PLAY MISTY FOR ME 1971

I have a comprehensive familiarity with the movies of Clint Eastwood that is grossly disproportionate to my relative indifference to him as an actor and director. While neither actively seeking him out nor going out of my way to avoid him, I’ve nevertheless somehow managed to see roughly 19 films starring the empty chair monologist of the 2012 GOP convention. That’s neck to neck with the number of Joan Crawford films I’ve seen…and I like her!   

Part of this I lay at the feet of my older sister. In my youth, she harbored such a take-no-prisoners crush on the former Rawhide star that whenever one of his movies played at the local theater, going to see it was a fait accompli in our house. No discussion. No argument. No resistance. I saw Paint Your Wagon, Coogan’s Bluff, and all those indistinguishable “rob, rape, ‘n’ shoot” spaghetti westerns of his, more times than I can possibly count. 

The other, more persuasive, part of this I attribute to Eastwood’s rather savvy handling of his career. Clint Eastwood has always had an eye for choosing roles that don’t press too heavily against his self-professed limited range, yet often they are in films with themes that are intriguing enough in their own right. Movies I would be interested in checking out independent of any consideration of Eastwood's participation. The Beguiled, Tightrope, The Bridges of Madison County, Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Million Dollar Baby, and Sudden Impact are all films I wanted to see in spite of Clint Eastwood, not because of him. 

Clint Eastwood as David Garver

Jessica Walter as Evelyn Draper

Donna Mills as Tobie Williams

Can we all pause for a moment to appreciate these awesome/awful '70s hairdos? 
Clint rocks an intricately sculptured, casual mass of blow-dried masculinity, while Walters and Mills both sport saucy variations on the ubiquitous Jane Fonda/Susannah York/Carol Brady layered shag.

The plot of Play Misty for Me is as simple as it is familiar: David Garver (Eastwood) is the honey-voiced (and by the size of his bachelor pad, financially successful) deejay of a light-jazz radio program in picturesque Carmel, California. Although “hung up” on local artist Tobie Williams (Mills)—aka “One of the foxiest chicks on the peninsula”—freewheeling David is also known to play the field a bit. It's David's propensity for quickie, love-the-one-you’re-with hook-ups that lands the smooth-talker in the bed of dark-eyed Evelyn Draper (Walters), a one-night-stand bar pickup who also just happens to be the provocative “Play ‘Misty’ for me” serial caller to his radio show.

While it would be two more years before Erica Jong’s “zipless fuck” entered into the sexual revolution lexicon; almost immediately David’s no-strings fling with the pleasant-appearing easy-listening groupie begins showing signs of growing increasingly less zipless and markedly more fucked. Faster than you can say “boiled bunnies” (see: Fatal Attraction, Play Misty for Me’s unofficial 1987 remake), Evelyn goes from fan to fanatic as she launches on an ever-escalating campaign of stalking and harassment, desperate to have David for herself alone, or pledged to ruining his life in retaliation for the perceived rejection.

Always a fan of thrillers, I was keen on seeing Play Misty for Me the moment I saw its Psycho-esque poster in the “Coming Soon to This Theater!” display case in a local movie theater lobby. And best of all, not a single gun, horse, or poncho in sight!  But wouldn’t you know it...by 1971 my sister was old enough to move into a place of her own, and so subsequently, the opening of the latest Clint Eastwood film no longer engendered the same degree of mandatory household allegiance it once had. In fact, everybody in the family was so relieved to be freed of my sister’s despotic, Eastwood-sway,  I was unsuccessful in persuading a single soul to go with me to see Play Misty for Me. (Which was probably for the best, as nobody wants to see a 13-year-old boy watching a movie through the fingers thrust over his eyes.)

"...an invitation to terror!" (Early advertising tagline)

In his first outing as director, Clint Eastwood definitely shows his inexperience (the trite romantic montage and interminable Monterey Jazz Festival footage play havoc with the film’s already shaky pacing), but he also shows a great deal of talent. Play Misty for Me is a thrill-ride suspense thriller that actually works, which is something not every entry in the genre can lay claim to. The original screenplay by Jo Heims and Dean Riesner has an irresistibly relatable premise that Eastwood does justice to by filming in a professional, straightforward manner refreshingly devoid of the usual self-consciously arty affectations that tend to mar so many debut directorial efforts of actors (that same year Jack Nicholson directed his first film: the plodding and oh-so-dated campus drama, Drive, He Said).

Don Siegel as Murphy 
As a favor to Eastwood, director Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) consented to appear in a cameo role as the bartender assisting David in his gambit to meet Evelyn. Siegel directed a total of five films with Eastwood and is said to have been instrumental in guiding Eastwood's hand in Play Misty for Me

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I get a huge kick out of movies where the leading men (especially if they are known for their macho and sex appeal) consciously take on roles that attempt to poke holes in the Male Mystique. Action fans tend to look on this as emasculating the hero, but if you’re longing to see men portrayed on the screen as something more authentic than wish-fulfillment templates of idealized masculinity, these self-aware implosions of archaic gender roles make for arresting character drama. 

Warren Beatty did it beautifully in Shampoo, and in the provocative and underrated Civil War drama, The Beguiled (released eight months apart, both The Beguiled and Play Misty for Me were co-written by women) Eastwood and director Don Siegel messed with a lot of men’s heads by depicting America’s #1 action hero as a hapless male at the mercy of a houseful of women.

Much in the way that glacially beautiful female sex symbols of the '60s discovered displaying a sense of humor to be the quickest route toward becoming humanized in the public's eye—Candice Bergen in Starting Over, Raquel Welch in The Three Musketeers—I find that macho action stars are only palatable to me when accompanied by a healthy dose of vulnerability.

One way Play Misty For Me conveys this vulnerability is through the composition of shots which emphasize the shift in gender power dynamics. As seen in these screencaps, Evelyn is often photographed in positions of superiority over David. She is forever pinning him down, looming over him, and basically reinforcing her dominance. David's diminished importance in the shots reflect his loss of control and power over his life. 

The vast majority of the characters Clint Eastwood built his career and reputation upon have struck me as being fairly insufferable. No matter how well-chiseled, a monosyllabic hunk of granite is still a rock. That's why I've always preferred him in average-Joe parts like Play Misty for Me's laid-back deejay, David Garver. Playing a man used to having things go his way suddenly forced to deal with the consequences of his actions, Eastwood's squinty impenetrability takes on human dimensions. He becomes a person I can relate to, if not necessarily care about. The humanizing effect is one big reason why, after all these years, Play Misty for Me has remained my favorite of all of his films. The other reason is the memorably unhinged performance of Jessica Walter.

Jessica Walter was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe for Play Misty for Me but lost out to Jane Fonda in Klute. Clearly a case of dueling shag haircuts.

One of the more terrifying things I learned while researching Play Misty for Me is that in 1970, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Ross Hunter - "old fashioned glamour!" devotee and producer dedicated to keeping older actresses employed (Portrait in Black) - had purchased the rights to the property. He planned on developing it as a vehicle for good but unlikely actress Dana Wynter. Still, anyone who's seen her witch-on-wheels performance in Hunter’s Airport couldn't deny she's precisely the kind of woman you wouldn't want to have mad at you.

Clarice Taylor as Birdie
Fans of The Cosby Show will recognize Taylor as Anna Huxtable, Bill Cosby's mother

PERFORMANCES

"The only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson, and that's ME, baby, remember?"  - Valley of the Dolls

Say what you will about Clint Eastwood as an actor, but he’s not one to surround himself with mediocrity in order to make himself look better. Many of his best films have been the result of his collaborating with talents which (in my opinion) far outclass his own: Meryl Streep, Geneviève Bujold, Geraldine Page, Gene Hackman—and the results have been all the better for it.
Maybe when you’re a megawatt personality like Barbra Streisand, it’s tough to find a male co-star with enough onscreen charisma to keep up (although I can’t say it has ever looked as though she wore herself out searching). 

But Eastwood, a good actor of limited range, is smart to cast co-stars who help him look better and bump up his game a notch. And it's to Eastwood's credit that he so graciously hands over the entirety of Play Misty for Me to Jessica Walter, whose portrayal seriously puts this film over. She's not simply good in this, she's GOOD in this. She makes Eastwood appear more engaged and present than usual, while giving her underwritten role just the right amount of sane and just the right amount of batshit crazy to make for a compelling, chilling, and oh-so-convincing screen heavy.

Armed with precious little in the way of backstory for Evelyn (we don't even know what she lives on), The sole bit of information she discloses about herself is that she lived in Albany when she was 19, but then, she's not exactly what you'd call a reliable narrator. In spite of this, Walter creates a character whose mounting instability always feels as though it's coming from a place very real. Even if it's a reality that only takes place in her head. I first became aware of Jessica Walter in Sidney Lumet's ensemble drama The Group (1966), in which her bitchy, motormouth character made a strong impression (as it also did, I understand, with Eastwood, who cast Walter after seeing her in that film in spite of the studio pressing for Lee Remick). Of course, I'm a huge fan of her priceless comedic work in TV's Arrested Development, but the knife-wielding Evelyn Draper is a nerve-rattling performance that I'll always think of as one of my top favorite Jessica Walter performances.

Donna Mills of Knots Landing fame is saddled with the largely thankless, ornamental role of Dave's true blue girlfriend, Tobie. Serving chiefly as a plot construct, Tobie is designed to make Eastwood's character more sympathetic and provide gender role contrast (she's sweet, soft-spoken, and passive to Evelyn's in-your-face confrontational). She also makes a good potential victim to add to the film's body count.
Play Misty for Me also boasts two by-now-tiresome cliche stereotypes that were a tad fresher back in 1971. Every movie that sought to brand itself with a superficial coating of "hipness" featured a gay character (Tobie has a swishy, gay best friend) and a Black character (Dave has the obligatory jive-talkin' soul brother buddy in addition to a standard-issue sassy Black housekeeper). I found myself praying for Evelyn and her knife would show up each time these characters appeared. Half of my prayers were answered. 

Design Technology for Tighty-Whities Had Not Yet Been Perfected
In later years my sister would tell me that this scene was the catalyst for her eventual disenchantment with Clint Eastwood (citing the uniform, Gumby-like taper of his physique, plus the droopy drawers). But I suspect it was really when he started making those redneck "Every Which Way..." comedies. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

My aforementioned affinity for films that tweak the hypermasculine ideal finds its complement in films depicting women turning the tables on men and acting out in assertive ways atypical to the conventions of the horror/suspense-thriller genres. 

I’m crazy about movies like Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Pretty Poison (1968 ), That Cold Day in the Park (1969), Kitten With a Whip (1964), Andy Warhol's BAD (1977), Eye of the Cat (1969), Remember My Name (1978), and of course, Fatal Attraction. Not just because I've grown weary of violence against women depicted as entertainment in 90% of what comes out of Hollywood, but because it intrigues me how the mere refocusing of aggression from female to male within a narrative can result in such a huge paradigm shift that even the old feels new.

My Not So Funny Valentine

Apropos of nothing perhaps, save for what passes for courting in motion pictures, but in watching Play Misty for Me recently, it struck me as odd that the trope of the ardent lover who won't take no for an answer has been a staple of both thrillers and romantic comedies. It's weird to think that you could take the basic "psycho-chick" plotline of Play Misty for Me, recast Clint Eastwood's pursued "victim" with a rom-com darling like Sarah Jessica Parker or Drew Barrymore; substitute Jessica Walter's obsessive lover with Adam Sandler or Seth Rogen, and, taking away the knives and death threats...you have the same "chase her until you wear down her defenses" premise that's at the center of I don't know how many excruciating romantic comedies.

Evelyn and David "meet cute" in a way that's kind of creepy

Perhaps that's what makes a thriller like Play Misty for Me click with audiences; we can all relate on some level. At one time or another we've all known what it's like to pursue or be pursued, yet unsure as to whether we're coming on too strong, misreading the signals, or inadvertently leading a person on. In songs, literature, and movies, the concept of men relentlessly pursuing a love interest is reinforced as romantic. Gender double standards instantly brand a woman doing the same as threatening (tragically ironic since in real life, women are statistically the ones more likely to be assaulted or killed). Rom-coms tell men they should never stop trying to win the person they love. When it comes to women doing the same, the word from men in thrillers like Play Misty for Me is, "Enough already!" 

After an argument, Evelyn shows up at David's door wearing nothing under her overcoat. In 1989 John Cusack would pull a similar stunt (with a blasting boombox substituting for standing there starkers) in Say Anything. Although depicted as a romantic gesture, it always seemed kind of creepy stalker-ish to me. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Coming as it does at the tail end of the '60s “free love” movement and the start of the promiscuous, swinging singles bar era that would dovetail into the joyless, Looking for Mr. Goodbar end of the sexual revolution; it’s difficult not to project onto Play Misty for Me’s rather straightforward thriller plot, a whole heap of sexual cautionary-tale subtext. 

Considerable footage (perhaps a tad too much) is devoted to capturing the beauty of the Carmel, California locations

When I look at the film today, I’m reminded of how very much Play Misty for Me is a product of its time in terms of clothing (oh, brother!), hairstyles (see above), slang (“Everythang is gonna be everythanng!”), and music (Misty, Erroll Garner’s 1954 classic is a hauntingly ideal piece to build a movie around). I'm still able to appreciate the film as a very effective thriller (if a tad on the TV movie side in its visual blandness) but I don't shy from enjoying some of the film's dated, by-now-familiar elements that have taken on an air of cap or comedy for me. And by this I mean, the way Evelyn's rages tend to make me think I'm looking at the young Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development. Or how, in these post-Mommie Dearest years, it's difficult (especially if you see this with an audience) not to find Evelyn's hair-trigger mood swings to be reminiscent of Faye Dunaway's iconic performance (scissors!).  

In early drafts of the screenplay, David did not have a steady girlfriend. It was decided that Evelyn would appear more dangerous (and David more sympathetic) if she represented a threat to the couple's "domestic" happiness

What does seem to traverse all generations is the film’s reinforcement of the old-fashioned belief that behind all the desire for sexual freedom, emancipation, and lack of commitment, true happiness can only be achieved through monogamy, domesticity, and adherence to traditional gender roles.

One of the reasons I think Play Misty for Me was so popular with the public is because long before Evelyn begins exhibiting signs of serious mental illness, she is depicted as a threat and disruption to the natural order of things. David is a skirt-chaser, but a reformed one, dedicated to changing his ways and starting anew with torch-carrying Tobie. But From the start, Evelyn fails to adhere to normative standards of male/female interaction. She’s the sexual instigator when David would prefer she sit by the phone and wait until HE calls her. She has a temper (women in the movies were seldom allowed to swear. Every time Evelyn blurts out an obscenity in this film, the camera cuts to people reacting like that audience watching "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers. 

Possibly most damning for Evelyn as a character the film wants to stack the deck against, is her assuming she has some say in where the relationship is going. In wanting to move faster than David (way faster) she is depicted as dominating and grasping.

Thrillers and horror movies are rooted in the introduction of chaos into order. In the '70s, what could be more chaotic to the status quo of male/female relations than the introduction of Women's Lib? Men have been sexually terrified of women since the days of the film noir femme fatale. With the dawning of the sexual revolution, the onscreen fireworks really began. 
Play Misty for Me may not have been the first psycho-sexual thriller, but it's stood the test of time by remaining one of the most enduringly enjoyable.

BONUS MATERIAL

What's in a name? An early mock-up ad reveals that, at least for a time, Universal was going to jettison the graceful ambiguity of Play Misty for Me and go for the hard sell.

Clint Eastwood's prior film, the clever, female-centric The Beguiled, suffered at the boxoffice due to it representing a true departure for Eastwood fans (he's a baddie). The slasher film rose to horror film popularity in the late '70s, with Play Misty for Me Eastwood can be credited with delivering one of the first (if not the first) genre entries of the decade, spearheading a genuine trend.

Starsky & Hutch "Fatal Charm" -1977: Pert and perky Karen Valentine (a personal fave) is cast against type and playing the unstable love interest of Hutch in an episode that is a near-direct rip-off of Play Misty for Me.

"Annabel Lee"  - Edgar Allan Poe 1849

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009- 2014

AIRPORT 1970

When I watch a movie like Airport—producer Ross (“I gave the public what they wanted”) Hunter’s arthritically old-fashioned, $10 million, all-star, big screen adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s ubiquitous 1968 bestseller—I’m reminded once again why the late '60s and '70s represent my absolute favorite era in American filmmaking.

The diversity of what was hitting the theaters was astounding. In 1970 alone we saw the release of complex films like Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's arty and experimental Performance, the underground films of Andy Warhol (Trash), big-budget acts of desperation like Myra Breckinridge, documentaries (Woodstock), and the explosion in Black cinema represented by Cotton Comes to Harlem.

There were last-gasp overblown musicals (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), the mainstream gay dramas of The Boys in the Band, sexually subversive comedies like Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Something for Everyone, significant foreign films like Le Boucher and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, forgotten oddities of the Dinah East stripe, Disney’s stuck-in-a-time-warp family films (The Boatniks), and breakout independents like John Avildsen’s Joe. And in the middle of all this, a big, glossy, old-Hollywood gasbag melodrama in the tradition of Grand Hotel meets The V.I.Ps…all in the same year!

"What a dramatic airport!" - Mel Brooks "High Anxiety" (1977)

Looking over the list of films cited above (representing merely the tip of the iceberg of what 1970 produced), I can scarcely get over what a broad array of films were released. As Hollywood blindly stumbled about in a struggle to conduct business as usual while trying to keep in step with changing public tastes, we movie lovers reaped the benefit of their creative identity crisis. 

Being just a kid at the time, I wasn't aware of the severe economic toll Hollywood’s growing pains were taking on the industry. All I knew was that you could look at the entertainment section of a newspaper (back when they could advertise X-rated and G-rated films side by side) and find what then appeared to be a record of the entire spectrum of human experience; all tastes and points of view represented. This broad-scope representation of life is precisely why I fell in love with movies as a youngster, and I had no reason to believe this wasn’t how it was always going to be.

What I'm hoping to achieve in detailing this brief and shining Camelot-esque moment in cinema history, is the granting of a kind of artistic clemency for myself. A nostalgic leniency, if you will, which begs one to take into account how, in my growing up in an atmosphere of democratic tolerance for films of all kinds, I was able to reconcile the glaring inconsistency—not to mention lapse in taste—behind my being 12-years-old and having as my absolute top, top, favorite movies at the time: Rosemary’s Baby, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Midnight Cowboy, …and Airport.

Burt Lancaster as Mel Bakersfeld

Jean Seberg as Tanya Livingston

Dean Martin as Vernon Demerest

Jacqueline Bisset as Gwen Meighen

Miss Helen Hays as Ada Quonsett

George Kennedy as Joe Patroni

Maureen Stapleton as Inez Guerrero

Van Heflin as D.O Guerrero

Dana Wynter as Cindy Bakersfeld

Yes, Airport. A movie whose clichés are piled higher than those snowdrifts disabling a Boeing 707 in the middle of a busy runway. And whose production values, dialogue, characters, and soap opera complications are all so cobwebby and old-fashioned that movie critic Judith Crist was inspired to dub it " The best film of 1944.”

Nevertheless, Airport was THE film to see in 1970, and when I did, I went positively dotty over it. I thought it was one of the most exciting, action-packed, tension-filled movies I'd ever seen. During its initial run, I saw it more times than I care to remember. 

I borrowed my mom's Reader's Digest "condensed" version of the novel (what was that condensed book thing all about, anyway?), then, convinced the abridged version had cut out a lot of then-sought-after smut, I checked out the complete novel from the library and re-read it. I even went out and purchased the soundtrack album...my first!...and wore it out (don't get me started on how off the geek-Richter-scale it is for a 12-year-old's first LP purchase to be Alfred Newman's by-turns spectacularly overcaffeinated /easy listening score for Airport). More frightening still, I played Airport with my toy model of a 747 Delta Airlines passenger jet, reenacting the pivotal disaster by cramming a firecracker into a hole I'd plastic model and lighting it. (Yikes! Let's hear it for the unsupervised play risks of my generation!)

TANYA HAS A HEART-TO-HEART WITH HER FATHER
A weird hallmark of old movies was the often huge age discrepancy between leading men and their onscreen love interests. The beautiful Jean Seberg was just 31 (although made to look like a well-preserved matron thanks to Ross Hunter's Maiden Aunt concept of beauty) to Lancaster's daddyish 56. Angie Dickinson was Ross Hunter's preferred choice for Tanya Livingston, Airport's head of customer relations and mooning love interest of married airport general manager Mel Bakersfeld, but Seberg was the one already under contract to Universal. Lancaster (who was a second choice after Gregory Peck) hated working on the film and there was no love lost between him and Seberg. Their lack of chemistry is palpable. 

What's clearer to me today, as I marvel at the way young movie audiences go ga-ga over things that are simply retreads of retreads, is that what adults in 1970 knew to be lame and hackneyed in Airport was brand new to me.

 I'm not going to say Airport isn't still one of my favorite films, for I watch it often. But I must confess that my enjoyment of it these days is strictly on par with why I repeatedly watch Valley of the Dolls, or The Oscar; which is to say, I can never get my fill when it comes to overripe Hollywood cheese. 

Airport was a huge boxoffice hit and even garnered a whopping 10 Academy Award nominations. But honestly, watching it today, I don't think there are even five consecutive minutes of Airport that don't reduce me to paroxysms of laughter. And try as I might to access the me who once watched this movie unironically, I swear, it feels as though I'm hijacking someone else's memories

GWEN HAS A HEART-TO-HEART WITH HER FATHER
Well, technically speaking, chief stewardess Gwen Meighan is merely dropping the bomb (heh-heh) to her much-married lover, pilot captain Vernon Demerest, that she is pregnant. However, what with the 27-year age spread between Bisset and Martin (she was 25 to his 52) the above caption at least psychologically fits. Incidentally, for all the coy verbiage in this scene, I can't imagine a G-rated film today featuring such a level-headed discussion about abortion without an outcry from the "How do I explain this to my kids?" set.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As the film that more or less kicked off the '70s “disaster film” craze, and the first and least cartoonish of the four airport-themed films in Universal’s franchise, Airport looks, by way of comparison to the atrocities that followed, much better than it actually is. Its plot: seven, count ‘em, seven romantic and dramatic entanglements duke it out over a seven-hour period at a busy Midwestern airport plagued by blizzards, airport noise bellyachers, and bombers.

At Lincoln International Airport, sexual tension and impending disaster are co-pilots, infidelity (real and the “lusting in my heart” variety) is virtually a job requirement, and when it comes to the way Lincoln International prioritizes customer service, mere personal tragedy and marital discord have to take a seat in coach class. In fact, the heavy doses of "The customer is always right"  and "Service with a smile" airline propaganda in this movie are the things that date Airport the most. 

Is This Any Way To Run An Airline?
This shot featuring an airline serving its customers from a tower of shrimp and a heaping bowl of iced caviar passed without notice in 1970. In 1980. when I saw Airport at a revival theater, it got one of the film's biggest laughs. And for you youngsters, the caption is a reference to a series of popular, oft-parodied National Airline commercials from the '60s in which a flight attendant (Andrea Dromm from the 1966 movie The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming) asked and answered her own rhetorical question: "Is this any way to run an airline? You bet it is!"

I’ve seen Airport far too many times to be able to ascertain whether or not it still holds up as a viable suspense melodrama. But I can attest to it being a near non-stop parade of ugly, stiff-looking fashions culled from acres of drab polyblend synthetics; static, rigidly blocked scenes (the camera must have been nailed to the floor) with actors giving TV movie-level performances, and truly terrible dialogue. For example, old-school he-man Joe Patroni still refers to women as “broads” and “dames.” And while preferable to today’s infatuation with the word “bitch,” I kinda thought that in the '70s atmosphere of  Diary of a Mad Housewife, terms like broad and dame—the Rat Pack notwithstanding—had gone out with Guys and Dolls.  Also, another thing that places Airport squarely in another time and place is, in stark contrast to today’s films, Airport displays a rather quaint interest in the lives of the middle-aged. The median age of the all-star cast reads like an AAR celebrity roster. 

 Actress Virginia Grey (Ross Hunter's "lucky charm") is cast as mom to Lou Wagner, playing her wisenheimer teenage son. That's actor Dick Weston as her skeptical-looking husband 

Airport bears all the earmarks of the kind of traditional studio-system production Hollywood has been turning out for decades. Within a few short years, Airprt most definitely would have been earmarked as a TV movie, but in the transformative era of the early '70s, the movie industry thought--not incorrectly, at least for a time--that this sort of inoffensively wholesome "family" entertainment (you know, adultery, terrorism, adorable stowaways) could serve as counter-programming. The alternative for those moviegoers who still preferred their movies to be images of a world that never was, not a reflection of what it is.  

Director/screenwriter George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street, Teacher's Pet) genuinely fashions a pretty solid (and silly) entertainment from this faithful adaptation of Hailey's exhaustively researched novel, the laughs arising chiefly out of the drop-dead serious manner in which all this nonsense is delivered.

Lloyd Nolan as Head of US Customs, Harry Standish, waxes philosophically on the art
of fraud detection: "First I look in their eyes...then the luggage." Kill me now.

PERFORMANCES
Not counting her dubbed walk-on as Miss Goodthighs in Casino Royale (1967), Airport was my first Jacqueline Bisset movie. And along with being bowled over by her beauty and "Pip pip, cheerio!" British accent, I remember being quite taken with the strength of her character. Gwen Meighen is no Ellen Ripley (Alien), but she was as close as one got to a liberated heroine in those days. Not only does she decide for herself what to do about her unplanned pregnancy, but she's so fearless and take-charge under pressure.
This movie may have been made by a bunch of old men, but they were light years ahead of the curve in giving us a female character who "acts" in the face of danger, rather than shrieks and collapses into hysterics. Universal contract player Katherine Ross was the original choice for the role and was subsequently put on suspension for turning it down (this she turns down, and says yes to The Swarm?). Bisset, having earlier stepped into the Mia Farrow role in Frank Sinatra's The Detective at the last minute, was used to being second-string.

I think my favorite scenes are those in which Bisset behaves more like the kind of flight attendants we've grown accustomed to in modern air travel. She is terrifically authoritative and stern, and I love the reactions of the other passengers...they act as though rudeness hadn't yet been invented. Here, Whit Bissell (I Was a Teenage Werewolf) tries to intercede in Bisset's elder abuse of stowaway Helen Hayes. Meanwhile, hopeful bomb-toter Van Heflin tries to act as if nothing is happening. No matter what you might think of the movie as a whole, this latter segment of Airport is pretty bravura stuff. (The blond pictured between Bisset and Hayes is Pat Priest, the 2nd Marilyn on the hit TV show The Munsters) 

While Bisset continues to dominate the film for me (she's practically the baby in the cast), over the years I've come to grow ever fonder of the laid-back performance of Dean Martin. His popular variety show was still on the air when Airport came out, but I honestly didn't care for him much as a kid. These days I rank him as my all-time favorite male vocalist (my iPod is overflowing with his mellow crooning) and his screen appearances, which I once dismissed as being so casual as to be lazy, have actually aged rather well; coming across as appealingly natural and underplayed compared to the stiff formality of actors like Burt Lancaster.

Irish-descants Maureen Stapleton and Van Heflin perhaps looked like no one's idea of Alex Hailey's Inez and Dominic Guerrero, but they give two of the more compelling performances in the film. But compelling or not, when I was a kid, all I remember about this scene was being so preoccupied with Stapleton filling those sugar dispensers. She's good!

In a film of questionable performances, it's odd that Helen Hayes' (sorry, Miss Helen Hayes') Oscar-winning turn as Ada Quonsett (described in the movie's trailer as "The mind-boggling, huggable perpetual stowaway!" ) is the one character I can barely abide (Kennedy's Joe Patroni runs a close second). Afflicted with a terminal case of the cutes and employing every little old lady cliche devised since the beginning of time, Hayes' is a hammy, vaudeville turn more in tune with a knee-slapping episode of The Andy Griffith Show than a major motion picture. But it's the kind of performance that wins Oscars (see: Margaret Rutherford in 1963's The V.I.Ps). While I like her very much in her scenes with Bisset (she gets slapped, after all), I really wouldn't have minded too much had her character been one of the bomber's casualties. Oh, and in addition, I have to race for the mute button every time she appears onscreen accompanied by her cutesy, cartoon-appropriate theme music. Both Shirley Booth and Claudette Colbert were originally considered for the role but spared themselves the schtick.

OK, the look she's giving this self-medicating nun
(character actress Mary Jackson) is pretty hilarious.

Perhaps this reveals me to be the terrible person I suspect I actually am, but next to Bisset's Gwen Meighan (the character names in this movie just scream "pulp fiction!"), my favorite character in Airport is actually Dana Wynter as Mel's fed-up, socialite wife, Cindy. Even if it's only for the reason that she is so unrelentingly one-note (that note would be: perpetually pissed off) that she's an absolute hoot.

Not only does she begin every conversation at full-throttle harpy, but here's a woman who braves the city's worst blizzard in 30 years (in mink, yet!) just to rip her husband a new asshole. She really should have been running that airport.

Wives don't fare too well in Airport. Perry Mason's Barbara Hale plays Sarah Demerest, the good-natured, long-suffering wife of philandering pilot Dean Martin, and sister to Burt Lancaster.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The passing of time and post-9/11 changes in airline travel have contributed to Airport acquiring a layer of historical entertainment value it didn't have in 1970. Given that Airport has about the same fantasy-to-reality ratio of any glamorous Ross Hunter production, it's doubtful that the commercial airline experience was ever as stylish as presented here. But seeing as the screenplay follows Arthur Hailey's dedication to airline operation accuracy to an almost Dragnet-degree of tedious factoid minutia, I think it gives a fairly close approximation of flying in the days when one could effortlessly sneak in and off of planes carrying homemade bombs and boarding passes in lieu of tickets.

Airport features many familiar TV faces among its cast of passengers, all of whom (according to the Ross Hunter hype machine) were given full character names and backstories for "realism."
1. Happy Day's Marion Ross; 2. Bewitched's Sandra Gould (Gladys Kravitz); 3. Everybody's favorite obnoxious passenger ("Nuts to the man in 21-D") Peter Turgeon; 4. Face-slapping priest Jim Nolan; 5. A familiar face from practically every TV commercial ever made, Fred Holliday.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
In all likelihood, my fascination with Airport was at least in part due to my taking my very first plane trip just a year before, in 1969. It was a flight from California to Maryland to visit my grandmother. I don't recall much about the flight itself other than the in-flight movie was Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, the whole experience was thrilling, and the stewardess gave me a tiny pair of wings to pin to my sweater. I was also given this booklet of color-and-tear postcards which I've somehow managed to hold onto for all these years.

In trying to figure out what it was about Airport that so captured my imagination back in 1970, I think perhaps it's because, among the many scaled-down, low-budget, character-based films rooted in realism that came out in the late '60s and '70s, Airport, in all it's old-fashioned glory, represented something startlingly different. Too young to be familiar with all the cliches and overworked plot devices, Airport was my first real all-star Hollywood blockbuster, and perhaps, like Ross Hunter himself, I was just hungry for a taste of old-fashioned, escapist glamour. And while I wouldn't want a steady diet of it, when in the right mood and proper frame of mind, a bit of harmless fluff like Airport can be very, very satisfying.


THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

"They don't call it the cockpit for nothing, honey!" - an actual line of dialogue from Airport '79
Gary Collins (c.) and Barry Nelson (r.) play second and first officers Cy Jordan and Anson Harris, respectively

This autographed of Barry Nelson was acquired at the stage door of San Francisco's Orpheum Theater in 1977 when he was co-starring with Liza Minnelli in the pre-Broadway tour of the musical, The Act (then titled Shine It On). A very genial guy, if perhaps an unlikely musical comedy leading man.

BONUS MATERIAL
An in-depth, lavishly illustrated article about Edith Head and the costume designs (and hairstyles, aka wigs) in Airport can be found at one of my favorite movie blogs, Poseidon's Underworld

Airport opened on Friday March 20, 1970, at the Pacific Theater in Hollywood

"Remind me to send a thank you note to Mr. Boeing"

Copyright © Ken Anderson      2009  -  2014