After a decade of no adventures competing for the Best Picture Oscar, the 1970s brought a new cycle of action-adventures, labeled as “disaster movies,” because they depicted all kinds of catastrophes, man and nature-made.
Most of these pictures were trashy potboilers, set on earth (Earthquake, 1974), in the air (Airport, 1970 and its many sequels), on the sea (Jaws, 1975 and its sequels) as well as under the sea (The Poseidon Adventure, 1972).
This genre would exploit its narrative possibilities in a few years, after saturating the market with so many sequels and imitators that the cycle even led to an hilarious send-up, Airplane (1980), a funny spoof of the various “airport” movies.
The “disaster” movie-adventures were more of mechanically packaged and calculated entertainment, each with an all-star cast, rather than well-made movies.
Nonetheless, most of them proved to be extremely popular with the large public, at once cashing in and promoting collective fears of ordinary individuals’ most ordinary behaviors, such as flying (Airport), swimming on Long Island’s beaches (Jaws), and working in a high-rising building (The Towering Inferno).
The pattern of these blockbusters, as far as the Academy and Oscars were concern, was to lend a large number of nominations, in recognition of their technical aspects and commercial appeal, but avoid granting major awards.
One of the pluses of the “disaster” adventures was providing employment to many older actors, some in forced retirement, though the pictures were not very generous to them–each actor of the large ensembles rarely got more than one good or decent scene.
This explains the large number of technical nominations and the paucity of acting ones. Those granted tended to be elderly performers, which got recognition for sentimental reasons.
Based on Arthur Hailey’s popular novel of the same title, the ludicrous scenario of Airport, which launched the cycle, was penned by George Seaton, who also got credited as director, even though Henry Hathaway shot some additional sequences after principal work.
With a considerable budget of $10 million (bigger than the budget of two superb Oscar winners, The French Connection in 1971 and The Godfather in 1972), producer Ross Hunter was clever enough to cast the film with an all-star cast.
The ensemble was led by A-listers, Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, and included vet and prestige actresses, such as Oscar winners Helen Hayes and Maureen Stapleton, as well as mediocre if beautiful femmes, Dana Wynter, Jean Seberg (in what would tragically become one of her last roles), and Jacqueline Bisset.
Seaton, better known for helming Grace Kelly’s Oscar role in the 1954 melodrama, The Country Girl, ended up turning in a glossy if silly and hollow picture, which benefited from the cinematography of Ernest Laszlo and music of Alfred Newman, who composed his very last score.
Nominally, the primary thrust of the plot revolves around a bomb, contained in the briefcase of a mad, troubled man, who is threatening to blow up mid-air the aircraft, its crew, and passengers.
In actuality, however, the trashy, disposable tale unfolded as a series of intertwined stories, as they pertained to some colorful passengers, and troubled crew members, and airport personnel.
Critical reviews were mixed to negative, but the movie became a blockbuster, grossing more than $100 million at the box-office, thus becoming one of the most profitable pictures in Universal’s history.
As a result of the film’s commercial success, the studio went on to make several sequels (all inferior to the original), and there would be countless imitations.
Detailed Plot
Van Hefflin (in his last screen role) plays a demolition expert named Guerrero, a loser with mental issues, who plans to commit suicide by blowing up a Rome-bound Boeing 707 jet, flying from a snowbound Chicago airport. He plans to set off a bomb in his attaché case so that his wife, Inez (Maureen Stapleton), can collect the insurance money of $225,000.
Once the crew becomes aware of Guerrero’s madness, Captain Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), a pilot who’s there to evaluate Captain Anson Harris (Barry Nelson), he tries to persuade Guerrero not to trigger the bomb, telling him his insurance policy had been cancelled. Meanwhile, airport manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) deals with weather, runway and stowaway problems.
Confronted by Demerest, Guerrero considers giving the attaché when a passenger yells about the bomb. Guerrero runs into the lavatory at the rear of the aircraft and triggers the bomb. The detonation blows out a hole in the wall and Guerrero with it. As a result, Chief Stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who is having illicit affair with Demerest and is pregnant, is injured in the explosion.
Due to unpredictable bad weather, the surrounding airports are shut down, and so the plane returns to Lincoln International for emergency landing, though another airliner stuck in snow has closed the primary runway. TWA chief mechanic at Lincoln Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) is enlisted by Bakersfeld to move the stuck aircraft, another Boeing 707, which belongs to a different airline, TGA (the parent company of the film’s Golden Argosy jet). Patroni frees the stuck jet, allowing the primary runway to be reopened just in time to permit the crippled aircraft to land.
Oscar Alert
The movie was nominated for 10 awards, including Best Picture.
Helen Hayes won her second (Supporting Actress) Oscar, for portraying a cute, eccentric and compulsive stowaway, who, upon being caught, says: “I don’t think it would be very good public relations to prosecute a little lady for visiting her daughter.”
In his review of the film, the N.Y., Times Vincent Canby wrote: “Helen Hayes plays with such outrageous abandon you believe she must have honestly thought it would be her last performance.” It was not her final work, but maybe the Academy thought so.
Oscar voters nominated another supporting actress: Maureen Stapleton, as the slow-witted, distraught wife of the mad bomber (played by Van Heflin in his final film role). Stapleton would finally earn the Best Supporting Oscar for a worthier effort in Warren Beatty’s Reds, in 1981.
