By Marc S. Sanders
Burt Lancaster described his participation in what would become the first of a batch of 1970s all-star disaster epics as the worst picture he’s ever done. He declared it “the worst piece of junk ever made.” Perhaps because of this assessment we were eventually blessed with the Airplane! spoofs a decade later.
Airport is a sudsy soap opera drama from novelist Arthur Hailey. It’s an indiscreet invitation to make fun of it, but I doubt it was meant to be regarded that way in 1970. Then, Airport was likely celebrated as that new kind of picture like The Godfather, Jaws and Star Wars would pioneer in their own rights.
The film was a box office smash for Universal Pictures, garnering an acting Oscar for kindly old Helen Hayes along with nominations for Best Picture, Cinematography and Screenplay. It spawned three more films following its success. Yet, it’s terribly cornball, drowning in floods of cheese, and coated in the thickest of sap. You better swallow that Maalox now. This airport is all backed up!
Lincoln International Airport is getting blanketed in one of the treacherous, most blinding snowstorms imaginable. So naturally it’s the right time to launch passenger airlines into the night sky while also welcoming jets to land. Were harsh weather conditions not so alarming fifty years ago for air travel?
Well, this blizzard is going to be the first of several problems starting with a plane stuck in the snow right in the middle of the airport’s major runway. Burt Lancaster is Mel Bakersfield, Lincoln’s Controller, who once again puts aside his family and his troubled marriage to oversee the matter. He recruits the grizzled, cigar chomping Joe Petroni (George Kennedy) to clear that runway. Mel firmly believes Joe is the only man who knows what the hell to do. (Best I could tell is that Joe picks up a shovel like everyone else.) Mel’s other issue is that his pesky wife is disrupting his happy affair with Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg), the no nonsense, yet perky appearing, blond airline executive with the mini uniform dress hemline.
Further upholding the proud chauvinism of this picture is everyone’s favorite lounge singing lizard Dean Martin as Vern Demerest. These names!!!! If this movie wasn’t taking place at an airport, I’d swear it was a news station. Vern also has an inconvenient marriage now that he’s learned his cutie stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset) is pregnant. Cue the squeaky violin music as Vern offers to cover the abortion. Shocking!!!! Gwen might want to have the child, but she’s gracious enough not to make it an obligation for Vern. She’s gonna let her dreamboat wonder of a man be, so he remains a doting husband on the side.
So we got melodrama for the airport staff, the pilot, the stewardess… Hmmm…Oh yeah! The passengers!!!!
A mentally ill, down on his luck man (Van Heflin) spends six dollars cash on a life insurance plan for his wife Inez (Maureen Stapleton) before boarding Vern & Gwen’s plane with a dynamite bomb in his briefcase. Can Inez warn Mel, Tonya and everyone in time before the plane takes off?
Of course, this kind of stressful tension requires some adoring comic relief, and Helen Hayes as kindly old Mrs. Ada Quonsett delivers an Oscar winning performance. She takes pleasure in being a habitual stowaway on one flight after another. Gosh darn it if Tonya is going to make sure to put a stop to this lady’s shenanigans.
The Cinemaniacs (Miguel, Thomas, Anthony and I) watched this together and Mig pointed out the cinematography first. It’s dull like straight out of a Sunday night TV movie. Thomas reminded us that this was in the same vein as most of Arthur Hailey’s material, like Hotel – the book that became a movie that became a TV series. The soap opera occupies the first two thirds of the picture. Then a potential threat of disaster occurs, and you work to guess who lives and who dies.
Directors George Seaton (also screenwriter) and Henry Hathaway work to get the audience invested in these people first while trying to educate us on the most up to date operations in a fully functioning airport. If George Kennedy’s character is not shoveling snow on a runway and giving it all he’s got in the stuck plane’s cockpit, he’s telling the others what to expect from a potential bomb explosion aboard a jet. And Look!!! There’s telephones in Mel and Vern’s cars. Push button ones too. All over the airport are red phones next to white phones. There’s luggage. There’s blankets and pillows for everyone on board the plane. There are also unsuspecting women wearing minks and smuggling jewelry into the country, but the seasoned custom security guard has got a good eye. He can see everything, except for the guy with the bomb. And there’s snow. Lots and lots of snow but the cabs make it to the airport in the nick of time. There’s also a message about the need for updating construction on our country’s airports with the most sophisticated traffic controls and operations imaginable. Should the money be spent? On top of all this, how are Mel and Vern’s wives and families holding up?
Maybe it’s unfair. It’s hard to embrace Airport when I have already grown up watching the ZAZ team brilliantly spoof the picture with the Airplane! films. Yet, I’m confident that had I seen Airport upon its initial release, I likely would not hail the romances of Lancaster, Seberg, Martin and Bisset as the next iterations of Rick and Ilsa. The dialogue and scenarios are eye rolling at best. The chemistry sputters as soon as we see the characters for the first time. The men are twenty five years older than the women, but the love is supposedly passionate?
The extras who are granted snippets of dialogue look like they are reading cue cards and the major players truly look bored. Watch the cast when the bomb goes off on the plane (like you didn’t think it wouldn’t happen). There’s no adrenaline from Dean Martin. He looks lost without his signature scotch and cigarette. The passenger extras never got the memo that they are supposed to be on board a plane with a gaping hole in the rear lavatory. The priest on board slaps the guy next to him, but I need more convincing of the panic that is supposed to persist.
Fifty years later, the legacy of Airport hinges on only one purpose and that is to give it the ol’ Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. More importantly, once you finish watching it, about all you want to do next is watch Airplane!
“The cockpit! What is it?”
“It’s the little room at the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that’s not important right now.”
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 