barn. When Strawn kills her father and the town won't do anything about it, Cat swears vengeance, robbing a train and ultimately killing Sir Harry.

That the movie has a good cast is not in doubt. Certainly Marvin is fun enough in the dual role. Oddly, though, this is neither his best western--that would be The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--nor his best movie (The Dirty Dozen). He's somewhat amusing but never quite as funny as you think he should be.

That seems to be the problem with the movie in a nutshell. Fonda, in the days before people hated her for her politics, never looked lovelier and  is sincere as Cat, but only afforded a few really funny moments. Those moments are fairly early in the movie and mostly involve her interactions with the two rustlers. Callan and Hickman are probably the two funniest characters and even they aren't as good as they should be. They're best material is in the train at the beginning.

In fact, the movie only really shines when the Greek chorus of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye show up to sing about the movie's proceedings. This was Cole's last screen appearance. He was already dying of cancer and passed away a few months before the movie was released. But their lyrics are the most amusing material the movie has to offer.

Part of the real problem is the fact that the movie, unlike Red Garter and Blazing Saddles, never fully embraces the lunacy of the cliches it's spoofing. It almost takes them too matter of fact, missing the obvious joke. Sure, there are way worse Western spoofs out there, but sadly this could and should have been much more than it was, making it a missed opportunity.

Favorite Fridays: My Fair Lady (1964)

It seems fairly rare for a movie based on a hit Broadway show to actually retain cast members from the show. Sometimes this is because it takes too long to get the movie version going. Movie fans famously missed out on Michael Crawford playing the title role in Phantom of the Opera because of how long it took to get that film version going. Other times it's a simple case of the studio deciding to recast with more famous actors such as Kiss Me Kate. But every so often, we movie fans get a taste of the magic that Broadway audiences got. My Fair Lady is one of those times even though it almost wasn't.

Hollywood legend has it that producer Jack Warner wanted Cary Grant and James Cagney to play, respectively, Henry Higgins and Alfred Doolittle in his big screen version of My Fair Lady. Cagney turned it down on the grounds that he was retired. But, as the story goes, Grant told Warner that not only would he not do the movie, he would never do another movie for Warner Brothers if Warner didn't quit fooling around and get Rex Harrison to reprise his stage role. I don't know  if that story is true or not, but if it is, it proves Cary Grant was a pretty classy guy. As for Doolittle, Cagney's turning the film down left the door open for Stanley Holloway to reprise his role.

Of course, not everyone from the Broadway cast made it into the film. Wilfred Hyde White takes over for Robert Coote as Pickering. More controversially, Audrey Hepburn was cast in place of Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. Rex Harrison didn't want her to begin with even if he did later state she was his favorite leading lady. The Motion Picture Academy was apparently so outraged that Hepburn got the part over Andrews that she wasn't even nominated for Best Actress, even though the movie itself got 12 nominations--including for Best Actor (Harrison), Supporting Actor (Holloway) and Supporting Actress (Gladys Cooper as Mrs. Higgins)--and won 8, including Best Picture, Actor, and Director (George Cukor). Instead, Andrews was given Best Actress for Mary Poppins that year basically as a consolation prize for losing out on the role of Doolittle.


Well, I'm going to be the guy who out and out says it: Nuts to that. Audrey Hepburn is superb as Eliza Doolittle. She got robbed and mistreated by the Academy. Yes, her singing is dubbed by Marni Nixon about 90% of the time. So? The list of actresses who got dubbed in a musical movie is long and mighty: Ava Gardner in Show Boat, Rita Hayworth every single time she sang, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Debbie Reynolds in Singing In The Rain to name a few. The fact is, she acts the part. One of Harrison's concerns was if someone who was so classy all the time could play a "guttersnipe" with a cockney accent. The answer, of course, is yes, she could. You can question Jack Warner's decisions on a lot of things, but his casting of Hepburn was dead on. Point in fact, this may well be Hepburn's best movie.

By the way, she does do some singing in the film. She sings the first minute or so of Just You Wait as well as it's reprise. She also sings the sing-speak parts of The Rain In Spain and the beginning of I Could Have Danced All Night. So give her some credit, people. The simple fact is--and this will drive all the Andrews apologists nuts--that Audrey Hepburn did a better job at the part than Andrews would have. Hepburn was primarily a film actress and Andrews, at that time, was primarily a stage actress. Those are two entirely different styles of acting. And no, Andrews as Mary Poppins was not better than Hepburn as Eliza.

Most people know that this is a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's 1914 play Pygmalion. However, the musical takes most of it's cues not strictly from the play but from the 1938 film version with Leslie Howard (who was a rotten Higgins, but that's a topic for another post). The ending that tends to outrage most people was written by Shaw himself for that movie. He hated that ending, but it stuck. The premise of both versions is that arrogant professor of phonetics Henry Higgins takes in flower girl Eliza Doolittle with the bet that he can pass her off as a Duchess at the Embassy Ball six months later. Higgins, who calls himself "a confirmed old bachelor and likely to remain so", doesn't seem to realize that this "heartless guttersnipe" has a few lessons to teach him as well.

This is one of the few movie musicals to transplant every song from the play to the screen. Not even The Sound of Music did that. It is a common practice for the movie versions to drop a song or two and replace it with another often lesser song.  But anyone who fell in love with the Broadway soundtrack will be delighted to know that it's transplanted whole to the movie. Considering that this may well be the best soundtrack for a non-songbook musical, it's well deserved. In fact, the only movie musical I can think of that's not a songbook musical that's it's equal may be Kiss Me Kate, and even that one may fall a little short despite a wonderful Cole Porter score. But every song in My Fair Lady is wonderful. My personal favorite is I Could Have Danced All Night.

Harrison doesn't sing his songs so much as he sing-speaks them. But it works, and why not? It worked for Robert Preston in The Music Man, too. The more important thing here is that this is as close as modern audiences will ever get to seeing Harrison's defining role. He may have done other movies before and after, including The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Anna and the King of Siam, but he's forever Henry Higgins. After seeing him in the role, I can't imagine anyone else in the part. It is one of those perfect marriages of actor and role, the proverbial lightning in a bottle. He was honored with Best Actor and it was a well deserved honor.

Hepburn may not sing most of the time, but she acts the songs out fantastically. Holloway as her ne'er-do-well father gives a masterly comedic performance and his two songs are easily showstoppers. Come to it, Holloway should have won an Oscar as well. He steals every scene he's in from every other actor. Again, as this is modern audience's chance to see what delighted Broadway audiences for years. Jeremy Brett, who was also dubbed, manages to not make lovestruck Freddy Eynsford-Hill not a creepy stalker, which is definitely one way to look at the character, but a charming, well-meaning goof. Hyde-White was always a great character actor (and always looked to be about 80, even back in 1949's The Third Man) and he's a perfect foil for Harrison as Pickering. And if Hyde-White wasn't dubbed, he's a better singer than you'd think. He plays off Harrison beautifully. His reactions to A Hymn to Him is hysterical. Cooper's Mrs. Higgins and Mona Washburn's delightful Mrs. Pearce also due their bit as foils to Higgins. Let's not forget Theodore Bikel as "that hairy hound from Budapest" Zoltan Kaparthy. He's in the movie only about five minutes, but he's an absolute delight.

Horrifyingly, copyright holder CBS has treated this movie shamefully over the years. They let the negatives deteriorate, leading Film Restorationists Robert A. Harris and James Katz to due a Herculean restoration in 1994, which did actually lead to a re-release (which is where I first saw the movie). The DVDs have apparently been skittish over the years. But most shameful of all is the fact that the Blu Ray of this was massively mishandled. That's a heart breaker. This is my favorite musical and one of the main movies I most wanted on Blu Ray. Being as this is the 50th Anniversary, it is to be hoped that CBS corrects this, but there has been no word on such as of this writing.

Still, it really is a wonderful movie. Among musicals, only Singing in the Rain can be argued as being better. But that may simply be because Singing in the Rain has the great dancing, the only thing missing from this. That said, My Fair Lady has a fabulous cast, gorgeous sets, and hands down the greatest original soundtrack ever.

3D THURSDAY: GRAVITY (2013)

I am of the opinion that there are certain movies you need to see in 3D. Some of them--mostly from the 80s--are pretty pointless without it in fact. Let's be honest here. Nobody watches Comin' At Ya! unless they are watching it in 3D. Other movies stand on their own in 2D but are also very different experiences in 3D. Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder is one such example. Surprisingly, Alfonso Cuarron's Gravity is another.

Surprisingly because unlike Dial M which was shot in true 3-D--the only way they could do it in 1954--Gravity is converted from 2-D. Conversions are always a tricky proposition. Even the really well done ones like Marvel's The Avengers don't look as good as real 3-D. The good ones fall just short and the bad ones--I'm looking at you Harry Potter--are spectacular insults to 3-D. They leave you not only wondering why you're wearing 3-D glasses, but why you paid extra to do so.

Gravity, however, doesn't look like a conversion. Part of that is because only 27 of it's 91 minutes were converted. The rest of it is CGI, so the 3-D is real by way of virtual twin cameras. Impressively, it's impossible to tell the difference between the two. Of course, it also helps that the movie seems to have been shot with 3-D in mind instead of just as an afterthought.

Gravity tells a simple story. George Clooney is astronaut Matt Kowalski, on his last space flight. Sandra Bullock is Doctor Ryan Stone, on her first space mission. While making repairs on the Hubble, a destroyed Russian satellite sets off a catastrophic chain reaction of debris that destroys their space shuttle. Trapped in space, the two have to find a way back to Earth by making their way over to the ISS.
After the amazing 17 minute opening shot, once the disaster strikes, the film becomes an incredibly tense ride, more so in 3-D. I saw this in the theater in 3-D and found myself hyperventilating when Bullock first spins out into space. Even at home that scene caused my heart to race, that's how effective it is.

Unfortunately, the effect is lessened in 2-D. This is one of those cases where 3-D gives genuine perspective to what is going on and actually heightens the sense of danger. The last time 3-D was used quite that effectively was in 1953's Inferno with it's deep and dizzying shot of the canyon Robert Ryan is trapped in. This is 3-D as a You-Are-There experience.This is what 3-D is meant for the most and puts the film firmly in the Top Ten of 3-D movies, right alongside the classics of the Golden Age.

The experience is helped along by the cast. Clooney and Bullock truly sell the film. Clooney exudes the confidence of a veteran astronaut while Bullock captivates use with her performance as the rookie who must step up or die. According to interviews with Bullock, it was a rough movie to shoot and she fully deserved her Oscar nomination for it.

In addition, Alfonso Cuarron became the second director in a row to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. Ang Lee previously took the same Oscar for 2012's Life of Pi. The mere fact that 3-D movies are winning major Oscars now shows that the form is gaining legitimacy. It is not unreasonable to think that one day a 3-D movie will take the Best Picture Oscar.

Some people have questioned the science behind the film, but that always seems to happen with a picture like this. Truth to tell, the overall premise of the debris chain reaction is in the realm of theoretical possibility, so the film's science isn't all that shaky. On top of which, it's effects are every bit as groundbreaking as those seen in 2001. Point in fact, I think it's a better movie, too.

At any rate, the next time you wonder what 3-D is good for, I suggest you watch this. Then you may just get it.

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

There are movies that become a permanent part of their decade's landscape, movies that one thinks of instantly whenever the topic of movies of that decade get brought up. Winner of multiple Academy Awards including it's famous theme song and nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is one such movie for the 1950s.

Based on the autobiographical novel A Many Splendored Thing by Han Suyin, the movie tells the story of an Eurasian doctor who meets and eventually falls in love with a married war correspondent. The novel was based on Dr. Han's real life affair with Ian Morrison, a war correspondent she met in Hong Kong in 1949. For the novel and movie, Morrison's name was changed to Mark Elliot. The story takes place as the Communists take over China and the beginning of the Korean War.

Jennifer Jones plays Dr. Han, who is doing her residency in Hong Kong in 1949. She is a widow, as her husband was a general killed by the Communists. She has a small room in the hospital itself and devotes her life to medicine. At a party given by one of the directors of the hospital, she meets Mark Elliot (William Holden). He pursues her and she at first rebuffs him. For one thing, he's married. For another, after her husband's death, she turned off her heart. Mark is persistent and she eventually falls for him, causing her to be ostracized by the greater Chinese community. Though they briefly find happiness, his wife refuses to give him the divorce he wants so he can marry Dr. Han and he eventually is shipped off to the Korean War.

This was one of the early CinemaScope films, but curiously fails to take full advantage of the process. Outside of the requisite gimmicky shots at the beginning of the point of view of an ambulance racing through the Hong Kong streets, the film doesn't really do anything with the process. Most early CinemaScope movies fill the image from left to right, especially with the placement of the actors. In this one, the actors mostly get clumped together in one area of the screen. There are some panaromic shots of Hong Kong, where the movie was actually filmed, but I guess after the opening bit, director Henry King thought, "well, there's my nod to CinemaScope. Now on with the picture." Which is odd, since those shots, like similar ones in How To Marry A Millionaire are obviously supposed to duplicate the thrill of Cinerama, something CinemaScope could never do. CinemaScope was always about the left to right image and widening that image, so it's use here is a little disappointing.

The film also fails to take advantage of the undertones of it's story. We're told repeatedly early on that Eurasians are treated badly by the British, but outside of some somewhat racist or at least clueless dialogue by the wife of the hospital's director (Isobel Elsom) at the party, this isn't evident. We're also told that Chinese  people having affairs with foreigners, especially married ones, will lead to ostracization in the Chinese community. Again, outside of two scenes of Kam Tong's Dr. Sen berating Jones for her affair, this doesn't seem to come out much, either. It's almost as if the film is afraid to commit to the difficulties it claims the couple should be having. Which is a shame, because it makes it a little bit harder to be fully invested in them and feel for them. The film only really pulls through in the emotionally charged ending, which would have been even better if it had committed to it's undertones a lot earlier.

I'm not saying that they had to go out of their way to wreck the lives of the two lovers. However, there's an awful lot of talk about things that could come to pass and very few examples of it actually coming to pass. As a result, the tension of the love affair isn't fully there. The most tension comes from whether or not Holden can get a divorce from his wife. Even that isn't fully realized. I wanted this movie to make me feel bad for these two, to really invest in them. After all, doesn't Romeo and Juliet make you feel for it's star crossed lovers by making the tensions between their families palpable? I may have to read the book to see if it expands on any of the themes the movie suggests but doesn't much get into.

What we're left with is Holden, Jones, and some lyrical dialogue. I suppose for a love story that should be enough, but it's not quite for this. Don't get me wrong. Holden and Jones are wonderful in their parts. I've never actually seen a movie Holden was in that I didn't like him. He was a terrific actor consistently and he's extremely effective here. He plays Mark as eager in the early scenes, but not overbearing or obnoxious in his pursuit of Jones.  When he tells her in the canoe "I would never do anything to hurt you", he truly sells it. As for Jones, she does the right thing and doesn't play Dr. Han as a caricature, but as a human being. I completely bought her transformation from the scientific doctor in the beginning not wanting to commit to her heart to the passionate person she becomes. That transformation is part of what makes the movie's last 20 minutes so emotionally charged, in fact. It's a little bit amazing that they seem to have such chemistry together, as by all reports they couldn't stand each other on set. There are reports that Jones ate garlic before the intimate scenes to discourage known womanizer Holden. She also apparently complained about everything on the film, including her makeup which she felt made her look old. I don't agree with her assessment if that was the case.

As far as the dialogue goes, it  really is lyrical. Some love stories have dialogue that makes you say aloud "who in the world actually talks like that?" but not this one. Maybe it's the fact that this was based on a true story, but nothing feels over-baked or sappy. In fact, as far as romantic movies go, this is probably one of the best in that regards.

The supporting cast is just that: a supporting cast. Nonetheless, there are a few amusing bits. Character actor Phillip Ahn plays Jones's Third Uncle and gets the film's most amusing line when he says "let us have tea and talk of absurdities". Keye Luke also has a bit part as a relative of Jones. Richard Loo, who later played Hai Fat in The Man With The Golden Gun and Major Chin in The Sand Pebbles, plays a rare sympathetic part as the husband of Jones's best friend.

Mention must also be made of Alfred Newman's score. It's a fairly lush score that incorporates the theme song throughout. The title theme was written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. We get bits of it throughout before getting the full blast sung during the emotional ending. It's one of those songs you either love or it gets on your nerves. I actually like it myself. The recording by The Four Aces became a number one hit for four weeks before Rock and Roll took over the charts.

At the end of the day this is a very good movie that could have been just a little bit more. It's bouyed by it's stars but one can't help feeling it holds too much back both in it's cinematography and exploration of it's themes.But the thing that nails it and makes this movie the classic that it has become is the ending, which is guaranteed to not leave a dry eye in the house.

Sequels, Remakes, and Reboots Part II: Remakes

There are people who believe that only the original version of something is a good version. That anything that follows is automatic trash. You'll find this with characters played by different actors, such as James Bond. A large number of people insist that the "original" James Bond, Sean Connery, is the only one worth watching. This thinking applies to songs, with some people going so far as to say that any musical artist that does a remake (they're actually called covers in musical terms) of a song sucks. And of course, it applies to movies, with people citing that the original version is always the best.


Yes, well, Sean Connery wasn't the original James Bond. Barry Nelson beat him to the part by 8 years.


You'd be hard pressed to find a musical artist who has been around for a while that didn't do a cover. Even the Beatles did a cover of Twist and Shout. After all, you can't be a Celine Dion fan if you don't like remakes, since pretty much every single album of hers is almost guaranteed to have a remake (or two or three) on it.


And yes, Virginia, some of the best versions of movies--indeed some of the best movies ever--are remakes.


I get that it's fashionable for Hollywood to do remakes. They truly seem to be on a kick of remaking 80s movies. I'll even go so far as to say that with all the 80s remakes going on over the last five or six years, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm reliving my teenage years. God, I hope not.


One of the most famous film noirs, the Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon, is actually the third version of that story. It was originally filmed in 1931 with Ricardo Cortez. It was filmed again as Satan Met A Lady in 1936 with Warren William and Bette Davis. But it was the third version in 1941 that gets remembered and loved. I haven't watched the 1936 version yet, but I have seen the 1931 version. It isn't bad and it is Pre-Code, so it's racier than the 1941 version, but it famously blows it in the ending. And none of the cast--not even Dwight Frye as Wilmer--match their 1941 counterparts.


Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock apparently both thought remakes had their place as they both remade earlier films of theirs in 1956. DeMille chose to remake his 1923 The Ten Commandments while Hitchcock remade his 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much. There's plenty of debate about the Hitchcock films--both versions have their fans--but most people prefer the 56 version of The Ten Commandments.


Speaking of religious films that got a superior remake, it is worth mentioning the 1959 film that won more Academy Awards than any other, a record it held until it was tied in 1997 by Titanic. That film, Ben Hur, is probably the best argument you can make for good remakes. In fact, the 1950s is peppered with remakes that are either as good as what came before or just plain kick the original in the teeth: House of Wax, Miss Sadie Thompson, A Star Is Born, Hound of the Baskervilles, Dracula, The Curse of Frankenstein, and The Mummy are all pretty good examples.


"Okay, so they knew how to do good remakes in the 1950s", some of you may be grumbling. "They can't possibly do good remakes nowadays."


Actually, they can and do. I love the Rat Pack myself, but the George Clooney version of Ocean's 11 beats the Rat Pack version in almost every level. For one thing, it's more fun. And while it can be argued that the Rat Pack version has the better ending, that and Dean Martin singing "Ain't That a Kick In The Head" are about the only things the original has over the remake.


What about King Kong, the poster child for poorly thought out remakes? It is true that Dino De Laurentis unleashed a mind-numbingly awful remake of King Kong in 1976. In fact, it's pretty shocking how the special effects of the 1976 version are such an epic fail as compared to the 1933 original. I mean, they just look cheap. But, while Peter Jackson's 2005 version isn't better than the 1933 version--it's far too bloated and excessive for it's own good--it's actually a pretty good movie. It's certainly not as bad as the 1976 version. And if you could cut a good hour out of the movie, it would likely give the original a real run for the money.
Other good, recent remakes include 3:10 to Yuma and True Grit, both of which can be argued as being better than their previous versions. Certainly 3:10 to Yuma is better. True Grit is at least as good if not better than the Wayne version.



The most common (and absurd) argument I've heard regarding remakes is the age old question of "Why do they remake only good movies? Why don't they remake bad movies to make better versions?" First off, they do remake bad movies from time to time. 1953's Catwomen of the Moon was remade in 1958 as Missile to the Moon. 1982's My Bloody Valentine was remade in 2009 as My Bloody Valentine 3D.  That's just two such examples. Second, do you know what you get when you remake a bad movie? How about...a bad movie? Neither one of those remakes are what you could call an improvement on their originals.  Besides, do you really want a remake of The Terror of Tiny Town or Reefer Madness? I didn't think so.


Are there rotten remakes? Of course there are. Nobody is arguing that. 1988's The Blob and 1994's The Getaway are both pretty poor, just proving the adage that you don't remake Steve McQueen.
Are remakes necessary then becomes the next snooty question. Necessity is not the point nor should it be the question, however. The question is or at least should be, like any film, are they good, bad, or indifferent. As with almost any type of film--except porn, of course--you can find examples of all three. So a generalization of "all remakes are awful bastardizations of the original" is really pretty silly at the end of the day. The great ones or at least the good ones will stick around and probably outshine the original to the point that we don't recognize that they aren't the original and the bad ones will be flushed down the drain like most bad movies do.


I don't watch every remake. I still haven't watched the redo of Footloose and I seriously doubt I will. They can keep the slasher remakes, too, as I have no interest in them. I had no interest in the original slasher movies in the 1980s, so why would I be interested in their remakes?  But I'm not going to write off remakes entirely and some that are still coming have me interested, such as this year's Godzilla. So relax and remember, this is nothing new. More to the point, this can just as often be a good thing as bad.

Airport (1970)

Contrary to popular belief, Airport was not the first Disaster movie. The genre goes back to at least 1901 with a movie called Fire!, which concerned some firefighters battling a blaze in a burning building and rescuing a couple of people. A little over a decade later, the sinking of the Titanic inspired a couple of films. The 1930s gave us a minor wave that included one about a Tsunami (Deluge, 1932), the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (San Francisco, 1936), the great Chicago fire (In Old Chicago), and a hurricane (The Hurricane, 1937). The genre kicked back up in the 50s with a pair of movies about the Titanic and a couple of airline disaster pics, including The High and The Mighty (1954) with John Wayne and the movie that actually inspired Airplane!, Zero Hour (1957), which happened to be written by the same guy who wrote the book this movie was based on. So, as I say, the Disaster Genre was nothing new when Universal released this adaption of Arthur Hailey's novel in 1970.


The formula seems to have been set up in the 1950s with films like The High and The Mighty. Get a bunch of characters each with their own storyline, toss them together like a salad, and then converge the multiple storylines into one by putting as many of the characters into danger through either a natural or man made disaster. Airport follows this and adds a couple of things they couldn't have gotten away with in the 1950s. Humorously, Airport was rated G nonetheless, despite including such family friendly themes as people having extra-marital affairs and planning to blow up airplanes over the ocean. But I'm getting ahead of myself.


Burt Lancaster is in charge of a fictional Chicago airport and he's up to his control tower with problems:
a)The worst blizzard in years is pounding the airport
b)a plane gets stuck on a runway blocking it
c)Local residents are protesting the one working runways since it cause planes to take off right over their houses
d)His marriage to shrewish wife Dana Wynter is falling apart due to his never being home--though that's okay since he's actually having an affair with co-worker Jean Seberg
e)A little old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) is causing all sorts of havoc
f)His pilot brother-in-law (Dean Martin) is sending reports to the higher ups trying to undermine him
g)There's a mad bomber (Van Heflin) about to board the flight to Rome.


Martin is one of the pilots on that Rome flight, checking main pilot Barry Nelson (who OO7 fans know as the actual first person to play James Bond on TV). Martin is having an affair with stewardess Jacqueline Bissett, who it turns out is pregnant with his kid.  Hayes is on the flight, too, and happens to be sitting right next to Heflin. Meantime, on the ground, Lancaster enlists George Kennedy's help in trying to get the stuck airplane off the runway, especially when he finds out about Heflin.


Beyond the people listed above, we also have Maureen Stapleton as Heflin's wife--she's the one who inadvertently tips the airline off to him--Barbara Hale as Martin's patient wife, Whit Bissell (Creature From the Black Lagoon) as a passenger, and Lloyd Nolan as a Customs Officer who has a niece on the flight.


Interestingly, the actual disaster--that is, the bomb going off--is a pretty small part of the movie. In fact, the disaster actually doesn't hit until around 90 minutes in. In this respect, the movie is very much like The High and The Mighty. It concerns itself much more with the characters and their stories than it does just throwing them into danger. We're given time to know these characters and get to care about them. Later Disaster movies couldn't wait to get the carnage going, which might be why so many of them fail. But Airport is good, old fashioned storytelling and I can appreciate that. It also helps that everyone in the cast turns in excellent performances. Hayes actually won an Academy Award for her performance and she deserved it. She's a delight in the role and steals every scene she's in, even from such major stars as Lancaster and Martin. Plus she plays a crucial role in the attempt to stop Heflin.


Airport did big business in 1970 and helped start the trend of the all-star big budget Disaster film. The Poseidon Adventure, released two years later, made sure that these sort of movies were a thing for the next eight years. Make of that what you want. At least those eight years gave us The Towering Inferno, a film that pretty much justifies the existence of the entire genre. That said, Airport runs a close second. It's also a fascinating snapshot of the pre-9/11 world of airline travel. Universal released this on Blu Ray in 2012 and did a nice job of it, even if they didn't do a making of documentary. Still, if you can sit for storytelling and don't need action and dead bodies every two minutes to hold your attention, I can safely recommend giving Airport a try, especially on a snowy day.