Alternate Session:
Drama in the Skies

Saturday, May 30, 4:15pm, at the usual place

FIRST FEATURE:
“The Crowded Sky” (1960, 105 Min) Directed by Joseph Pevney; written by Charles Schnee, based on the novel by Hank Searls; starring Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., John Kerr; Mike Rule; Anne Francis, Keenan Wynn, Nick Hyland, Troy Donahue,  Joe Mantell, Patsy Kelly, Donald May, Louis Quinn, Ed Kemmer, Tom Gilson, Hollis Irving, Paul Genge

A review from allmovie.com by Bruce Eder
"The Crowded Sky" was one of the more intelligent and economical air-travel thrillers of its day. Produced by Michael Garrison (who later produced The Wild, Wild West television series), and directed by Joseph Pevney, its plot (derived and maybe even slightly improved from Hank Searls' novel) was hooked on one ingredient for suspense that Alfred Hitchcock had always regarded as sure-fire -- put the protagonist in danger, and let the audience know it. In this case, the "protagonist" was a plane-load of passengers on a collision course with another flight, stretched out to nearly an hour-and-a-half of screen time. The movie also had some of the best virtues of a sprawling big-budget A-movie with a fairly large cast, coupled with those of a neat, clean, unpretentious, and uncluttered B-picture. Not as gargantuan in running time or as ambitious as "The High and the Mighty" (which was distributed by the same studio), nor as cerebral as "No Highway in the Sky," and more accessible than such British thrillers as "Jet Storm" or "Jet Over the Atlantic," "The Crowded Sky" was a fine little meat-and-potatoes type thriller, and the film only suffered from some minor aspects of its small budget -- the canvas was perhaps not big enough to take in all of the subplots involving the passengers and pilots in the way that subsequent big-budget disaster movies like "Airport" did a decade later, and at a crucial point (the crash scene) the special effects took on a distinctly low-budget cheesiness. Luckily, Joseph Pevney (Away All Boats, etc.) directed with such a deftness, that, coupled with some good performances, the film overcame the latter problem and ultimately made the film enjoyable."The Crowded Sky" was never going to be "The High and the Mighty" or "Airport, but it was a fine example of professional and occasionally inspired filmmaking by an underrated director and a cast that tried hard to pull it off. A subsequent oddity about this movie came up in the casting of Airport 1975 14 years later, in which Dana Andrews and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. were once again playing the pilots of two planes on a collision course, except that in the later film, Andrews is piloting the smaller plane and Zimbalist the airliner.


DINNER BREAK
Food themes: Barbecue, Mexican

SECOND FEATURE:
“The High and the Mighty” (1954, 141 min) Directed by William A. Wellman; written by Ernest K. Gann; starring John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris, Robert Newton, David Brian, Paul Kelly, Sidney Blackmer, Julie Bishop

This film won an Oscar for Best Score, and was nominated for five more.

The Amazon.com editorial review:
John Wayne personally produced many of his '50s films, which is why some of them have languished in corporate limbo following his death. "The High and the Mighty" was one of his most popular vehicles (no pun intended). This long, necessarily sedentary drama aboard an endangered airliner is a CinemaScope bridge between 1932's "Grand Hotel" and 1970s disaster movies. Despite Wayne's iconic presence as a pilot--now copilot--who survived the plane crash that wiped out his family, it's an ensemble movie with an impressive cast: Robert Stack sharing the cockpit, Oscar nominees Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling, Laraine Day, Robert Newton, Paul Kelly, John Qualen, Regis Toomey, the ubiquitous Paul Fix, and director William A. Wellman's good-luck character actor Douglas Fowley. Dimitri Tiomkin's score won the Oscar, though the fondly remembered theme song isn't as prominent as you'd expect. Wings veteran William H. Clothier shot the aerial footage. --Richard T. Jameson


SHORT SUBJECTS:
TBA

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