Keep 'Em Flying

One of the funniest of Abbott and Costello's early Universal films was Keep 'Em Flying which stuck with the tried and true formula established by Buck Privates.

The boys are working at a carnival with their pal Dick Foran who's a stunt flier. After a disagreement with management, all three of them quit and wind up in the Army Air Corps.

For Foran he gets to renew a personal rivalry with William Gargan who's an instructor who had fired Foran once before in a civilian flying job. They're both interested in the lovely Carol Bruce who sings great and is a USO hostess.

The boys are up to their usual monkeyshines. Seeing both of them on the back of a speeding torpedo was as funny as when they repeated the same gag on the back of a bucking bronco in Ride 'Em Cowboy. And seeing them hit the silk at the end of the film is indescribable.

Martha Raye plays a dual role in the film as twin sisters, one of whom likes Abbott and the other Costello. Of course poor Costello doesn't realize they're twins and Martha's on and off attitude towards him is baffling. Later on the same twin gimmick was used by Betty Hutton in Here Come The Waves.

Gene DePaul and Don Raye wrote the original songs for this film and actually came up with an Academy Award nomination for one of their songs, Pigfoot Pete which Martha Raye sings and which is incorrectly credited in Academy records to another Universal Film, Hellzapoppin'. It's not bad, but it's really a poor man's Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The best song in the film is one interpolated for Carol Bruce when we first meet her as a nightclub singer, the Tommy Dorsey standard, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You.

Keep 'Em Flying is right in the great tradition of Buck Privates and In the Navy and still as funny today as when first made.

Blackie (Bud Abbott) and Heathcliff (Lou Costello) are the ground crew for barn storming pilot Jinx Roberts. They join the Air Corps as ground crewman where the fall for twin USO hostesses (Martha Raye).

The guys are still fun but they are stuck in a propaganda film for the military. I don't care about the Jinx story. So the movie is split into two. I enjoy the boys but when they're not on the screen, the movie stalls out. I also enjoy Martha Raye playing the duo role. She's great with the guys. I like half of this movie.

As a reviewer wrote elsewhere, the only way to watch Bud and Lou's movies is in sequence. 'Buck Privates' was perhaps a better story, but 'Keep 'em Flying' sees Lou put in probably his finest performance. This time the boys are perfectly integrated into the story and their gags flow along as part of the natural sequence of events.

There is an excellent rapport between Martha Raye and our heroes, which becomes evident in the USO canteen sequence. Not only was Martha a fine singer and dancer, she was a great comedienne. Without giving away the gag, the fact that it runs on so long and still remains funny is testament to the trio - or "quartet's" skill in working together.

Okay, I love this movie and given a limit of 10 movies to take to a desert island, this would be included. But that says something, doesn't it?

KEEP 'EM FLYING (1941) *** Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Martha Raye. One of A&C's very best: the boys as bumbling airfield jockeys and Raye as their identical twin girlfriends. Very funny bits including the first encounter with Raye(s) and the air finale.

Not their best, but by far not their weakest, the film provides the viewers with the duo in the Army Air Corps, or at least a training facility.

While there has been some comment on the wood and fabric airplanes in the film, filmed shortly before the U.S. got involved in World War II, many training facilities taught their students initially on such aircraft, just so they could learn the rudiments of flight. Later, the fledgling pilots would graduate to more state-of-the-art trainers.

Minor spoiler For the aero gags, the fabric airplanes worked well: in the "inverted" sequence, Costello's head wouldn't have been able to break through a metal skin.

I had this on VHS, and finally was able to locate it on DVD, in an A&C collection.