The antecedent of Airport (book and film series) - and therefore of Airplane too - as a jolly group of passengers consider their fates where a plane develops engine trouble over the 12 hour Hawaii to San Francisco flight. Ernest Kellogg Gann wrote the novel.
In the cockpit: John Wayne, who's killed his wife and child in a plane crash but is somehow still flying, and Robert Stack, who's having a crisis of nerves. Plus invaluable hostess Doe Avedon. And William Campell and navigator Wally Brown.
Doe is quite low billed considering the amount of screen time she gets; Maltin doesn't even list her as one of the main participants. It's funny how all the vibrations and shakes happen to her - almost like she's causing them. In fact her character is underutilised - should have been a romantic element, with a passenger, or the younger pilot... or even Duke himself!
Doe had the sort of crazy life you could make a film about. Her father was a butler to a wealthy New York lawyer, when he died, the family adopted her. She was a friend of Leonard Gershe who wrote the musical Funny Face loosely based on her life. Her first husband was decapitated in a car accident in which she was barely hurt. This was her first film after the accident, which John Wayne 's company produced. She was later married to Don Siegel for 18 years and adopted four children.
John Howard and Laraine Day aren't getting on well. Claire Trevor pals up with businessman David Brian. Jan Sterling is nervously meeting a pen pal. Phil Harris and Anne Doran have just had a lousy holiday where they've been sex-pested by another couple. Robert Newton has to hang on to John Wayne to stop him falling out. John Qualen overcomes a nutter with a gun. With Joy Kim, John Smith and Karen Sharpe (newlyweds who share something of a snog at one steamy point).
Dimitri Tiomkin provides a suitably stimulating score, Archie Stout filmed it in Warnercolor and CinemaScope. Does go on rather (2 hours 21) but is overall quite fun.
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