Ceiling Zero

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.

This film stays mainly on the ground rather than in the air, probably because it was originally a stage play. The action focuses on the Newark, New Jersey branch of fictitious Federal Airlines and its employees, who are exclusively involved in delivering the mail.

Pat O'Brien plays Jake Lee, the fast talking hard-nosed operations manager of the Newark branch. The industry is one in transition as the WWI flying aces and barnstormers that once dominated as air mail pilots are being slowly replaced with "college men" - engineers. Enter James Cagney as Dizzy Davis who is one of those old aces - if you can possibly imagine the energetic James Cagney as somebody who's on the verge of being all washed up at anything in 1935. Jake, Dizzy's old WWI flying buddy, has gotten him a job at the Newark office as Dizzy is on the verge of losing his pilot's license as he has a bad ticker and a bad attitude when it comes to following all of the new rules that did not exist when he first started out in the business.

There are romantic complications too. Touchiest of these is the fact that Jake's wife of two years, Mary, was serious about Dizzy right before she met Jake. This is information Dizzy and Mary desperately want to keep from Jake in order to spare his feelings. There's also a new female pilot at the Newark branch, Tommy, all of 19, who catches Dizzy's eye. Tommy has a steady boyfriend, but she's fascinated by this older experienced WWI ace and his exciting stories and lifestyle.

Dizzy is a fellow on the move with him chasing Tommy and age and the odds chasing him, and then there's Mike, an old ace Dizzy's age who cracked up in a wreck. His bones healed but his mind didn't, and Dizzy is horrified to see his old mirror image turned simpleton and janitor. It's unspoken, but you just know that Dizzy sees his own possible future when he looks at the guy.

The film is a real edge-of-your-seat experience, even though almost all of the action is on the ground as pilots fly in "ceiling zero" weather, and some make it back alive and some don't. It's an exciting little movie with a look at the state of flight technology in 1935. Highly recommended.

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.

This is bread and butter Hawks. A professional man in a dangerous professions falls for another man's girl, and he ends up having to make a serious, life altering choice that he takes fervently but lightly at the same time, making his choice like a man, one might say. Watching so many of Hawks' movies in a row it's becoming obvious where Hawks' narrative tics were. I'm not saying this like a bad thing, he can say similar things endlessly as long as he's entertaining, but what's amazing is how he jumps between genres so easily from one movie to the next. Ceiling Zero is a solid entry in Hawks' filmography that fits comfortably there, is what I'm saying.

Set in a small commercial airport (Newark) in the earliest days of commercial aviation, Ceiling Zero is about Dizzy Davis, an expert pilot with experience in The Great War who is as reckless as he is talented. He's hired back by his friend, Jake Lee, after a stint out West with stories of his outrageous behavior (including delaying the delivery of his mail cargo in order to land and hang out with four attractive women by a pool). Together with Texas Clarke, the three represent the last of a dying breed, the last of the pioneers of the skies who figured out flying through daring, experimentation, and war, steadily being replaced by the newer generation of college educated flyers.

Now, I do feel like the core of this movie is good enough and carries the overall film well, but it does, at the same time, leave a lot hanging without much payoff. One of those things is the pioneer versus educated divide. The early moments of the film are dominated by Jake firing a young pilot who abandoned his plane in the fog because he didn't have the nerve to take the blindness bravely, figuring out where he was relative to the airport and trying to land. This character disappears from the picture, and the movie never really makes anything of the comparison again, though we do see the nerve of the older generation in wonderful detail.

The other aspect of the film that seems only halfheartedly taken up is the love triangle. Dizzy meets Tommy Thomas, a young woman learning to fly who works at the airport. She has a beau, named Joe, but he's barely a character and appears only a handful of times, usually at the periphery of scenes until the end. It would actually be pretty easy for a viewer to miss the quick moment of Tommy with Joe near the beginning and assume that Dizzy is just courting Tommy without her having any previous ties. It kind of feels like there were some scenes cut somewhere along the way.

Anyway, Dizzy falls for Tommy instantly. How much is hard to say since he's been a womanizer for years, having broken romantic ties to Jake's wife that Jake doesn't know about. Still, he's going to make his effort with her, and in order to get his first date with her, Dizzy convinces Tex to take his flight to Cleveland and back that night. They have a nice time, but fog descends over Newark with zero ceiling on the ground. Tex can't see, makes his approach as best he can, but crashes horribly on the runway, dying in a fireball. Dizzy ends up consumed by his guilt, made all the worse by the fact that he couldn't help enough in the tower to get Tex down safely.

The aviation board in Washington ends up refusing to renew Dizzy's pilot's license, but he knows nothing else other than flying. With a storm front coming in, and emotions running high because of Tex's death, Jake leaves the airport and leaves Dizzy in charge, telling him to cancel the final flight of the night. This is where Joe becomes important, having developed a new kind of de-icing system for the planes and assigned the mission to fly that night. Dizzy, in charge and needing a way to make himself right with the world, refuses Jake's order to cancel the final flight, but instead of sending Joe, he knocks Joe out and flies up himself.

Now, when I saw this is bread and butter Hawks, I'm talking about how this repeats a lot of little plot points from before. In The Dawn Patrol, one character got another character drunk so he could fly the other's suicide mission. In Tiger Shark, one man gives up the woman he loves to another man she loves as his dying wish. In Today We Live, one man takes on a suicide mission because he knows that the woman will choose the other man over him. They're all variations on the same idea (I have no problem with this), and it's just that Hawks had his archetypes that he called upon repeatedly. It's a note, not really a criticism.

Anyway, Dizzy does the heroic and selfless thing, taking on the risk of providing the first real world test of the de-icing system, providing real world observation as his wings get more and more ice, recommending fixes that will make it work perfectly, before his plane becomes too heavy and falls to the earth. This is solid stuff, nothing terribly affecting or amazing, but well built and told. Joe needed to be more integral early, and the pioneer vs. Educated angle could have followed through by combining Joe with the early fired pilot. This might have provided enough material to really make the whole film more cohesive. However, the core of the film is Dizzy, and it's really good.

James Cagney was obviously more than just a mob tough from Little Caesar and The Big Heat, and he plays Dizzy with suave confidence and cockiness, making his quick courtship of Tommy believable. He's hot stuff as an ace pilot, and Cagney plays that really well. Props have to go out to the rest of the cast including Pat O'Brien as Jake, June Travis as Tommy smitten with Dizzy, and Stuart Erwin as Tex. It's a well-cast and acted film, made all the more important by the fact that about 75% of it takes place on a single set, the airport control tower. It's a strong mark in Hawks' favor that despite the limited locations (add in the bar set and you've got about 90% of your movie in two locations) it never feels small or repetitive. This is a case study in making the most of limited shooting locations.

It's a solidly good little drama, anchored by a very good performance by Cagney, but still open for a more streamlined script that took advantage of some of its more tangential ideas more. Still, it's a good little film in Hawks' very busy 1936.

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.