Some thoughts upon watching a film from 1939 ("Five Came Back")

11/22/17 | Me

[Simon Green]

It's just an obscure but entertaining B movie from RKO, the story of the crew and passengers of a small airplane crashed in the South American jungle. Will they be able to repair the plane in time to escape before being attacked by natives?

(Um, given the spoilerrific title...yes. Yes they will. Five of them, at any rate.)

I enjoy watching older films that are set contemporaneously. It's almost like having a time machine.

Remade by the same director in 1956 with a slightly less give-it-away title, "Back From Eternity". My thoughts:

1) The characters arrive at the airport 10 minutes before flight time. "We've got plenty of time".

2) Lucille Ball is a hottie in 1939.

3) Speaking of Ball, she's playing a hooker with a heart of gold (never explicitely stated, this is the 30's). The other character's reactions to her range from strained formality to outright hostility.

4) When on the plane, passengers think nothing of strolling into the cockpit and striking up a conversation with the pilots.

5) Two out of a dozen passengers are carrying concealed handguns.

6) The cabin is way too quiet. That kind of plane was noisy.

7) The pilot shamelessly flirts with a passenger.

8) Landing a plane in the middle of the jungle. On one engine. In a storm. At night. No problem.

9) After a week, the camp will look like Gillgian's Island.

[al baby]

Kinda campy check out Kona kost

[SoCal Pubbie]

I would say that any film set in the time it was made represents a stylized impression of the era in which it is made. In the 1940s, the Hays Code enforced a sense of morality and mandated certain outcomes (crime never paid for example) that did not really comport with the reality of that era.

On the other hand, PC today enforces its own code, which for the most part distorts the reality of we see it every day and presents what the liberal mind wants us to see. Which is more real? It’s hard to say, although I would suggest that in days gone by, the reality was closer on screen, absent the more unsavory elements of human nature, reality for minorities, etc.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Tommy Udo, they broke the mold when they made him … truly a "psycho".

[antidisestablishment]

That was true 20 years ago in many regional airports. They also had wide seats with legroom, served decent meals, hired good looking stewardesses (and even called them stewardesses), and allowed people to smoke (so it wasn’t perfect!).

[ETL]

Tommy Udo, they broke the mold when they made him … truly a "psycho".

Yes, Richard Widmark was terrific in that role. I think it was because of this film that his career took off.

Interesting aside, real-life gangster Crazy Joe Gallo shaped his personality to resemble Udo's after seeing this film as a teen.

They mention it here in this mobster documentary on him:

Joe (Crazy Joe) Gallo, Colombo Crime Family Gangster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yRr1EpRFiA

[stylin19a]

no smoking on the plane ?

[moehoward]

Different film entirely.

[luvbach1]

I like to guess the year a film was made by clues of dress, slang, hair styles, cars, etc.I usually get it within a year or two and often am dead on.

[ETL]

Oops! Posted that “Scrooge” film link to the wrong thread.

[libertylover]

My cousin survived a plane crash in Africa! Zambia to be exact.

It wouldn’t be a good movie because it seems too impossible. Small plane, only my cousin and the pilot on board; oil leak all over the windshield and engine failure; spotted a little grass runway not shown on any map and was able to crash-land on it; plane completely destroyed but passengers only slightly injured; an hour later African natives show up to help, (not to eat), and the natives spoke English! They were picked up a few hours later.

[GJones2]

I’m a big fan of old movies too. The one you mentioned sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t recall it well enough to comment. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was pretty good, though.

[warsaw44]

What is not depicted in any of those films is the vulgar reality of today’s society.

- and in that is the appeal.

[Simon Green]

no smoking on the plane ?

Oh, they smoked like chimneys.

[Squantos]

She wuz a babe .......

[ETL]

Also loved Coleen Gray in that. Hadn't known of her previous. What a lucky guy he (Victor Mature in the film) was to have a pretty girl like that so head-over-heels over him!

Did a search on her soon after watching the film for the first time and learned that she was a staunch conservative in real life, an activist even. Also that she had then just recently died... in 2015, and age 92.

Personal life

Gray married Rod Amateau, a screenwriter, on August 10, 1945; they divorced on February 11, 1949, and had one daughter, Susan (born 1946). Gray’s second husband was William Clymer Bidlack, an aviation executive. They were married from July 14, 1953,[11] until his death in 1978. The union produced a son, Bruce Robin Bidlack (born 1954).[12]

In 1979, Gray married widowed biblical scholar Joseph Fritz Zeiser;[13] they remained together until his death in March 2012. They were active with the non-profit organization, Prison Fellowship, founded in 1976 by Chuck Colson, a convicted felon in the Watergate scandal. Prison Fellowship assists the church in ministering to prisoners and their families and victims.

Gray was a staunch conservative Republican[14].

In 1964, along with actors Victor Jory and Susan Seaforth, Gray testified before the United States Congress as part of “Project Prayer,” arguing in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing school prayer.

Gray died in her Bel Air, Los Angeles home on August 3, 2015, of natural causes. She was 92.[15][16] She was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery and her ashes given to her stepson, Rick Zeiser[17]. Her memorial service was held at the Bel-Air Presbyterian Church where she, and her husband Joseph Fritz Ziesier, were active members[18][19][20][21].

Public service

Gray was a member of the board of directors at her alma mater, Hamline University.[4] Gray was also active within the following organizations: WAIF, the child adoption organization as President, The March of Dimes, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross, American Mental Health Association, Los Angeles Epilepsy Society, Junior Blind, The Bel-Air Republican Women’s Group, and The Boy and Girl Scouts of America[22].

Partial filmography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleen_Gray#Personal_life

____________________________

From the NY Times, Aug 3, 2015...

Coleen Gray, an actress who dreamed of playing femmes fatales but was repeatedly cast as innocents in noir films like Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” died on Monday at her home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 92.

David Schecter, a friend, confirmed her death.

With wavy hair and luminous skin, Ms. Gray had the looks to play one of film noir’s leading ladies in the 1940s and ’50s. But her girl-next-door demeanor effectively typecast her as the love interest in crime movies and cowboy pictures.

“I was always Goody Two-Shoes,” Ms. Gray was quoted as saying in “Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir,” by Eddie Muller. “The juicier parts, it was determined, were not for me.”

Ms. Gray made the most of her niche, however, appearing with some of the biggest stars of the time.

Her first major part was as the love interest of a parolee, played by Victor Mature, in Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” (1947), which she also narrated. The film was the movie debut of Richard Widmark, who played the murderer. [Tommy Udo]

Ms. Gray played a wife who refused to take part in a grift with her husband, a carnival con man played by Tyrone Power, in “Nightmare Alley” (1947). She also appeared in westerns, notably as the sweetheart of John Wayne’s cattle-rancher character in Howard Hawks’s “Red River” (released in 1948).
Continue reading the main story

In “The Killing” (1956), Ms. Gray was the love interest of Sterling Hayden’s criminal, who is bent on robbing a racetrack before settling down with her. But she would much rather have played the scheming wife who double-crossed her husband, she told The New York Times in 1999, and not getting the part — Marie Windsor did — “was frustrating.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-coleen-gray-20150804-story.html

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They don't make (many) women like her anymore! She was the complete package! :)

[Robert DeLong]

It could be. I watched several of hem and it has been awhile now. 8>)

[onedoug]

Ungawa

[xrmusn]

I remember when smoking section on the plane was ‘floatable’

they would move a sign- as appropriate - on the back of the seat as needed.. I believe they then went to a curtain....

And the people that complained were looked down upon...

Great ‘excuse’ was if one couldn’t smoke he may ‘lose it’ while the plane in flight....

That is one ‘fight’ the minority won...

They were probably the majority as smokers usually didn’t ‘hang out’ with nonsmokers as they couldn’t ‘stand us’....

If someone was ‘bothering’ you all you had to do was light up and they would leave you alone...

Ah, the good old days....HA HA

[xrmusn]

8) Landing a plane in the middle of the jungle. On one engine. In a storm. At night. No problem.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
Had to us ‘poetic license’ to follow the script...

Use to ‘love’ the Old Westerns where the ‘White Hat’ would be galloping full throttle through the ravine while 30 ‘Black Hats’ were lining the ridges with their rifles and they couldn’t come close while he was picking them off with his six shooter from a speeding horse and while doing ‘tricks’ in the saddle....