Air Hostess

Aside from supporting performances by Thelma Todd and Jane Darwell, very few today will recognize the actors in this B-film from Columbia Studios. Likewise, it seems to be the sort of old fashioned film that few would watch today. However, me being an airplane buff and B-movie fanatic, it's a natural I'd see this film.

Although the film begins in WWI, it soon switches to the present (1933) and features folks working with the early airlines. I loved seeing all the great old planes, such as the Ford Tri-Motor, as this is a period in aviation history that it almost forgotten today.

Cute Evalyn Knapp stars as the daughter of one of the pilots killed in the prologue. Now a decade and a half later, she's working as an air hostess (flight attendant) for one of these airlines founded by pals of the dead pilot. The men have sort of adopted Knapp--keeping an eye out for her and protecting her at every turn. Eventually, a bad boy (James Murray) turns up and Knapp marries him--mostly to spite her protectors. The new couple struggle to make ends meet and Evalyn is forced to return to her job as an air hostess. Unfortunately, Murray ends up spending much of the marriage feeling sorry for himself because he is having trouble making a go of his new business idea as well as falling under the influence of the evil vamp (Thelma Todd). Will the marriage last through these strains or will Murray and Todd hurt poor little Knapp? See this one for yourself to find out what happens next.

Overall, this isn't a terribly great film. The plot is awfully familiar and there's not much to make it stand out--unless, as I said above, you are an aviation nut (like me). Not bad, but not especially noteworthy--that is until the dopey ending. In a very contrived twist, the two men who love Knapp have to work together to save her life--she's on a train bound for a bridge that has just washed out and there isn't a second to lose!!! This ending loses a point from the overall score.

By the way, at the beginning of the film you see some footage of WWI air combat. I am not sure which, but the film clips were lifted from either "Hell's Angels" or "Wings" (I am inclined to think "Hells Angels"). I recognized these clips--particularly the scene with the pilot bleeding from the mouth. If anyone can figure out which of the films it was from, drop me a line.

Note--About halfway through the film, Murray gives Knapp a playful little smack on the rump. Such goings on could not have occurred in this film had it come out a year later--after the toughened Production Code was enacted.

One reason you watch 1930s movies to experience the mood and atmosphere of the age. Grace Perkins who wrote a handful of those iconic early thirties movies such as NIGHT NURSE also wrote this. She wrote this however when she was just 19 working at a magazine in 1919 so its story, its attitudes are a decade older than the actual film. It's a 1930s picture but it's also a picture from an era even longer ago, from a time even more different and alien to us than the thirties. Not a great film but an interesting snapshot into how we thought, lived and loved in the 1920s.

It was set in a time when men were men, women were women, planes were called ships and aviation was pronounced aah-viation. The blend of Great War attitudes in a 1930s context makes this a little more interesting than your usual Columbia B movie. Evalyn Knapp's Kitty certainly isn't your typical girl of the thirties and certainly not a twenties flapper. She's a sweet young thing and it's the duty of her male companions to protect her from the attentions of other men....until she can marry someone she's only known for a couple of days because that's what girls had to do! It's fascinating to see that that their way of thinking and behaving seems so perfectly normal to them. These people look like us but they're so different even from the familiar faces we see in 1930s pictures; their sensibilities and points of view seem Victorian.

What is most definitely not Victorian is Thelma Todd. She has almost as much fun vamping up her role as the man-eating, sex crazed 'other woman' as we do watching her. Holy mackerel - now that's what I call a dress! I'm not sure I'd be able to resist her charms either. Her character isn't exactly subtle neither is it a well-developed character. And that's a problem with this film: the characters are very black or white. We have a good girl, a nice but boring boy, an exciting bad boy and a naughty bad girl. There's no nuance to anyone, their personalities are just clichés, but..... Grace Perkins was only a teenager when she wrote this so didn't have the experience of life to draw from at that stage....and the story probably didn't cost Columbia much

The story, which is as unbelievable as the characters, centres on Kitty's husband trying to get financial backing for his new airplane from wealthy Thelma Todd who will do so in return for sex. Does Kitty love her husband enough to allow him to achieve his dream by letting him be seduced by the wild, wealthy widow? Is husband actually thinking about airplanes at that point!!! It's not the best acting or direction you'll ever find but it will keep you amused for an hour.

...are what make this film interesting, not the rather pedestrian plot that could probably be seen as the backbone of hundreds of B programmers in the 30's and 40's.

The plot involves a corp of WWI flyers who stick together through the founding of aviation as a major means of transportation. One member of the group dies during the war and leaves behind a little daughter, Kitty. The group bands together to be a kind of "group dad" to the girl (Evelyn Knapp), going to the extreme of keeping her from dating anybody, though. Fast forward to the early 30's and the girl is now an "air hostess" - what is now called a flight attendant - onboard planes landing and leaving from the same airfield at which the old flying corp now works as mechanics and pilots.

Two pilots show up at the airfield at about the same time - Dick Miller (Arthur Pierson) and Ted Hunter (James Murray). Dick is the good guy, Ted is the bad boy. Kitty, being overprotected by her "group dad" is naturally intrigued by the bad boy, and a hasty marriage between the two ensues. Ted's big dreams, a lusty divorcée (Thelma Todd), and a daring train/plane race all figure into the plot from this point forward.

None of this by itself would make this film more than about 5/10. What raises it a couple of notches are two specific matters of interest. First, there is the chance to see commercial aviation as it was practiced in 1933. At this time, most people are still taking trains for cross-country journeys. You even get a shot of an early passenger plane galley.

Secondly, there is the matter of the fates of the three stars of this film - Evelyn Knapp, James Murray, and Thelma Todd. Evelyn Knapp had the kindest of the unkind fates. She was chosen by Warner Bros. to be built up as one of their early talking film stars in 1930 after starring in a series of comedy shorts for Pathe. You only have to see her first starring feature role in "Sinner's Holiday" to figure what is to come - Evelyn and Grant Withers have the picture stolen out from underneath them by the gritty James Cagney and Joan Blondell. Two years later Evelyn's time on the A-film circuit is over. Thelma Todd, whose career was doing fine at the time, was found dead in her garage in 1935 at age 30, and her death has always remained a mystery. James Murray had the saddest fate of all. Brought out of obscurity in 1928 to star in King Vidor's silent masterpiece "The Crowd" as an every-man whose life hits the skids, his life pretty much imitated art. He became a hopeless alcoholic in the 30's and was found dead in a river in 1936.

The b-level programmers of Columbia Pictures during the 1930's are often quite exciting and well-paced. The studio's assembly line produced audience-satisfying product quickly and inexpensively. And, in this case, with a director like Albert Rogell, veteran of dozens of fine b-westerns in the silent era and who would continue working in bread-and-butter product through the 1950's, AIR HOSTESS (not the most exciting title!) has all the elements of a textbook example of the exciting, efficient b-movie. Daring stunt flier James Murray (of King Vidor's THE CROWD, who would die a few years later due to alcohol) sees his friend and mentor get killed during WWI and helps watch over the friend's young daughter over the years. The film soon switches to the early 30s, where the daughter (played by the perky Evalyn Knapp, perhaps best-known today for starring with John Wayne in the long-time public domain, dollar-rack favorite HIS PRIVATE SECRETARY in 1933) is a grown up airline hostess and Murray is a pilot who is still a daredevil but also an inventor of aviation technology looking for an investor to help see his plans to fruition. Needless to say, they fall in love, a number of problems arise, Thelma Todd appears (looking especially regal!!!!) as "the other woman", and the film ends up with an amazing train-plane sequence. Knapp is quite appealing (although a few flubbed lines are left in, reminding us that Columbia was NOT a major studio in 1932!), and James Murray shows the charisma that made him a star in THE CROWD. He has a brash quality, and had he lived, he surely could have made a career of playing wisecracking newspaper reporters and leads in b-action films. Interestingly, his character is drunk in about 1/3 of the film--one wonders if that was written into the film to capitalize on the bad publicity Murray had received for his drinking problems, or if he actually was drunk on the set and the writers quickly decided to play along with it (I'm betting the former). In any event, he is quite impressive and this is a major role for him, though the movie was undoubtedly a bottom-of-the-bill product that vanished quickly from theaters. In less than 65 minutes, we laugh, we cry (the scene where the WWI flier has his daughter's letter read to him is a real tearjerker), we feel for the characters, we cheer them on, we worry about them, and we are brought to the edge of our seats in a nail-biting climax. What today's directors could learn from a film like this and a director such as Albert Rogell. Also, it's not every film that's set in Albuquerque (at least half of it is!). Finally, those who collect films with spanking scenes can put this one on their lists, although it's a brief one. Highly recommended to lovers of classic fast-moving early 30's b-movies.

Scanning a list of pre-code films, you probably wouldn't move a film starring Evalyn Knapp, James Murray and Arthur Pierson to the front of the queue, but Knapp, whose acting career eventually petered out, and Murray, whose career quickly tanked due to alcoholism, were big names at the time. (Pierson is kind of generic.)

The film turn out to be an action-packed aviation drama, back when aviation was a daring and romantic subject and apparently pronounced with a short a in the first syllable. Some stock footage of air stunts from old movies, but also some original and exciting original stunt scenes.

But it's not all just action. Two of the era's recurrent themes, Prohibition and protecting the heroine's virginity, move the plot about a stewardess whose father was a pilot killed in WW I. Exactly how she was brought up and what happened to her mother are glossed over, but she seems to be the pet of every flyer and mechanic at the Glendale CA airport and they seem to have nothing else to do besides keeping her from going out with men of any description.

Enter Ted Hunter (Murray), an old comrade of her father's leading a daredevil life and contemptuous in a friendly way of the more mundane commercial airline pilots. Kitty King (Knapp), already chafing under her self-appointed chaperones, obviously has a crush on him. Hunter is also an aircraft designer seeking backing for a plane with retractable wings, an idea that hasn't caught on for some reason. And he's an alcoholic.

This is where the film may get confusing if you don't remember Prohibition is in effect. Among other things, poor Kitty hasn't had her first taste of alcohol. She and Hunter plan a getaway in his plane to Mexico where you can still get drunk legally, in a conversation with mild sexual undertones.

Once they've had a night on the town in Ensenada and Kitty turns up in some sexy nightwear in the hotel room, it turns out that drinking was all Hunter was planning to show her and they beat a hasty retreat to California, where to save Kitty's reputation Hunter ad libs that they plan to get married, which is fine with her.

Will Ted get backing for his experimental plane? Will he fall for the charms of rich seductress Sylvia Carleton (Thelma Todd)? Will Kitty ditch unreliable Ted for sober commercial pilot Dick Miller (Pierson)?

As so often in that era, there's more going on in this film than seems possible in 67 minutes, and we haven't even mentioned the climactic stunt-flying action sequence at the finale. Also as usual, there are bits that won't sit well with today's audience, like a husband spanking his wife, even if it's presented as fun for both parties.

A real sleeper for pre-code fans.