Sky Bride

Richard Arlen gives a damn good performance as a stunt pilot dealing with loss and guilt. His chemistry with Jackie Oakie really works and the story moves at a decent pace. Arlen starred with Clara Bow in the classic Wings about pilots in World War 1 but this movie seems forgotten. Hard to find but worth the time if you can find it.

I have no idea why this film is called "Sky Bride", as there is no bride nor groom in the movie....and hardly any romance at all. Instead, it's a movie about some barnstormers who live a crazy and reckless life during the 1930s. However, when one of their midair stunts goes awry, one of them is killed and the surviving pilot, 'Speed' Condon (Richard Arlen), falls apart. He quits the air show and bums around trying to avoid his past. However, when his old buddy Alec (Jack Oakie) spots him months later, Alec is determined to help Speed get on with his life.

This is a decent B-movie but it's nothing special either. I also was surprised about that little kid in the film...he is a bit of a psychopath and needed some sort of mental health treatment! See the film...see what I mean.

By the way, if you pay attention, you will see Randolph Scott in a short scene in around the middle of the film.

Richard Arlen is the lead pilot in a troupe of pilots who barnstorm across the country, offering shows for county fairs and rides into the sky for adventurous people; business isn't very good, since a ride is marked down from $10 to $5, or perhaps that's just a come-on to convince the rubes they're getting a bargain. Jack Oakie is their ground man, the barker. They wing-walk and hold mock aerial duels and razz each other in the privacy their cheap hotel rooms. When one of their number is killed in a stunt, Arlen quits the troupe, walks to Los Angeles and gets a job as a mechanic in an airplane factory. He's good at his job, but no one likes him, because he's glum and stand-offish and won't go near a plane about to fly.

There are some very good aerial stunts in this movie, shot at a distance. It brings to mind, of course, Arlen's performance in WINGS; Randolph Scott has a half-minute walk-on as an army pilot, clearly meant evoke Gary Cooper's cameo in the early film. It's a serious film. Arlen's depression is well-performed, understandable in the movie's situation, but it's a symbolic dog at how far aviation had fallen, from knights the skies to itinerant performers.