Keep 'Em Flying

Out of Universal Pictures comes Keep 'Em Flying starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello with support from Martha Raye, Dick Foran and Carol Bruce. It's directed by Arthur Lubin with music by Charles Previn and was filmed on location at the Cal-Aero school in Ontario, California. Plot sees the bumbling duo and their stunt pilot pal Jinx Roberts (Foran) join the Army Air Force after getting fired from their positions at a carnival & air show. High jinx and love interests will of course follow.

The fifth film outing for Abbott and Costello, and their third featuring the armed forces after Buck Privates & In The Navy, Keep 'Em Flying is one of their better feature length productions. Tho somewhat surprisingly rather thick on plot, the piece is all the better for some narrative substance in that it lets us savour the slaphappy antics of the intrepid duo when their routines come alive. Action sequences to savour here include a runaway torpedo, a spooky carnival fun house and a short sharp shock treatment of Lou falling over his ankle grabbing pants. While there's quality in a dialogue driven skit that the boys perform in a Café-where we are introduced to the bright and bubbly Raye; playing twin sisters who each end up dating the boys. There's also some nice tunes penned by Don Raye & Gene de Paul, with the stand out being "Pig Foot Pete" that was famously nominated for an Academy Award but for the wrong movie (Hellzapoppin').

Funny, daft and even romantic, Keep 'Em Flying soars high enough to entertain the masses. 8/10

Not their best, but by far not their weakest, the film provides the viewers with the duo in the Army Air Corps, or at least a training facility.

While there has been some comment on the wood and fabric airplanes in the film, filmed shortly before the U.S. got involved in World War II, many training facilities taught their students initially on such aircraft, just so they could learn the rudiments of flight. Later, the fledgling pilots would graduate to more state-of-the-art trainers.

Minor spoiler For the aero gags, the fabric airplanes worked well: in the "inverted" sequence, Costello's head wouldn't have been able to break through a metal skin.

I had this on VHS, and finally was able to locate it on DVD, in an A&C collection.

KEEP 'EM FLYING (1941) *** Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Martha Raye. One of A&C's very best: the boys as bumbling airfield jockeys and Raye as their identical twin girlfriends. Very funny bits including the first encounter with Raye(s) and the air finale.

When high-flying stunt pilot Jinx Roberts joins the air corps, his two assistants Blackie and Heathcliff follow him into the service out of loyalty and lack of other options. While Jinx gets a pilot's position they find themselves essentially at the level of janitors with little in the way of glamour or prestige. They end up causing more trouble than anything else – not least of which in the world of romance where the attention of twins Gloria and Barbara causes more confusion.

This film was part of several made in a short period by Abbott & Costello in support of the war effort and the structure is roughly the same. A "straight" guy pursues a girl while Abbott and Costello trail along behind getting involved in various escapades and misunderstandings in support of the "straight" guy's romantic efforts. This should not surprise anyone and the only thing of concern should be whether or not the film is funny and makes good use of the comic abilities of the stars (by which I do not mean Foran). The answer is "sort of" and it is because of this that the film is quite amusing for fans but not good enough to really win over others or stand out as one of their best. The plot with Jinx does take up a bit too much of the running time and, as is often the case, the film is padded out with too many songs (although at least one of them is actually pretty good) and I didn't find myself laughing often enough. There are some good bits though; the scene where they order food in the restaurant is brilliant stuff and had me laughing out loud but, a few good lines here and there and that is pretty much it. The torpedo sequence is the normal stuff but lacks inspiration while the flight stuff, although quite good suffers badly from poor back projection and basic model work – OK both are of their time but still.

The cast do reasonably well and the fault for the film perhaps being a bit lacking is not with their performances. Both Abbott and Costello do good work as you would expect but it is just a shame that they don't get better material to work with. What they do benefit from is a female co-star who isn't just a cute love interest for Costello. Raye plays it in a way that echoes Costello's style but it does work and she is funny and adds a bit of variety which is needed when you consider the "main" plot. Bruce, Gargan and Foran are all fairly dull and stiff – again it is a shame that they take so much of the time from the others.

Keep 'em Flying is an OK Abbott & Costello film that has enough about it to please most fans however it is still not as funny as it should be and it has too much stuff that either pads (the songs) or detracts (the main plot). If you like them it is worth a look but only a few scenes here and there show what the two are capable of.

One of the funniest of Abbott and Costello's early Universal films was Keep 'Em Flying which stuck with the tried and true formula established by Buck Privates.

The boys are working at a carnival with their pal Dick Foran who's a stunt flier. After a disagreement with management, all three of them quit and wind up in the Army Air Corps.

For Foran he gets to renew a personal rivalry with William Gargan who's an instructor who had fired Foran once before in a civilian flying job. They're both interested in the lovely Carol Bruce who sings great and is a USO hostess.

The boys are up to their usual monkeyshines. Seeing both of them on the back of a speeding torpedo was as funny as when they repeated the same gag on the back of a bucking bronco in Ride 'Em Cowboy. And seeing them hit the silk at the end of the film is indescribable.

Martha Raye plays a dual role in the film as twin sisters, one of whom likes Abbott and the other Costello. Of course poor Costello doesn't realize they're twins and Martha's on and off attitude towards him is baffling. Later on the same twin gimmick was used by Betty Hutton in Here Come The Waves.

Gene DePaul and Don Raye wrote the original songs for this film and actually came up with an Academy Award nomination for one of their songs, Pigfoot Pete which Martha Raye sings and which is incorrectly credited in Academy records to another Universal Film, Hellzapoppin'. It's not bad, but it's really a poor man's Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The best song in the film is one interpolated for Carol Bruce when we first meet her as a nightclub singer, the Tommy Dorsey standard, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You.

Keep 'Em Flying is right in the great tradition of Buck Privates and In the Navy and still as funny today as when first made.