Up in the Air

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Richard Cross's review published on Letterboxd:

"Is I where I think I is or am I where I hope I ain't?" asks Manton Moreland of the bulging eyes and comical double-takes. He plays wing man to an ok Frankie Darro in this dull murder thriller, and, like us, he's sadly where he hoped he ain't.

Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland made several movie together in the 1930's and 40's where they were pretty much on equal footing with each other despite everything that was going on around them. They were the stereotypical buddies of the buddy film. Normally that wouldn't mean much except that Darro was white and Moreland was black and in every other film of their time no one could be as they were unless they both were white.

Race has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of Up in the Air, which concerns a series of murders at a radio station. I mention the fact notion of race simply because the script for this movie was used two or three more times with out nary a change for white co-stars.

The fact that the script was re-used is also an very good indication that the film is a very good one. No its not flawless, there are little bumps here and there and a couple of jumps in logic, but as excuse for murder and silliness in the typical Hollywood style one need not look much farther than this film.

The morning after watching this, my wife and I sat at the kitchen table discussing it, and found we had nothing to talk about but Mantan Moreland. The plot is pretty much a series of contrivances to hang situations on, and the inevitable solution of the "who killed..." mystery doesn't seem to be the driving force. It's all about Mantan. I have seen him as comedy relief in a dozen movies, and he always steals every scene he is in, but I have never seen him dominate like this. He makes everyone else into his straight man, and constantly subverts and deflates authority figures. Every time someone says "I've got an idea," or "I've been thinking," he's on the spot with his "UH-OH!" There is nothing cowardly (as it often appears in his Charlie Chan roles) about his fierce common- sense determination to move away from trouble, not toward it. He sometimes seems like the only one who is not dangerously foolish. Mantan and Frankie Darro work together really well here and, though modern sensibilities may be jarred by Darro donning blackface to try to get them a radio job as a comedy duo, they come across as peers and friends, not boss and lackey as so often occurs in films of this era. The highest point is Mantan's dance scene - inserted into the story for no reason but its sheer entertainment value - in which he is so suave, smooth, cool, cute, and downright huggable it's difficult not to exclaim in delight. The movie plugs along gamely in the moments when Mantan is not on screen, and provides some pretty fair musical numbers, but he is the real shining light in this production.

B-movie star Frankie Darro and everyone's favorite bug-eyed comic relief Mantan Moreland made several murder mystery comedies together around 1940 (with some other more-or-less recurring cast members, including Tristram Coffin) for Monogram Pictures. In this one, the guys work at a radio station (Frankie as a bell-boy as usual) when they get mixed up in the murder of the station's popular, but problematic singing star, Rita Wilson (played by Lorna Gray) who is shot during a rehearsal. As usual, the police detective who handles the case is quite arrogant and incompetent, but he ends up working together quite fine with Frankie. And Mantan. Who, while doing his regular scared-of-everything act, is definitely much more than a mandatory comic relief here: he gets top billing, proves again that he is an excellent comedian and also takes part in the detective work quite effectively and in general, his role is more similar to what we usually see from Lou Abbott. So even the people who are extra-sensitive about the racial stereotypes of classic Hollywood are safe with this one. And talking about Abbott and Costello: they actually did their own version of the "murder mystery at the radio station" theme two years later in Who Done It? (1942), while Monogram remade the story in 1945 as There Goes Kelly.

Up In The Air has a little bit of everything: mystery, action, comedy, musical and the mixture works pretty well, but as the hour-long entry has several musical numbers, comedy acts and even a dance performance by Mantan, you can imagine how thin the plot is. But it is actually nothing more than a tool to keep the story going and to hold the movie together and at that, it does a pretty fine job and makes this a rather enjoyable little time-passer, complete with car chase, Frankie and Mantan's black face comedy act and a mysterious singing cowboy.

Up in the Air, a quickie 1940 B movie cranked out on a tight budget and on an even tighter shooting schedule, is worth viewing at least once. It's representative of all those cheap bread-and-butter movies the studios churned out designed to fill the lower bill of America's movie houses. If you don't have some familiarity with these films you just won't understand what a lot of Hollywood was about before and, to a degree, right after WWII. For every Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth and John Ford, there were thousands of journeymen, men and women, directing, writing, acting in and making possible all these movies. The movie, only 61 minutes long, is a comedy murder mystery which was a popular staple back then. This time the formula also calls for songs. There are three original ones and, like the movie, they're not bad. It stars a long forgotten actor named Frankie Darrow, who was big stuff in the B movie business back in the mid-Thirties through the mid-Forties. Darrow was a small, lean guy who got his start as a child actor. His big years were spent playing jockeys and high school students. At 5' 3" and when tastes changed right after WWII, Darrow was quickly left behind after he returned from the Navy. By 1950, when he was 33, he was only getting bit parts. He and a partner finally bought a bar in Hollywood, a bad move. Darrow became a serious alcoholic, but at least a relatively good-natured one. Except for occasional movie and television bits, he was washed up. If you admire Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, Darrow was one of two men hired to take turns being inside Robby to make him move. That's show biz, kids.

One other interesting thing to note. This is one of seven films Darrow made between 1939 and 1941 in which he always plays a young man named Frankie and always partners with a buddy named Jeff. The two invariably get mixed up in mystery, with Frankie determined to solve the crime and Jeff reluctantly backing him up. The interesting thing is that Jeff in these seven movies always is played by Mantan Moreland. Although Moreland does his trademark eye-popping, it's not as exaggerated as it usually was. There's almost none of the foot- shuffling and chitlin dialect that Hollywood made its black actors use. Except for one, thankfully brief (but funny) comedy routine Darrow and Moreland do as Rastus and Mose with Darrow in blackface (but which Moreland dominates), the Jeff character is, for Hollywood of the period, unusually color blind.

With Up in the Air, Darrow plays Frankie Ryan, an energetic and confident young man employed as a page at Amalgamated Broadcasting Company. His ambition is to snag a comedy spot on one of its radio shows. He meets Anne Mason (Marjorie Reynolds), newly hired as a lobby greeter who wants to be a singer. Wouldn't you know it, Rita Wilson, the snooty and well-known singer on one of Amalgamated's top shows, takes a bullet in the heart during a rehearsal. Frankie is determined to find the killer, promote Anne into the singing slot, and at least get a comedy try-out chance with Jeff in front of the producers. Frankie is the kind of inexhaustibly active fellow who always snaps his fingers when he gets an idea, then charges out of the room, or down the hall, or up the stairs, or through a doorway. Eventually, sometimes with the help of the police and sometimes not, Frankie, with Jeff close behind, makes the killer come forth. There are no great surprises. The acting is competent and the movie moves quickly through its 61 minutes. Up in the Air isn't a waste of time exactly, but it helps if you do a little reading about Darrow and Hollywood's B-movie factories.

About those three songs. Unlike the movie, they're worth experiencing more than once. "Doin' the Congo," written by Edward Kay, Lew Porter and Johnny Lange, is a very nice Latin rhythm number. "Somehow or Other" and "By the Looks of Things," written by Kay and Harry Tobias, are light swing numbers. "By the Looks of Things," especially, is a song that is much better than it needed to be. Marjorie Reynolds sings all three.