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CEILING ZERO (Warner Brothers, Cosmopolitan Production, 1935/36), produced and directed by Howard Hawks, is an aviation drama staged and written by Frank Wead, author of the 1935 stage play starring John Litel and Osgood Perkins. Rather than featuring both Litel and Perkins to reprise their initial roles, the studio provided the then popular friendly rival team and best friends collaboration of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. Following their earlier successes of HERE COMES THE NAVY (1934), DEVIL DOGS OF THE AIR (1935) and THE IRISH IN US (1935), the main distinction CEILING ZERO doesn't have is the common support by Frank McHugh in a role here enacted by Stuart Erwin in a convincing serio-serious performance. Basically a filmed stage play with several exterior scenes revolving air flying and outside airport activity, CEILING ZERO ranks one of the finest of the Cagney and O'Brien collaborations, thanks to good scripting, acting and fine direction of Howard Hawks.

Before the story gets underway, the opening title first explains the meaning of "Ceiling Zero - that time when fog, rain or snow completely fills the flyable air between the sky or ceiling and the Earth. Until recent years, no pilot dared to fly in ceiling zero weather." Set at the Federal Airlines in Newark, New Jersey, plot development focuses on Jake L. Lee (Pat O'Brien), a hard-driving field boss who must do what he has to do, ranging from firing those for not properly doing their job, or to later hire "Dizzy" Davis (James Cagney, sporting a mustache), an ace pilot under the better judgment of Al Stone (Barton MacLane), the company supervisor, With Jake and Dizzy being best friends for many years, he risks his career for his association with Dizzy. Dizzy isn't very well liked by his fellow flyers, especially Lou (Isabel Jewell), wife of "Texas" Clarke (Stuart Erwin), and by Tay Lawson (Henry Wadsworth), for forcing himself on Tommy Thomas (June Travis), a girl pilot whom he loves. Problems arise when Dizzy feigns illness to have Texas fly in his place in order to keep his date with Mary (Martha Tibbetts), one of his former girlfriends, now married Jake's wife. After Texas loses his life flying blind in ceiling zero, and being told off by Lou, Dizzy also risks losing both Jake's friendship and flying license as well. Co-stars include Craig Reynolds (Joe Allen), Richard Purcell ("Smiley" Johnson), Robert Light (Les Brogan), Addison Richards and Mathilde Comont. Garry Owen, not a very well-known character actor having appeared in numerous movie productions, stands out as Mike Owens, a former ace pilot reduced to shining door knows after a crackup that has deformed his speaking and memory ability.

With Cagney heading that cast, the film very much belongs to Pat O'Brien, whose supporting role is actually the lead. Cagney doesn't appear until 19 minutes into the story. His arrogant character comes similar to the latter Cagney-O'Brien collaboration of THE FIGHTING 69th (Warners, 1940) with similar results. Though CEILING ZERO doesn't contain better marque female names in support like Margaret Lindsay or a Glenda Farrell, the performances provided by the lesser known June Travis and Margaret Tibbets are commendable, especially Isabel Jewell coming off stronger than the major lead performers during its crucial scenes.

Ranked as one of the best of the aviation melodramas of the 1930s next to Hawkes own ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (Columbia, 1939), CEILING ZERO, which did have television broadcasts in the past, has become strictly limited. In the early days of cable television, CEILING ZERO played on Showtime (1987) and Turner Network Television (1989-1992) before its distribution to video cassette in 1993. To date, CEILING ZERO has yet to broadcast on Turner Classic Movies or distribution on DVD due to legal complications regarding this title and its remake, INTERNATIONAL SQUADRON (Warners, 1941) starring James Stephenson and Ronald Reagan. Maybe like the obscure NIGHT FLIGHT (MGM, 1933) with John and Lionel Barrymore, CEILING ZERO may be seen flying across the screen of TCM in the future. For now, one would have to rely on the out of print 1993 video tape to locate and view out of curiosity's sake. (***1/2)

Mail pilot Dizzy Davis (James Cagney) is a daredevil and a womanizer like a textbook example. After he dropped a scheduled flight because of a rendezvous, his friend and colleague Texas Clarke (Stuart Erwin) stands in for him. Due to bad sight, the plane meets with an accident while landing, and Texas dies. Dizzy puts the blame on himself. To fix up that fatal error, he starts a bad weather kamikaze flight.

Hawks' preliminary study to "Only Angels Have Wings" is an absorbing aviator film which does not surprise very much though. A troup of airmen, intrepidly looking in death's eye, between the flight sequences, it's a drama of interiors. Duty and honor, lust and loyalty of professionals, a question of fast-paced flow of words and swifter movements. Hawks' (typical) flawed hero, played by the master of nimble gestures, James Cagney, is small and every handling an expression of his being. Although he flirts with June Travis and tries to impose his room keys on her, his love applies to his understanding chief and friend, the plagued Pat O'Brien.

Unfortunately, all this comes along as pretty conventional (particularly for a Hawks film), but is entertaining nonetheless with a great James Cagney in the lead.

'Ceiling Zero' fits quite neatly into the central part of his 'oeuvre'. The classical Hawks' hero is honourable and heroic, but flawed. 'Dizzy' Davis fits firmly and squarely into this archetype. His womanising and recklessness precedes him, and is the cause on one of the film's twin tragedies. But this is offset by daring and bravery that is 'de rigeur' for mail pilots of the era. It is very rarely in films of this era that the 'hero' could still be the villain with just a few minutes to go, but that is effectively the case here. As in many of Hawks' finest films, the opening sequence serves as a contrasting miniature morality play that sets the ensuing drama into focus. Here it is a cowardly pilot who, lost in poor visibility, bails out of his plane without thought for the financial consequences for his employers. It is no accident that the company at the heart of the film is 'Federal Airlines'. Many of Hawks' films make exquisite political allegories, and this is no exception. Read the 'fog' as the Great Depression, Dizzy as the reckless aspect of the American entrepreneurial spirit and Jake as The President…

But there is more… psychologically it works a treat too. Jake and Dizzy share the same heroic wartime background. It emerges that they share the same taste in women too. To some extent, they represent two aspects of the same character – it is significant that during the climactic moments of Texas' final approach to the airfield, they keep switching roles, with first one then the other taking charge of the situation. Both of them also show the same moral flexibility – Dizzy by exchanging places with Tommy's boyfriend, Jake by being willing to distort his professional judgement to save Dizzy's flying career.

In spite of all of this, 'Ceiling Zero' cannot really be placed at the same level as the truly great Hawks masterpieces – El Dorado, To Have & Have Not, Bringing Up Baby and, significantly, Only Angels Have Wings. At the end of the film, one doesn't feel that one has really known the characters. But, considering its vintage, it is an entirely worthy work that gives us clear indications of the wonders to come.

It should be absolutely essential viewing for anyone wishing to acquaint themselves with the an important work of one of America's greatest artists, in any discipline, of the twentieth century. Another interesting parallel is Ford's 'Air Mail'which has a similar story also originating in Frank Wead.

Ceiling Zero is a story about airmail pilots back when flying was itself an occupational hazard. It was written by Frank W. Wead, better known as Spig Wead whose life was later brought to the screen by John Ford in Wings of Eagles.

For those who've seen Wings of Eagles, they know that Spig Wead was a navy pilot who set all kinds of aviation records before becoming paralyzed with a broken neck due to a fall down some stairs in his home. After that Wead turned to writing and published all kinds of articles, stories, and screenplays mostly relating to aviation.

Ceiling Zero was Wead's one attempt at a Broadway play. It ran for three months on Broadway in 1935 with John Litel and Osgood Perkins in the roles played by James Cagney and Pat O'Brien respectively. It got good critical acclaim, but a short Broadway run as did a lot of plays during the Depression.

O'Brien is the operations manager of an airline and Cagney is an old friend who is an irresponsible but talented flyer. Superficially those seem like parts tailor made for Cagney and O'Brien, but this is in fact a serious drama so their usual hijinks are not present in this film as well they shouldn't have been.

Cagney and O'Brien had done another film about aviation, Devil Dogs of the Air which is far more lighthearted, but which Warner Brothers invested far more production values. For the most part, Ceiling Zero is a photographed stage play with some scenes that are clearly done on the backlot.

I'm surprised that Wead who did in fact write more for the screen didn't push for a bigger budget and some location shooting for his play. On the plus side Director Howard Hawks handles his cast real well and you can see some influences for the later and better Only Angels Have Wings.

One of the greater challenges for a film director in handling an adaptation of a staged-bound play with a low budget is to make it exciting. But director Howard Hawks proved he could take a story originally constricted to the stage and create a barn burner of a adventure film in January 1936's "Ceiling Zero." The director was helped by the vibrancy of James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, both fast talkers delivering their rapid fire dialogue, so typical of a Hawks' film. "There's a close, emotionally heavy, mano a mano sense to scenes," writes film reviewer Erick Lundegard, describing Hawks' trademark features. "It's a melodrama, truncated in time and space, and with a low budget."

Hawks had a love affair with aviation films. He was an instructor for Signal Corps pilots during World War One, inspiring him to produce flyboy movies such as 1928 'Air Circus,' 1930 "The Dawn Patrol," and 1939 "Only Angels Have Wings," his last one containing similar storylines as "Ceiling Zero." Scriptwriter Frank 'Spig' Wead, also a WW1 aviator, wrote both the play of the same name as well as the script. Wead, an inventor for several airplane innovations, turned to writing when he became paralyzed falling down stairs while responding to his daughter's crying. The John Wayne movie, 1957's "The Wings of Eagles," directed by John Ford, is a biopic on Wead, who was good friends with the director.

Wead addressed two themes in "Ceiling Zero." Set in the year 1930, the movie focuses on the younger, yet vastly inexperienced pilots vying against the much older WW1 vets for aviator jobs. Dizzy Davis (James Cagney) and Tex Clarke (Stuart Erwin) are a pair of daredevil war pilots who fly in any type of weather, including ceiling zero, where visibility is nil. The younger pilots are skittish about the weather, as exhibited by one tenderfoot who abandons his plane when he can't see his hand in front of his face.

The secondary theme is the introduction of a novel form of deicing an airplane in flight when freezing rain, snow or drizzle dangerously forms ice on the airplane. Mixed in with all this excitement is cinema's proverbial romantic angle, which includes Jack Lee (O'Brien), who's the Newark, N. J. branch manager for Federal Airlines and a young female pilot "Tommy" Thomas (June Travis). Famous aviator Amelia Earhart gave lessons in flying, navigating and parachute jumping to Travis as well as to Cagney and O'Brien before the production in preparation for the film. Close to 70 per cent of the shots takes place in Jack's dispatcher office (filming never left the Warner Brother's studio and backlot.). Hawks's ability to create such a thrilling aviation film, all without computerized blue screens, was a talent very few movie directors in his day were capable of matching.