Airport 1975 (1974)

Airport 1975 (1974)
Despite the title, Airport 1975 actually came out in 1974. Airport 1975 is a sequel to Airport (1970) so why couldn't they just call it Airport II?
Disaster movies were extremely popular in the 1970s thanks in large part to the commercial success of the original Airport which was also nominated for 10 Oscars. Airport 1975 is the second of four films in the series, though this is the only one I've seen at the moment. Like the first Airport movie, Airport 1975 was a box office success and the sixth top grossing movie of 1974 behind a couple of other disaster movies, The Towering Inferno and Earthquake.
The basic plot of Airport 1975 is that a small plane crashes into a Boeing 747, killing and injuring the pilots. A flight attendant flies the plane with instructions from ground controllers but it is eventually decided that a real pilot must be brought in to land it.
Like most disaster movies of its time, Airport 1975 features a large ensemble cast. Pretty much everybody is in this movie such as Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Linda Blair, Nancy Olson, Erik Estrada, Norman Fell, Jerry Stiller, Gloria Swanson (as herself!), Myrna Loy (who has showed up in a couple of my Tales from the Archives posts), and many more.

Despite being a hit in its time, Airport 1975 is very dated with references, clothes, and politically incorrect jokes that make this a time capsule of the mid-70s. There is a lot of melodrama which at times makes it feel like a soap opera. Although this was a disaster movie, I never felt that these characters were ever in true danger. There are some scenes full of tension, like those with the flight attendant (Karen Black) being instructed on how to fly the plane, but others fall flat and can be boring. Airport 1975 is competently made with a lot of good actors but just ends up being mediocre and a product of its time.
Airport 1975 was directed by Jack Smight. Although this is the first of his movies I have seen, Smight directed four episodes of The Twilight Zone including The Lonely, a personal favorite of mine.
Airplane! (1980) would later parody disaster movies like this one. Although I already loved that comedy, I appreciate it even more after watching Airport 1975 since I got a better sense of what they were parodying. It was interested to see plot elements of this film that Airplane! would later go on to directly make fun of.
5/10

Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church Nov. 1928 Part 3

After being on hiatus since December 2011 (except for a special post back in April that was part of the Short Animation blogathon) my Tales from the Archives series is finally back! To catch up on my previous posts simply click on the Tales from the Archives tag at the bottom of this post. New Tales from the Archives entries will be up every Tuesday.

I'm picking up exactly where I left off, which was in the middle of going through schedules of movies shown by the Catholic Church of the Holy Infancy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the 1920s. My last entry was about the movies shown on November 18th 1928, so without further ado let's get to the movies people watched at this Church the very next week!

Like November 18th, the Church showed another double feature the following Sunday the 25th. The first movie was The Girl From Chicago (1927), a crime film with romance starring Conrad Nagel and Myrna Loy. Myrna Loy was in another movie this Church showed a few weeks earlier titled Ham and Eggs at the Front (1927). Like that film, this movie was another early role for Loy before she would breakout as a superstar playing Nora Charles in The Thin Man series which started in 1934. Like many of the movies shown by this Church, The Girl From Chicago was a Warner Bros. Vitaphone production. This meant that even though it was a silent film, there was a recorded musical score and sound effects which were synched with the movie when shown. It appears that is a lost film, but I was able to find a contemporary review of the movie! Check it out here.

Conrad Nagel received top billing for The Girl From Chicago, and unlike Myrna Loy this is his first appearance in my Tales from the Archives series. Nagel was a prolific actor with over 135 credits spanning from 1918 to television appearances into the mid 1960s! Nagel was in a famous lost film, London After Midnight, which I discussed in this post last summer. Nagel had no problem making the jump from silent movies to "talkies" and later television. He must've had a great voice since he also hosted the popular radio program Silver Theater in the 1930s and 1940s.
Conrad Nagel was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization best known for giving out the Academy Awards or Oscars! Nagel hosted the 3rd Academy Awards in 1930 and the 5th Academy Awards in 1932. Nagel would later co-host the 25th Academy Awards in 1953 with none other than Bob Hope! The 21 years between hosting Oscar ceremonies still holds the record for the longest gap between hosting the Academy Awards. Nagel was given an honorary Oscar in 1940 for his leadership and involvement in the Motion Picture Relief Fund. In 1960 Nagel received three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in Motion Pictures, Radio, and Television.

The second movie of this week was a romance film titled Dress Parade (1927) about a boxer who enrolls at West Point and falls in love with the commandant's daughter. The star of Dress Parade was actor William Boyd, who was featured in many of the movies shown by this Church. William Boyd would later become famous for role as the cowboy Hopalong Cassidy. The Hopalong Cassidy character was extremely popular as the series lasted from 1935 to 1947 for a grand total of 66 films! Hopalong Cassidy was so well received that the movies even spawned an amusement park in Los Angeles named Hoppyland! Boyd made regular appearances at the park but it ended up not being a success as it only lasted from 1951 to 1954.

The director of Dress Parade was Donald Crisp, pictured above. Crisp was also an actor and won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for How Green Was My Valley (1941). Crisp co-directed The Navigator (1924) with Buster Keaton and worked as an actor and assistant to D.W. Griffith for many years.
Dress Parade survives today and has even been released on DVD.

The Flight That Failed (1928) was an animated short in the Aesop's Fables short film series. The Flight That Failed is not on YouTube and I'm not sure if it still exists. I covered these cartoons in depth with a post for the Short Animation blogathon so check it out here to find out more.

Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church Oct. 1928 Part 2

This week's parish monthly calendar is from September 1928 and shows us the films scheduled to be shown in October of that year.

The first film of the October 21st double feature was A Dog of the Regiment (1927). So far this is the third Rin Tin Tin movie shown at the Church. Like many of the other films the parishioners of this Church watched,  A Dog of the Regiment was a Warner Bros Vitaphone production. Sadly it appears that this is a lost film.

The second film of the double feature was The Night Flyer (1928). 
6/1/12 Edit: According to Art Pierce, executive director for the Capitol Theatre in Rome, New York the does indeed exist! A 35mm print of the film will be shown on August 10th 2012 accompanied by live music. More information about the showing can be found here.
The star of this movie was William Boyd, who I've discussed in earlier posts as this Church showed several of his films. His co-star in this movie was Jobyna Ralston, pictured below.

Ralston was a best known for being paired with silent film comedian Harold Lloyd. The duo made several films together, including the classic comedies Girl Shy (1924), The Freshman (1925), and The Kid Brother (1927). Ralston was named a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1923, which was an award given to the best young actresses of the year by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers from 1922 - 1934.  Ralston also had a supporting role in Wings (1927), the first movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Ralston married her Wings co-star actor Richard Arlen in 1927. In 1931 Ralston became a mother and decided to quit acting. Ralston did a couple of talkies before she ended her career, one of which was a Rin Tin Tin movie.

The full title of this week's short is Hunting for Germans in Berlin with Will Rogers (1927). Will Rogers was one of the most famous people of the 1920s and 30s. Rogers acted in films, vaudeville, and radio and also wrote a newspaper column. His popularity skyrocketed thanks to his cowboy image and humorous social commentary. Sadly Rogers died in a plane crash at the age of 55 in 1935.

On October 28th one feature was screened with two shorts. The full length film was Ham and Eggs at the Front (1927) starring Myrna Loy in an early role. Loy started her career in the silent film era but become famous in the 1930s. Loy's best known role is that of Nora Charles, one half of a husband and wife crime-solving team alongside actor William Powell, in The Thin Man film series. Loy regretted her role in Ham and Eggs at the Front because she put on blackface to play a black barmaid who was also a German spy. This movie was clearly a product of its time as "Ham" and "Eggs" were also black characters played by white actors. Loy referred to the film as a "tasteless slapstick comedy." We'll probably never know how tasteless it was since this appears to be a lost film.

The first of the two shorts this week was War Feathers (1926), a Hal Roach Our Gang comedy. War Feathers features the Our Gang kids playing Cowboys and Indians. The short still survives today.
The second short was A Jungle Triangle (1928) from the animated Aesop's Fables series. This Church must have really like the Aesop's Fables cartoons as they showed them quite often.