Air Mail

Although John Ford was one of the top directors of his time, he apparently didn't always get prime opportunities to helm movies-- particularly earlier in his career. Despite making such prestigious films as "The Iron Horse" and "3 Bad Man" and dozens of other films, here Universal Studios hired him to direct a film which is not much better than a B-movie--passable entertainment and worth seeing but otherwise unremarkable.

The film is set in an airport in the desert and Mike (Ralph Bellamy) is in charge of this airmail operation. However, the job is dangerous and they keep losing people. So, when they are down a man he hires an unlikely guy, Duke (Pat O'Brien). He's unlikely because Duke is a top pilot...one of the world's best...and why would he get involved with such a dangerous and thankless operations? Plus, as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that Duke is a total jerk-- only interested in himself and certainly not a team player. So how is Duke going to rise to the occasion and prove himself to be something more? See the film...or not.

This film is unusual because the part Pat O'Brien plays is very much unlike his usual nice-guy persona. It's also unusual because the film plays a lot like Howard Hawks' film "Only Angels Have Wings" but isn't nearly as good nor as well acted. Passable and predictable entertainment...the sort of film John Ford could have directed in his sleep.

A film that belies its age. There are some corny bits of dialogue and cheesy special effects, but Ford created a good low-key drama utilizing an excellent cast. Strong story written partly by Frank Wead. Could not believe this was made in 1932 and at UNIVERSAL!

As Christmas storms gather, the under-pressure manager of an air mail depot is forced to accept a selfish, boastful foe as one of his new pilots. Ralph Bellamy makes a bland and colourless leading man in a movie that suffers from comparison with Only Angels Have Wings, which is based on the same story by Frank Wead and Dale Van Every. Pat O'Brien doesn't fare much better - he was never particularly convincing in roles that called upon him to be cocky and arrogant - and only Lilian Bond as the unhappy wife of a pilot who falls for O'Brien's dubious charms makes a positive impression, although there is something to be said for Slim Summerville's unerring aim with chewing tobacco and a spittoon (ptooh! ding!!). It starts strongly with an impressive air crash and some insane aerial acrobatics in one of those flimsy-looking biplanes, but there's little else of interest.

Universal pre-coder, directed by John Ford, about the dramatic goings-on at an air mail base. Ralph Bellamy runs the place and has his hands full with arrogant new pilot Pat O'Brien. In future films similar to this, O'Brien would play the Bellamy part of the responsible straight-arrow while James Cagney played the reckless hotshot. So it's interesting to see him playing against his (later) typecasting here. Fine performances from Bellamy and O'Brien. Good support from Gloria Stuart, Slim Summerville, Lilian Bond, David Landau, and Leslie Fenton. Nice special effects and flying sequences. Not quite as good as Night Flight but right up there as one of my favorite aviation films from the '30s.

Before Howard Hawks made Only Angels Have Wings, before he made Ceiling Zero, John Ford made Air Mail. I was struck at how pretty much identical the first act of Air Mail was to Ceiling Zero. There's the introduction to a small commercial airport that specializes in delivering mail, bad weather conditions (including the use of the term "ceiling zero"), and a pilot crashing because he couldn't accurately gauge the ground. There's also a hotshot pilot flying in, making a show of his first approach, and coming into conflict with the older and more traditional head of the airport. The two films end up diverging a good bit by the end in terms of story plot points, but it is interesting at how closely they track for so long. Where Ford ends up failing where Hawks managed to succeed twice at different levels of success is that Ford succumbed to his tendency of overstuffing his own film with characters that the runtime of the overall film couldn't really support. His ending, like almost always, elevates what came before, but just not quite enough.

Ralph Bellamy plays Mike Miller, the head of the Desert Airport near the Rocky Mountains. The airport is running on thin margins with a surfeit of pilots, the constant danger to their lives, and the Christmas rush upcoming. With fog hitting the airport and a pilot incoming with a mail load, they struggle to get him down, leading to his crashing and death. He needs a replacement, and his boss offers him Duke Talbot (Pat O'Brien), a brash pilot who is happier to do tricks in his plane than make Mike happy with solid and quiet work. There are a bunch of other characters circling around, but the core of the film ends up being the conflict between Mike and Duke.

Duke becomes somewhat infatuated with Irene (Lilian Bond), the wife of another pilot Dizzy (Russell Hopton). He's aggressive, and her unwillingness fades away to acquiescence as they fall into each other arms while Dizzy is off on his own run. The dangers of the job end up crashing Dizzy's plane, killing him in the process. The relationship between Dizzy and Irene had already been fraying before Duke showed up, so the news of Dizzy's death doesn't affect Irene that much and she's happy to run off with Duke.

Mike has an unofficial policy that whenever an accident happens during a flight, he takes on the next delivery himself. He took it near the beginning of the film, but his physical revealed that his eyesight was failing. Still, he's going to do it after Dizzy's accident, and we get the most concentrated dose of this movie's issues with lack of focus. There's a very minor character, another pilot, Tommy (Frank Albertson) who suddenly gains prominence when a passenger plane has to emergency land at Desert Airport and that pilot identifies him as a pilot who parachuted out of a passenger plane, leaving all of his passengers to die in a crash. It comes out of nowhere, and suddenly this minor character is begging for his chance to redeem himself by taking the next dangerous flight. Mike takes on the mission himself, anyway, and Tommy is never heard from or seen again.

There are other bits that distract, like the first pilot's sister (Gloria Stuart) acting as a sort of love interest for Mike but kind of disappearing in the final act even though she should have a decent role to play, even if it's just as the worried woman left behind.

Anyway, Mike does the run, and he crashes in the mountains. Duke, having run off with Irene, hears about the rescue mission to find Mike, ultimately being called off because no one will be able to land near him. Duke, being a brash but great pilot, scoffs at the idea, goes back to the airport, steals a plane, and goes in search of Mike. He lands in spectacular fashion (with some entertaining miniature work), damaging the plane in the process.

What makes this ending work is Duke becoming the man that Mike had wanted him to be. Yes, Duke is still a reckless pilot, but he does it for the good of his fellow pilot in need, keeping honest with the brotherhood of pilots. There's a sacrifice in the end, done with real flair, that helps end the movie with a surprising punch. If the movie as a whole had been able to focus more fully on the central relationship, I think that ending would have been more satisfying. It's still a nice fulfilment of that particular storyline, but the first hour or so is so unfocused with so many personalities that it blunts the ending's impact.

Still, it almost makes the movie. The nearly identical opening to both of Howard Hawks' commercial airline movies (as well as other smaller ones to other Hawks films like The Dawn Patrol) are interesting but aren't really anything more than curiosities and possible indications of the limitation of stories available in the time and place of a commercial airport that delivers mail. A lot of Ford's hallmarks are on display here, for both good and ill, and it ends up a mixed end product that could have used a bit more time in the screenwriting stage. But, this was the era of Ford making an average of 3 movies a year. There was no time for rewrites.