The High and the Mighty (1954) Conversation with Rick Barlow

The High and the Mighty (1954)

This weeks podcast is a conversation with Rick Barlow about one of the early disaster films, The High and the Mighty (1954). This great movie stars John Wayne, Lorraine Day, Jan Sterling, Paul Fix, Claire Trevor and many others.

Rick Barlow grew up on the south side of Chicago. He spent much of his early life watching movie in theaters. is a film maker and wealth of knowledge about movies. Rick graduated from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1968 and Harvard Business School OPM 1999. He then built and sold a successful business. Later he produced an independent film. He proudly states that he once hitchhiked from Carbondale to Macomb. Rick can be found under the handle @riscorick on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

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Okay. It’s recording now. I believe we may end up with an audio podcast. It’s good to finally talk to you. I’ve enjoyed your stuff for a long time. Appreciate it. Go ahead. Uh, what, what got you into it? How did you happen to come up with this great idea? Well, I love reading those, uh, movie synopsis’s that they have when iMDB.com, and we were doing one at work and I wanted to just see what I could do at home. We were doing one on archaeology at work and so I just started up my own without a real idea of what I was doing. And it took, you know, about two, three years to figure out which way I wanted to go. How long have you been doing it? Since 14 I started July 4th. I’m 13 sorry. Wow. Okay. That explains, you’re so good at it.

I’m pretty ashamed of that first 100. I probably heard some of them, but I can’t think of a single one that I didn’t enjoy. I love all the, all the information on the various actors and that’s fascinating stuff. Yeah, there’s some good stuff out there. It’s amazing stories. Well, uh, I guess we talk about how we want to do this. Oh, lots of spoilers. I like to do lots of spoilers. You know, I figured the movies of 74 years old, you haven’t watched it by now. You’re probably going to need a boost if you want to do, if you want to like talk about the movie and I kind of do color commentary and throw in stuff, but you probably are a lot more familiar with this one than I am. Well, yeah, that’s fine. Um, my recollection of the, of course as a kid, um, I was a big John Wayne fan.

I’m still a John Wayne. And so, uh, when that movie came out, of course I went to see it. Now it was only a, about nine years old. But, um, I lived in the South side of Chicago and there was a movie theater two blocks from my home. And so, I saw every movie, I mean 25 cents to get in, you know, 10 cents for popcorn, 10 cents for a Coke and a Holloway Bar. I remember those, maybe you don’t, but they’re like Milk Duds, you know, the movie at least once a week, my mom would say go to a movie. So, I grabbed 50 cents and off I’d go. And The High and the Mighty came out back then. A lot of times there were double features because the movies are pretty short. They’re 90 minutes at the most, but this one was long, and it was a single feature. And of course, there were, there were always some cartoons, a newsreel and previews. So, movies were a real fun experience. But, um, the movie I expected John Wayne the hero, and yet obviously this movie,

he’s got a very small part. It’s a significant part, but it’s a small part. And when I read the background of the movie, um, I understood he never, it was the first movie that his production company produced, and he never planned to be in it. Oh, okay. I read that Spencer Tracy was supposed to have that role and backed out at the last minute. And John Wayne stepped in. I couldn’t see Spencer Tracy doing that role doesn’t look right. I’ve watched this movie several times before, but since I’ve been doing the first time I watched it, I’ve found out who Claire Trevor is, who I’m named the other lady, the other film, Jan Sterling, the other film man. You’ve seen, of course you’ve got to have seen Stagecoach (1939). Yes. Yeah. So, Claire Trevor and John Wayne there, but also Lorraine Day who back in the 50s. I used to see quite a bit on TV.

Um, I don’t know how many movies she made, but I thought she did. You know, the interesting thing about the movie is so much stuff got packed in two, what, two hours and 15 minutes. I must have been about eight different stories going on. And um, it’s, it, it was kind of unique for a movie to be constructed that way back then. To try to get so many stories sort of folded in over one another. And, um, and I, when I went to see it, even though I was a little disappointed, there wasn’t John Wayne punching people, um, or shooting people.

I still got all caught up in all those stories. And, uh, I thought even though it’s really corny, you know, you watch the movie now and, and, and there’s a lot of corny stuff, especially the director put that little kid in the story who wasn’t in the book, I thought that was the corniest part of the movie was the little kid stuff.

Taking a message to his mother from his father.

Yeah. But I thought they did the tension, the disaster tension really well. Oh yeah. I could feel the danger, you know, the point of no return and the engine catching fire, I thought that was darn good stuff. Well you know that that kid is William Wellman’s other son. Yeah. So, he put his own son in there and then they, they followed that at least into some of the early disaster movies. Like they had the girl from “The Love Boat” as a terminally ill patient that had to, Helen Reddy was a nun and was taking care of in the back of an airplane like that. Oh yeah. I read some of these trends forward from the other movies. Yes.

So even though the kid was just a throw in, they picked up on that. Yup. Yup. I thought it was interesting he had a cap gun on his home, on his holster when he uh, went in, you know, thinking about the day the SWAT team would have it. Oh man. Cap guns. I had a Hopalong Cassidy two guns set. I love those things. Oh yeah. Cap guns. Kids don’t know the fun of that anymore. Well, all of a sudden, you know, uh, by the time I had my kids, every, the fashion was to not, not buy guns for your kids. Don’t let kids play with guns. My God, we can eliminate violence all over the world if we simply don’t let them play with guns. And we played with guns where I was a kid a lot. We definitely played with guns. Yes. So yeah, this movie, it did really well as far as the Oscars got a lot of Oscar nominations. Um, I guess I picked up one for best music, best song “The High and the Mighty,” but that wasn’t even in the movie or the release now. The new release. So, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. Well, they’ve got, of course John Wayne whistles it, it was a big hit when the movie came out. I think that the year of the Oscars, “The High and the Mighty” was on the radio a lot. I mean, it was a, it was a hit song. It was, it was an instrumental with whistling.

Okay. So, I didn’t recognize that tune because I probably don’t know what that song is. I mean, you know, even if I heard it, I like the way though, when he was nervous, he would fall back to whistling yeah. To calm himself down. Yeah. It’s interesting Robert Stack in a role like that too though. But again, I think the, the, uh, the story was really that the director did a good job establishing that, the tension, the, the, the fear, the disaster element of that movie. And um, um, I lost the thought there, but it’ll come back. They had to pull together. And another thing about this, it’s like, uh, 17 passengers on a, not an international flight, although they did make them check their passports in the movie. You didn’t have to in Hawaii at that time. Are you sure that you didn’t have to chill? You didn’t have to have a passport to go from Hawaii to the United States even though it wasn’t a state yet.

So, to your right. Yeah. Yeah. I, when I saw the movie, I watched it again, uh, about two weeks ago and all of that go to immigration is what he said. And I thought, oh, that’s right. I mean, both Alaska and Hawaii became States the same year, 1959, and this was five years before that. By the time I got to Hawaii. It was a whole different place. Oh, I’m bet. I never made it out there yet. What’s the other guy? Um, Oh, Douglas Foley. An old Film Noir actor. That was the check in clerk that knew everything. Yes. Everybody could do a good way to work in all the backstories there. See, now that’s cool. That’s, that’s an actor whose name I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for you just now. And that’s the kind of great stuff I get from your podcast. Oh, great.

Fantastic. Yeah. Was so, so they get on this DC 4, you know, and then they, uh, well they already explained to the beginning of the movie that John Wayne‘s kind of a broken man. Yeah. Because of the, the plane where you crashed where his wife died and his son died, but he also, the Hoby the assistant pilot or the third pilot, it gives them the guy that looks like Liberace to me. Okay. What’s his name? Campbell or something? William Campbell, I believe. Yes, William Campbell played Hobie Wheeler, the assistant pilot, but he did the other side of it. He gave us, you know, learn to fly in World War I, World War II, B-17s, 20,000 open cockpits barnstorming, you know, like this guy knows how to fly an airplane. So, you got both sides real early on before you knew what the story was. You know, I was sort of surprised it was a DC 4 because I, I always, back then when I was interested in airplanes, I was fascinated by those DC 6 and DC 7 and Constellations that were flying around in the, in the fifties and sixties at DC 4 is not a very big airplane.

I mean that’s, that’s a long way to go on a DC 4 John Wayne goes to the back to look for problems and he opens a big compartment and there’s wires and cable pullies back there. Oh yeah. I guess you got to have the muscle to pull that thing up. Well, you don’t see that anymore. Even though when I was working on helicopters, it was all servo boxes and electricity that moved that stuff around. You didn’t have to really pull the, uh, yolk back. You know, interesting thing. I, cause when I, about 10 years later, there was a movie called Fate is the Hunter. The Hunter. Yes. Glenn Ford written also by Ernest K. Gann. And also, I watched the John Wayne movie Islands in the Sky also, but great. Yeah. Yeah. I was one to do what I want to do all the airplanes together. Yeah. You had three, three scripts.

Three of his books turned into movies in a 10-year period and every one of them is pretty good. I mean, I think people don’t appreciate how tight those movies were back then before people got two and a half hour formats where they just wander all over the place. Right. I mean these are tight little movies. The High and the Mighty‘s long, but the other movies were shorter, and Fate is the Hunter with Glen Ford, I think it’s a 61 or 62 movie that’s pretty good. And they have to convince Suzanne Pleshette to go back into the plane after she’d survived the crash. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great movie. And then there’s another one that has a Marlene Dietrich and Jimmy Stewart in it and he’s an engineer and he predicts that the tails going to fall off of this plane that he designed. And he has to get on the airplane to try it. Try and stop them. I forgot what the name of that one is. It’s feared. It’s not, Oh, it’ll come to me in a little bit. But anyway, the whole point was they fly around in a, they land, and everybody thinks he’s a crackpot.

I got to see that one. It’s a good one. Yeah. I got to check that out. I’ll just check out Jimmy Stewart’s filmography. It’ll be in there. Yeah. And so, there’s a lot of good ones. And they, and they, they played right into that, uh, uh, airplane or airport, airport, whatever, 74. And then the Airplane, the comedy. And I just was reading the other day that, uh, I forgot what it was. I was reading for one of the movies, the airplane comedy is a remake of another movie, a serious movie that maybe had Glenn Ford in it too. It’s a remake. It doesn’t have the same title. No Lloyd Bridges. That’s who it was. And, uh, William Stryker, it’s about the same story. Oh yeah. So, but not with a comedy. So, I’ll have to look that up again too. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I love watching. Of course, everybody calls him old movies. To me, they were just my movies. Have you found His Majesty O’Keefe yet? I have watched it, but I haven’t gotten, I haven’t been able to find a new copy. I’d like to get them for free off the TV, you know, but, uh, I haven’t actually found a copy yet. I watch it. It’s a good anthropology movie.

Burt Lancaster with that grin of his running around fighting people. I love it. Yeah, he has to fight the chief. Right. And kind of get out there and wrestle instead of clubbing each other to death. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I don’t know. Let’s see. You got a lot of so Claire Trevor in this movie. May Hopes was the kind of, um, like a has been movie star, but she wasn’t really like a defeated or destroyed, you know, she was like, she embraced what she was, she was having a happy life. Um, I thought that was, you know, kind of like I say that I, I didn’t see key Largo until after I saw this movie the first step. And find out about her, but she could almost be like a successful version of the lady in Key Largo, you know, the kind of, uh, she was a has been singer there.

Yeah, I think, I think I read in the book, it was indicated that she had, not only was she a has been actress, but she had actually become sort of an escort. She’d become a pro. Okay. No, the hint is when those soldiers see her walking through the lobby? One of them says to the other one, Hey, do you remember that? Okay. That was the little nod to the point in the book where she’s actually making her money on her back these days. Okay. Same characters she played in Stagecoach (1939). Yeah exactly. Typecast, I guess. Oh goodness. So, let’s just give us a, kind of, get into the stories and go over some of the couples and pairing. I’ve got a cheat sheet here. I don’t know if you had fixed up one. Nope. I know where that, um, I know that later on in the movie, uh, we’ll get to Regis Toomey and I think they ripped his character off for a lot of the uh, uh, the future airplane moves.

Regis was the kind of guy who was in a fedora and he kind of paced around the weather room and went over to the tower, kind of like the Lloyd Bridges comedy character. Is he the guy that utters that corniest of all movie lines – Goodbye you ancient or so long? You ancient Pelican. Pelican. Yeah, I think so. Oh, I love your Pelican. I’ve got to remember to talk like that. That’s what I’m trying, my goal in life is trying to talk to everybody like I’m a noir character and see how they take it in modern society with a PC. I think my son has seen more movies than anybody on earth and when I told him, I haven’t seen this one yet and when I told them the last line in the movie is so long, you ancient pelican and he couldn’t believe it.

Well let’s go, let me just start out. They take off and John Wayne is the copilot, but he’s the veteran pilot and Robert Stack is, he seems very competent as the pilot. You don’t see any problems with him and he’s, you know, he’s “Elliot Ness.” Why would we think, yeah, “Elliot Ness” would have any problems? Then you go Wally Brown kind of playing he plays the navigator and he’s kind of henpecked, I guess. Well beaten down by his wife. William Campbell who we’ve already talked about and uh, Doe Avedon – Miss Spalding, the stewardess. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. You know, how they, uh, how the uh, standards changed when the company comes in and he talks about how, you know, basically how good looking she is compared to some of the other stewardesses and uh, can’t do that anymore, I guess. No. So they take off and everything seems all right.

And then, uh, John Wayne gets the first primary vibration, sees the first vibration and he picks it up and he looks at the, the, uh, navigator and he looks at the young copilot and they don’t notice anything. Nobody else feels it no. And I think the, a stewardess had noticed the vibration because she was looking in the mirror at the time. So, it’s like, it’s played in like, you know, those 20,000 hours of flying and flying by touch. No, not the modern pilots that push the autopilot to take off. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you ever think got underway and then you start hearing all the back stories of the people in the plane. Yeah. Which one did you think was a the most interesting of those people back there? So many.

I kind of liked the, well I liked the Claire Trevor story. Oh well you don’t get a lot of her story. Um, the other one that interested me was the, um, is the actors named John Howard with Lorraine Day, the couple he wants to go mining in Canada and she’s a New York socialite. Wife’s money Lorraine day and John Howard. Absolutely. The Rice family. Yeah. I like that story. That was interesting. Um, I didn’t quite ever connect with the guy who was clutching the briefcase, the guy that had been working on, I mean that was a big theme back in the 50s. You know, the, the horror that’s been unleashed on the planet by nuclear, by the scientists that have created atomic weapons. Um, and we were still ducking under our desks for atomic bomb drills at school. Quick get under your desk. It’s going to help you a lot.

That’s about the same time the aliens and stuff were coming in the benevolent aliens to try and get us to save ourselves and the vicious aliens that were going to attack us and overpower us. And so, I guess I just tried to jump on that trend, John, you’ve got to get into some of those 50 science fiction movies, Invaders from Mars. I was just looking at When Worlds Collide. I think I’m going to do a couple of those disaster ones with Faith Domergue. That’s why I haven’t done that. I don’t want to say that name. I don’t want to try and say Domergue. You’re going to love those movies when you get into them.

I mean, I do already with the, uh, you know, with the robot, with the clipper hands and everything. What was that? That was something forbidden planet. No, This Planet Earth. Oh. Could be. Forbidden Plant is with Leslie Nielsen, that is Forbidden Planet. Um, yeah, Leslie Nielsen, I can’t remember who else was in that, but Robbie the Robot was the name of that robot. Yeah, no, I was thinking of the, on the, uh, This Planet Earth where the, uh, the aliens had these green kind of clipper hands. Oh. But the big hands. And then that’s the one where they dropped the, uh, like the Cessna or the Piper Cub out of the UFO at the end. And let us just free fall and start flying. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wonder if the wings would have come off on that.

I got to find that movie again. You know because it was so cheap and easy to go to the movies and because you could stay and see a movie over and over again, the theater, you were in the theater. So, some of these movies that I liked, I would see those things three or four times in a week. I’d go and see him twice at a time. It was great. I mean those science fiction movies; I could not see them enough. That was, I was just interviewed a woman named Helen Garber, Helen K. Garber and she’s a photographer. She taught a noir photography class out in Santa Fe that I took. And she was saying that too. She would go to the theaters, which was young and watch the movies over and over and now her husband can’t understand why she can watch a movie five or six times and look at different things.

I’m going to watch the actors, I’m going to watch the background, let’s listen to the music and yup. So, it’s a kind of a gift. I think that the, I sure watched a lot of movies when I was a kid and I think that that was the babysitter. They would drop me off at the movie theater and I would just stay there most of the day watching the movie three or four times. Yeah. Popcorn. So, I did the same thing but living down South. One thing that always had galled me because they never would let me sit in the balcony and balconies were where the blacks had to sit. Oh. Even in the middle of the day when nobody was there, they wouldn’t let me go up and sit down. And I always wanted to sit in the balcony. Where, where did you live? Oh, South Mississippi. In Hattiesburg. Okay. Yeah. Strange, strange times. My favorite character really is the Jan Sterling one. You know, the former beauty queen is not as beautiful and she’s going to see William Hooper. Yeah. Paul Drake, great actor. You know, and she’s worried that she’s lost a step and he’s not going to like her. I like that story the best. Of course. the uh. She’s the one only one that got an Oscar on that movie, I think. Yeah.

When she pulled her makeup off, you know, that’s pretty bold, you know, for somebody that, uh, they made her look and she let them do that because she was a beautiful lady and to let her look without her makeup. Yeah. She didn’t look as bad as she thought she did. They had the couple; I’m just going back to my list here. Um, the Joseph’s Ed and Clare Joseph were the happy travelers, you know, that has the, uh, like the complaining club. Phil Harrison yeah. Phil Harrison and Ann Doran. Yeah. And how’s kind of an interesting story, kind of a philosophy for life, you know? Well, it’s really not that bad. Yeah. Actually, somebody always got a worse story. You’d mentioned though, the lady, let’s see, Lorraine Day and John Howard. And for most of that movie, you assume that John Howard, his character is an idiot and he’s wasting money. And then at the end of the movie, they’re like, well, you know, maybe there’ll be gold there.

You know, maybe I will be successful. I’m not, you know, I’m not just depending on your money. I’m making my own, you know, ideas. And I kind of liked that transition on that couple. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like he’s trying to break out, break away from the, he’s married the rich, rich woman and he wants to make it on his own. Right. You, you, you hope that she’s discovered for her heart, but she hasn’t, by the end of the movie she’s decided that she’s not going to go to Canada. He can go, but she’s not. Yeah. So that’s a good one. I was there that, uh, you know, Paul Fix is pretty darn good in this movie. You know, Paul Fix is always good. I guess he is really playing Mika on the Rifleman. Right. And, uh, just, uh, I hadn’t seen him in any movies. He’s almost, he’s in almost every John Wayne movie. Okay. I was thinking of, what’s the other guy that, Oh, the guy that plays, the guy that plays an Italian in this movie is also in almost every John Wayne movie. John Qualen.

Is that his name? John Qualen. Usually plays a Norwegian or something. Well, he’s Liberty Valance and he’s in, I think he might even be in, uh, The Searchers (1956). He’s one of the parents. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yes, that’s right. He’s Halley’s father. And then I guess what’s the, I’m trying to think of the Bruce Cabot‘s, the other one that was in a lot of John Wayne movies. That’s the John Wayne crew. Yeah. Bruce and the other guy, you are Gonzalez-Gonzalez. Oh, yes, him too, he’s the guy on the boat. He is he built the radio a lot of the old John Wayne gang in this one. Yep. So yeah, that’s pretty loyal, you know, to take care of a crew like that.

Yeah. Well I think there’s a really, I don’t know if you’ve read it, but there’s an excellent biography of John Wayne came up, came out about three years ago and I read it and you know, John Wayne was a real professional. Um, he, he loved acting, he loved production and when he got a crew of people that understood him and that he enjoyed being with and that, that embraced his work ethic, he just loved working with them. So, all those guys were people that, that were, you know, part of his crew and I believe, I believe this will be, was the first movie his production company produced. But I don’t think, I think the name of his production company hadn’t yet been, um, been named Batjack. I think he had a different kind of a company at the time.

Okay. Well, I guess, yeah. And then he kept Bruce Cabot around for a drinking buddy. Yeah. It’s good to have people you can hang out with after work too, if you can afford it.

But that’s a great biography by the way, if you, if you’re, he’s, he’s uh, you know, he’s, he was, um, he graduated college. Uh, he was smart, and he just started doing odd jobs out on the movie lot and, um, and just sort of fell into some roles and it all happened from there. I mean, it’s a great story. And, um, he worked hard and he, he didn’t make that much money. He died not, you know, you would just assume a guy like John Wayne would, would have quite a fortune, but he put a lot of money into the Alamo, which was his passion project. And that thing was a bomb.

Right. Pretty. Uh, yeah. I like it though. I enjoy watching it. It’s not that he’s not that great a movie, but, uh, he made the The Green Berets (1968), you know, which didn’t go over too big either. You know, I like, of course Hellfighters (1968) was in around that same time when he was playing there. It’s a fun movie. I liked that movie. Yeah. To sit down and I’m going to enjoy it.

There just aren’t too many. My favorite John Wayne movie is The Shootist (1976).

Oh great. That’s probably because of my age.

I just think he did a great job. I mean, people don’t, I don’t think people appreciate what a good actor he is.

He really, uh, he really has as you know, superficial. But yeah, he played that cowboy role over and over and over till he was perfect at it. Yeah. And then so people thought that was the only thing you could do, but like when you mention The Shooters, he is fantastic and nuanced, and I love Lauren Bacall in that movie. Yeah. I think the, to me, what I see out of that movies if they had met at a different time, they would have been a couple. Yeah. She’s so good. And he’s so good. Of course. Ron Howard. Ron Howard was good. Yes, Hugh O’Brian. Right. The biggest ham bone in the world.

Paladin. Richard Boone Richard Boone playing a rough old guy and Jimmy Stewart had a little cameo here, a little small part in that. That was a great movie within a movie. I thought. Yeah, the interaction of those two old guys and one of them given the other one really bad news and the other one trying to figure out how to handle it and the doctor warning him, you know, if I were in your position and I where you’re kind of man, I wouldn’t go out that way. Right. That was a perfect movie in the movie. I thought. Yeah, that was a great just fantastic scene. Yeah. Alright. So, I know we could talk for a long time because we drag it back to this airplane.

So, they’re past the point of no return. The engine falls off and puts a lot of drag on them. Yup. The navigator, which is a, I had to look at his name again. Wally Brown. Okay. He’s like an old veteran and he starts, I love the part where he stands up with a Sexton and looks out the top of the airplane bubble to find his position, you know, working with slide rulers and stuff. Yeah. Oh, I would go down in the ocean, you know, circles or something, you know. So, he calculates it they like they’re, what, 11 minutes short or four minutes short at first. Yeah. And then, uh, Stack the captain Robert Stack is just ready to put it in the sea just as soon as he can. And John Wayne wants to make for land, and I guess because the sea was rough, and they were pretty sure it was going to break up or go under. Yeah. Quickly. Just by some chances. Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales character was made a little radio set where he could monitor, uh, aviation when he was bored and picked up on their position and got kind of a rescue flight. Right. Going out to them. So, uh, the rescue flight would’ve been immaterial, really. I mean, they, I thought they did a great job of when they show this guy and the ship rolling back. And you can tell

those seas are rough. The last thing you want to do is put that airplane in the ocean. You got the chair clips and he hooks in when he’s really talking on the radio. That would be a rough sea rock in a ship like that. I think so. Yeah. So, but you know, so, but if you bring a they were going into San Francisco, I don’t know how big San Francisco wasn’t 54 but are you coming in over a populated area? You know, so that’s the other choice whether you bring it in, you know where you might land in the city. Yeah. Or not. And I’m not sure how the airport’s rigged up out there, but, well they,

as I recall you, one approach brings you in over the Bay.

So, but. I think I flew into Oakland.

All of the considerations that are going on, that’s why I thought they did such a great job. There’re so many factors that these pilots have to consider. And there’s one old hand there who knows how to compute the factors and who knows when to gamble and when not. And then there’s the younger guy who’s whose, whose confidence has been fragile, almost the whole trap. He broke, he definitely broke. It was just too much for him. And then, uh, you know, you weren’t sure of the navigator and the, and the way they juxtaposed the age and experience of the navigator with the third pilot, you know, uh, he was his, um, didn’t have Hobie, didn’t have hardly any experience, so he wasn’t going to be much help to the crew.

They, it was a, I thought it was a nice touch the way they had Hobie condescend and insult a John Wayne character. Right. You know, I forget what the lines were, but at one point in, in effect, he said, you’re washed up. You know, you’re, you’re the guy who crashed.

Whatever you think doesn’t matter. You’re an old timer and we’re, we’re long past you. And yet it was his instinct that ultimately saved the plane.

That was in the part where John Wayne was trying to rally him to help him get the captain to reconsider. He turned him down flat. Yes, dismissed him out of hand. Yeah. And so, I liked the way they, uh, how everybody stayed pretty calm as they opened up the, uh, you know, the doors and started throwing cargo out. And I think that’s, that might be the time when I’d be like, ah, I’m just going to sit back here and rest. Yeah, I think I’d be under the seat at that point. It’s like the, it’s like the, uh, the old Alamo joke, you know, like, uh, if somebody got a jump for the airplane, you know, I’m like, I’m going to throw this guy out for me. Yeah, I guess so. Well that’s actually in a William isn’t a Wings a William Wellman movie. The old Wings version with Claire Bow. Maybe I’m not, you know, that’s one that I have not seen. It’s, it’s horrible. It’s unwatchable as far as I’m concerned. Uh, let me see if I can, I want to make sure I’m right before I say it and 1927. Oh, 27. Yeah, it’s William Wellman. And the, on the German Zeppelin they throw out all the weight that trying to get away and then they get to the point where they’re like, you have to die for the fatherland. So out you go there. These guys are just jumping out of the airplane out of the zeppelin.

So, I guess I might skip that. It’s, it’s pretty terrible actually. I thought it was for such a great supposedly movie, you know, I want to watch, I’ll watch one of the old Errol Flynn ones if I want to watch the dog fighting. Yeah. So, they, they get everybody prepared and uh, I guess Paul Fix has found a reason to stay alive. I forget which woman is, uh, talking to him. Is it the steward and the stewardess?

Yeah. Uh, but the, all the little Asian woman that little Asian woman and she, he’s, I think he’s trying to calm her a bit and talking about the steak dinner once they land.

Yeah. Making plans. And then your kind of like, he had given up on life when he got there and when he was on the plane and then he took found a reason. Yeah. To keep on going. I like that. And what was the, um, the actor, when is he Pardee? Robert Newton. It was supposed to be the actor and his wife Julie Bishop. Long John Silver. Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, and he was, uh, he was scared. It was white knuckling the whole flight and a fear of fear of death. And then when they got into the situation, he was the one that put on this persona, started acting and didn’t care about dying. I don’t know if he was acting or didn’t care about dying. Right. So, he completely changes to keep everybody calm and he’d never done a thing for anybody in his life.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, he played Long John Silver.

Oh yeah. Walt, Walt Disney’s, um, Treasure Island, um, he played Long John Silver and then that role was so popular, his performance that they gave him a TV series. I think it was two seasons back in about maybe 55, 56. Long John Silver was a TV series starring Robert Newton, but the whole “arrh matey” stuff was all created by, uh, by Robert Newton. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah. Some more to add in there. They finally decide, I guess. Well who the rescue plane gets there. And did you notice who the copilot was in the rescue plane? Yeah. Alfalfa, Alfalfa, you know, he wasn’t working much, but uh, that was good that he, uh, got that job. Yeah. So, Alfalfa comes to the rescue. That sounds like an Our Gang episode. Yeah. They get them and they find out that the navigators made an error in his calculations of the, uh, I guess metrics and not, or, uh, miles and knots, which is a, what NASA did with a Mars probe now, you know, so many years ago. So, I guess one was doing kilometers and one was doing miles shot straight into the surface of Mars. Oh, oops. So, I guess that’s a common mistake, I guess.

And an expensive one. Yeah. So, you pick up enough wind that they think they can make. And John Wayne finally convinced Robert Stack to go forward. They fly directly in and uh, so they do make it, they make it on the ground and then there’s like what they tell them, it’s less than 30 gallons of fuel left in the airplane when they hit the ground, when they landed, and then then later on as all the couples go away with their new life. And even the guy that was going to a murder, the airline executive, he’s happy and ready to go back to his wife instead of, you remember Blackmer I think. Yeah, but, but I got the sense that the experience didn’t change that much. It looked to me like he was still ready to kill that guy if he can get at him. It was just a matter of being out of reach.

Yeah. And then that’s another juxtaposition they did and had the quiet fishermen, which played by John Qualen take the gun disarming and you know, stop the crazy. Oh yeah. So, I love that so much in this movie. I’ve watched it. I watched it last time before we were going to record it and I watched this morning a little bit to make sure I knew everybody’s name again. You know, David Brian was another TV actor in the 50s that I remember and he’d never, I’ve never, I can’t remember ever playing a role where he wasn’t the brave, the good-looking brave guy. In this movie he’s petrified. Claire Trevor’s just taken care of him. He, he almost becomes speechless in the last half of the movie, I think. And he’s the aviation guy, right?

I think he’s a stockholder. I don’t think he’s Not a flyer but a businessman that owns aviation. Yeah. Oh.

I guess nobody wants to talk to the, uh, the press when they get off the airplane, they just want to go on and get on with their lives. You back what they, what they’ve learned. And of course, William Hopper’s there to pick up Jan Sterling and he’s happy with the way she looks, you know, take her to his mountain cabin, live forever in paradise.

She’ll get bored with that. But that was kind of a long time before online dating, you know, they were kind of like, yeah, letter writing correspondence. Pen pals yeah. And yeah, pen pals and then they were way ahead of the curve, you know, they could have done that on the internet now.

A few minutes. Yeah. And probably had a lot more options too. Little wider pool. So, I was going to ask you, I usually ask this at the beginning,

You know, what, what do you, you’ve said a few things about how well John Wayne acted and the complexity of the stories and how tight, everything was, but what is the one thing about this movie that you just love the most, just really pulls you to it? Why don’t you go to the people watch this movie?

Well, as I said, I think they for, I mean we, we think that the movies we see today are just worlds ahead of what’s been done in the past, you know, superior technology and, and more sophistication in the stories, et cetera. But this movie does such a good job of creating the tension and the fear and then using that to advance all of the stories in the movie. I just think it’s a great example of, of what writing and acting can do without any fancy technology or sophisticated approaches. It’s very, well, like I said, it’s kind of corny and yet it all works. And, um, I just, I just love the movie because it’s, it has heart that way. Um, with the exception of the little kid, I think he sleeps most of the time. But there’s a lot of tender moments tucking him in. And I mean that, that the director I think was excessive there. But basically, it’s a, it’s a movie with heart and tension it works. So yeah.

Imagine now if they made this movie with all the CGI and they would show, you know, internal engine explosions and you know, people get like when she burned her hand with the coffee stewardess burned her hand with the coffee. Yeah. The plane lurched, you know, well, would be somebody catching on fire and you know, jumping out of the airplane or something. I don’t know. And um, I have this argument all the time with my, of my adult children. That CGI make movies better or does it just make movies lazier? I think just exchange the explosion for good writing and a good story. Yeah. Kind of the old Norma Desmond. Yeah. I think you could make that case that, uh, effect have replaced to some extent. It replaced the quality of writing. Yeah. And I’m not a snob. I’ll go and watch, you know, Iron Man or any of those Age of Thor or Age of Ultron. I like, I like to watch the explosion, but I don’t pretend that there’s, you know, good writing behind it. Just, it’s fun. I agree with you. Although I’m not a big fan of superhero movies, I, I tend to avoid them. I’ve watched a few of them and just sworn it off for good.

I get it because I have to. Excuse me. Sorry. Sorry. That’s the dude. The dude, the dude. I have to, uh, I have watched these movies so I can keep up with my cultural references. You know, what people are talking about. Definitely. So, okay, well what else do we need to go over this movie? We have hit most of the major people, uh Oh, I wanted to talk about one other guy that was on here. Let’s see, he was the, he was the, actually the cargo clerk, which is that Robert Easton. You just had them see, just had a, he had Robert Stack sign, the weight for the plane. He said, I told Orville I told that other guy… got that super interesting voice is more developed later on. But it’s almost like a super country accent. He was in a lot of movies. But he just has that real unique voice.

And like he’s like Percy Helton, you can when you hear him, you know exactly who it is. You think he was in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and stuff like that. And I’m having a hard time. Yeah, he’s a pretty obscure character. But I like him because he’s got that. I just wanted to throw him in there because he’s got that wild voice on there. And then of course we talked about, uh, just briefly how many movies this thing influenced to see Airport and the Airplane parody. Uh, The High and the Mighty served as a template for the whole airport series, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, The Hindenburg, and The Titanic (1997) version. So, this was like one of the early disaster movies before there were disaster and took us until the 70s before they were really disaster movies. Right. And I like how they, uh, they take that template and I guess the first air Airport with the one with Dean Martin and everybody was pretty good.

The [Arthur] Hailey book, I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I never have time to read anymore. I’m pushing. I wish I had more time to read. Well, I’m retired so I’ve got a lot of time. I do too, but it seems like I’m always out cutting branches or something like that, you know? Well, but you’d make, you’re doing this stuff, which is really great is when I run in and out between it. So, this is my fun thing. But yeah. Yeah. It’s like I’m always doing some more work around the house since I retired. Yeah. That’ll happen to you. So, here’s my advice. Sell the house.

I have been telling my wife, you know, I don’t want to move to look a nice condo and it has a swimming pool. You don’t have to mow the grass. We sold our house; we got a condo here in Phoenix and all the work gets done for you. Do that. Man. Sounds good. Either that or get five acres so that I can just bush hog with a tractor, you know. Oh, that still sounds like work to me. Rick it was great talking to you today? Yes, it is great. It’s um, uh, someday I hope you’ll be able to review this movie that my son and I made 20 years ago that we’ve not yet ever gotten distribution for. But um, I’m working on that. I thought I, I thought I had a deal but the company, the distributor went bankrupt on me this summer before the movie ever got put up on iTunes and Amazon.

But I’m, I’m working on finding a new distributor to put it up there for us. So, it has, it’s not a self-help process. Like I, I like podcast. Huh? You got to get an intermediary in there to do that for you. Well, you know, theoretically, I’m not even sure this is accurate. I was going to say theoretically if I, if I knew how to meet all the technical specs that these platforms require, maybe I could do it myself, but I don’t think so. I think they’ll only deal with intermediaries. This company that I was dealing with was called Distrber and its whole business was taking little indie movies that didn’t get distribution and putting them up on these video on demand, you know, Netflix, Amazon and in many other platforms where people can stream them. So, I thought by this time people would be renting this movie and I’d have some revenue finally, but. I’d love to see it. It’s called “The Last Late Night.” We made it. We shot it in 98. And um, I mean my son wrote and directed it and we co-produced it and we took it on the festival circuit, won some nice awards and we thought we’d get some distribution. But back then,

you know, before the video on demand stuff, 99 we premiered it and 2000 it did many of the festivals. In fact, we got a lot of help from Brian Cranston when we’ve made the movie. He was shooting his indie movie at the same time. We met him at a seminar in Los Angeles and he gave us all of his post-production list of people, you know, the negative cutter and the just everybody for post-production that he had used in his movie. Huh. He a reference for us. And so, he was a big help and he was at one of our festivals, the Nashville Film Festival where we won the Audience Award. Brian and his wife, Robin were there because his movie had won it the year before and they had invited him back. So, we had a hell of a good time doing it. But um, you know, it’s never made a dollar and it’s a few thousand people. Saw it at various festivals, but other than that, nobody has seen the movie and I’d like people to see it. It’s, it’s a fun little movie. Yeah. Dramatic comedy.

Okay, good. Uh, yeah. Is there anything anybody can do? Is there a website or anything you want to send people to after this?

Well, there, there will be, but there isn’t right now. Okay,
Well keep that posted. Well, look, this was a lot of fun. I think. Let’s do this again before, you know, few months.

Yeah, let’s do it. You know, when you get another old 50s vintage movie, maybe if you get into those science fiction movies, we’ll, we’ll talk through one of those, or I’ll track down His Majesty O’Keefe and we can talk about that. Yeah. All right. Well, great. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it and it was a lot of fun. Enjoyed it. Thank you. Right. I’ll talk to you before everything goes out.