The High and The Mighty 1954

 

Oh the high. Oh the mighty. 

The Granddaddy of the airplane disaster or near disaster movies was this 1954 release that was the 8^th highest and mightiest grossing film of the year. Set in a fake looking cute propeller plane going from Hawaii to San Francisco in 12 hours with a nearly empty passenger load of lower tier actors and actresses.


Let see we first of all have the co-pilot John Wayne who has been flying planes since 1914 and was brought down some years back by his plane crashing in South America killing his wife and young son who just happened to be aboard the plane.  He only suffered a broken leg and a discreet limp but has been paying for his disaster for a long time.

His co-pilot is played by a  young Robert Stack troubled and sweating for something we don’t know, but probably has to do with family problems. Stack is all tightly wound up and when disaster strikes he folds up ready to crash the plane into the sea until Wayne gives him a good smack across his pretty face, and tells him not to give up, even though they have less then 30 gallons of fuel left and two of the four propellers are shot to hell. The tension and boredom mounts. 

The passengers are played by a mixed group  including Claire Trevor as an aging party girl who has done too much partying and is winding down and out. Claire has done this part many times before and even won an Oscar for playing a younger dish in 1948’s “Key Largo”  She takes a liking to fellow passenger David Brian who when disaster strikes also folds up. There is a lot of folding up on this trip. Also around for the ride is Jan Sterling who scared me as a child of 7 when I first saw this romp of a disaster movie.

In one of the best scenes she removes all her make-up, the reason which I won’t go into but the sight of her cold creaming off her face scared me more than Raymond Burr in “Rear Window”, “King Kong”, “The Leopard Man” and “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein” all seen by me at my local neighborhood Brooklyn movie theatre at this early age.

Both Trevor and Sterling for some reason got Oscar nominations for their startling turns. There are many more cliché-ridden stories sitting in seats on this plane, and floating above it all is the musical theme that was a popular highlight of the year, and was whistled through the film and our lives. Lyrics were put to the whistling and many singers covered it. The cast has a lot of familiar looking character actors and actresses playing ticket sellers, airport personal, passengers and the like who in one outrageous scene get busy throwing out their luggage and belongings to make the plane lighter so it won’t crash into the water. Wayne throws open the door and is held back by Robert Newton  so he won’t fly out with the luggage which in real life would never happen. Open a door on a plane and out everyone goes. Screenplay by Ernest K. Gann based on his novel with direction by William Wellman who received an Oscar nomination.