User reviews

Their fourth starring vehicle of 1941, "Keep 'Em Flying" shows the wear and tear of the duo's busy year. The films production values are more skimpy; evidently by filming on location at Cal-Aero in Ontario, California, the producers felt they could cut costs. This doesn't help A&C's flying sequences with their poor rear projection or the rescue sequence at the end, with all-too-obvious miniatures. The real flying stunt sequences sandwiched around them, however, are done well.

What saves the film are A&C's performances and the interplay between Costello and Martha Raye, who plays twins in the film. There are some truly funny moments, but not enough to elevate the film among their best. 6 out of 10.

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.

KEEP 'EM FLYING (Universal, 1941), directed by Arthur Lubin, marks the fifth screen collaboration of the popular comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello who, in this venture, take to the air and have quite a time staying on the ground. Previously appearing in the Army in BUCK PRIVATES (1941) and IN THE NAVY (1941), each featuring the Andrews Sisters, what logical choice to find them back in peacetime military comedy, this time with the Army Air Corps, with Martha Raye and Carol Bruce stepping in for the Andrews Sisters.

The story begins in a carnival where Jinx Roberts (Dick Foran) works as a daredevil stunt pilot. After getting fired by his boss, McGonigle (William B. Davidson), Jinx, along with his two assistants, Blackie (Bud Abbott) and Heathcliff (Lou Costello) enlist at the army air corps at Cal-Aero Academy. While there, Jinx immediately meets and falls in love with Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce), a USO hostess and singer, who has a jealous boyfriend (William Gargan) and brother (Charles Lang), who disapproves of him dating his sister, while Jinx and Heathcliff encounter confusion after meeting up with Gloria Phelps, who happens to have a twin sister, Barbara (both played by Martha Raye). In between these love matches comes a handful of Abbott and Costello routines and stunts that keep this film going at a fast pace for 86 minutes. There is also time out for music, featuring some popular 40s tunes of the day by Don Raye and Gene DePaul including: "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" (written by Ned Washington and George Bassman/ sung by Carol Bruce); "Pig Foot Pete" (Sung by Martha Raye); "Keep 'Em Flying" (sung by Dick Foran); "The Boy With the Wistful Eyes" and "Keep 'Em Flying" (reprise).

Aside from the romantic subplots, the movie relatively belongs to Abbott and Costello who supply the story with their comedy highlights: The "Go ahead, order something" routine where Blackie and Heathcliff only have a quarter to their name and go to a diner where Blackie orders only a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee, with the intention of splitting the order with his partner, but whenever the waitress (Raye) asks for Heathcliff's order and says he doesn't want anything, it is Blackie who coaxes him to order something, only to give him a slap in the face and tell him that no matter how much he coaxes him, he should refuse. This routine is further developed when the daffy waitress (Raye) gives Heathcliff a piece of cake on the house, and when she goes to the kitchen, the other, her serious-minded twin sister (Raye) returns to find Heathcliffe with the cake and insisting that he'd pay for it. Other highlights include Heathcliff in the tunnel of love with one of the twin sisters; Blackie and Heathcliff riding on a runaway torpedo all over the base, followed by a couple of scenes involving the comedic dual taking to the air via plane and creating unintentional stunts of their own before parachuting to safety. In spite of obvious rear projection backgrounds, these faults should be overlooked and simply enjoyed as originally intended.

Featured in the supporting cast are: Truman Bradley as Butch, and Freddie Slack and his Six Hits. Martha Raye, who adds twice as much fun playing twin sisters, each partnered with Bud and Lou, works well with the team. It seems a pity that she didn't get to work with Abbott and Costello again for that they make a wonderful trio. While a formula movie the plays strictly for laughs, it is Costello who gets his rare opportunity on screen to show himself on the serious side in one scene early in the story when he pleads with a major to give him a job so that he could serve his country. This sequence could have been a low point, but funny man Costello manages to make this brief moment followed by a patriotic speech believable and moving. He certainly was an original.

While KEEP 'EM FLYING might be considered extremely dated by today's standards, it still ranks one of the funnier comedies of the 1940s. KEEP 'EM FLYING is available on video cassette through MCA Home Video. Once presented on the cable television's The Comedy Channel in the early 1990s, it resurfaced on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2000, on American Movie Classics where it played occasionally for almost two years. (***)

Abbott & Costello probably needed a rest after completing their third salute to America's (woefully unprepared) armed services in 1941. Following "Buck Privates" and "In the Navy," the comedic duo took on the Army Air Corps. This time they didn't have the bouncy cheerfulness and fine voices of the Andrews Sisters-too bad.

There are a fair number of funny moments here but, overall, this last comedy paean to a fighting service has a tired quality and some of the scenes are disjointed. A young Martha Raye is good portraying either two sisters or one seriously schizoid woman, take your pick.

A definite period piece, "Keep "Em Flying" heralds America's air arm but anyone with historical knowledge will wince as the obsolete planes go through their paces. And this film was made while Germany and Japan were fielding state-of-the-art combat aircraft.

6/10

Abbott & Costello plays Blackie Benson & Heathcliff, two bumbling assistants to recently fired Air Show stunt pilot Jinx Roberts(played by Dick Foran). With nowhere else to go, they enlist in the Air Force sometime before WWII, where they proceed to turn it upside down with their wild antics. Martha Raye plays twins who cause confusion for the team when they are in a diner, and they are waitresses, then later when they go on a double date in the fun-house. Can they survive their training, and will the Air Force survive them? Funny comedy with good gags and tolerable songs. Does for the Air Force what "Buck Privates" did for the army; too bad about the navy though...

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.

Another service movie, hmmm? First they were in the Army, then the Navy, and now Abbott and Costello join the U.S. Air Corps. This one seems to set us a step back when watching the A&C films in their release order. Though I think it works pleasantly enough as humorous Abbott and Costello fare, once again we face a good number of musical interruptions in the bargain, and these are not especially palatable. We've got no Andrews Sisters this time, so we have Carol Bruce belting out some songs for us instead. If that doesn't slow things to a crawl for you, then how's about Dick Foran crooning the title tune?

Actually, KEEP 'EM FLYING plays more like the story of Foran's character, Jinx Roberts -- a pilot with a rebellious nature and a tendency for trouble, who joins the Air Corps along with his dizzy buddies, Bud and Lou. Much time is spent dealing with the Jinx parts of the story while Abbott and Costello face problems of their own on the side. The highlights of these problems come in the guise of comedienne Martha Raye (yeah, she sings and dances, too) who portrays a couple of identical twin sisters, one who's sweet on Bud and another who's stuck on Lou. The best scene in the movie for my money is the "Go Ahead and Order Something" routine, where Abbott keeps coaxing Costello to order food at a restaurant, even though they've only got a quarter between them. Great stuff there, and sprinkled elsewhere in the film, too; just not very consistently this time out. **1/2 out of ****

Out of Universal Pictures comes Keep 'Em Flying starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello with support from Martha Raye, Dick Foran and Carol Bruce. It's directed by Arthur Lubin with music by Charles Previn and was filmed on location at the Cal-Aero school in Ontario, California. Plot sees the bumbling duo and their stunt pilot pal Jinx Roberts (Foran) join the Army Air Force after getting fired from their positions at a carnival & air show. High jinx and love interests will of course follow.

The fifth film outing for Abbott and Costello, and their third featuring the armed forces after Buck Privates & In The Navy, Keep 'Em Flying is one of their better feature length productions. Tho somewhat surprisingly rather thick on plot, the piece is all the better for some narrative substance in that it lets us savour the slaphappy antics of the intrepid duo when their routines come alive. Action sequences to savour here include a runaway torpedo, a spooky carnival fun house and a short sharp shock treatment of Lou falling over his ankle grabbing pants. While there's quality in a dialogue driven skit that the boys perform in a Café-where we are introduced to the bright and bubbly Raye; playing twin sisters who each end up dating the boys. There's also some nice tunes penned by Don Raye & Gene de Paul, with the stand out being "Pig Foot Pete" that was famously nominated for an Academy Award but for the wrong movie (Hellzapoppin').

Funny, daft and even romantic, Keep 'Em Flying soars high enough to entertain the masses. 8/10

Keep 'Em Flying (1941) : Brief Review -

The final film in Abbott & Costello's Service Comedy Trilogy is full of foolish tantrums, but funny alright. People who have seen the first film in Arthur Lubin's service comedy trilogy, "Buck Privates" (1941), can easily notice that Keep Em Flying has used all the same tantrums. Instead of the Army, it's the Air Force this time, and that's the only difference in the basic plot. In Buck Privates, a spoiled playboy joins the army to impress the girl; here, we have a pro pilot, but once again, an irresponsible fella who joins the airforce to impress the girl. The barnstorming stunt pilot has two goofball assistants, Blackie and Heathcliff, who decide to go with him. They can't fly the plane and become janitors. The plot has nothing new to offer, and the screenplay is outdated as well. What makes it crispy is Martha Raye's double role. I don't know how they did it in the early 40s, but what an achievement. Hats off to the visual hook-up. Whatever double role goof-ups you have seen till date, believe me, a lot of them have been influenced by this. Keep Em Flying has a lot of foolish scenes, including those adventurous stunts. Not all are foolish. I mean, some are really good, but have something problematic. Sometimes it's visuals and sometimes the execution. Anyhow, the show is spoiled right in the middle. What I missed the most was some highlight scenes. Like Buck Privates had that bargaining scene, whereas In The Navy had that submarine game scene featuring our favourite duo. However, Martha does cover some of the loss, but she's not on the same level as the duo, right? Nevertheless, Abbott and Costello provide you with enough laughs with their traditional methods and some new ones once in a while. This one is Lubin's weakest film in this trilogy, but it's not boring or skippable.

RATING - 6.5/10*

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.

The casting of Martha Raye, the gifted comedienne, with Abbot and Costello was a casting hit. Raye had previously been in productions with Bob Hope, but there was no chemistry there, as Hope needed someone a bit more exotic (like Dorothy Lamour) as a romantic foil. Lou Costello, however, is a perfect match for Raye; a marriage made in heaven. Each of their scenes is a classic. Catch the fun with the whole family.

Fun Abbott and Costello movie with the boys following their friend (Dick Foran) into the Air Corps. Foran's character is hard to like and his romantic subplot with pretty Carol Bruce is a bit nauseating. Those are the negatives. The positives are Bud and Lou have several funny bits. Martha Raye is also fun in a dual role. This isn't one of their best but I find myself returning to it more often than some of their classics, so that says something. I love the old planes so that's probably part of it. Anyway give it a look. Abbott and Costello never disappoint.

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?

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.

Before rewatching this movie on YouTube, I watched a 9-minute short called Life with the Flying Cadets which was basically a trailer for this film as it shows many scenes from it especially the ones with stars Abbott & Costello. It basically told of the value of those men training to fly for whatever awaits them. Now Keep 'Em Flying was the second A & C movie I saw as an 11- or 12-year-old kid in 1979 when it showed up on TV late Saturday night on "The Abbott & Costello Theatre" which was devoted to showcasing all their Universal product. The first was Hold That Ghost. Anyway, here Blackie (Abbott) and Heathcliff (Costello) are associates of daredevil flyer Jinx Roberts (Dick Foran who had also appeared with Bud and Lou in In the Navy and Ride 'Em Cowboy) who all get fired from the fair and they all swear off women but then they go to a nightclub where singer Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce) is performing her last engagement before going to the USO. Of course, Jinx is smitten with her and ends up working near her at a cadet training center. Blackie and Heathcliff follow and encounter two waitresses at a cafe there but since they're twins-Barbara and Gloria (both Martha Raye)-and they don't appear together when they all meet, confusion reigns! I'll just now say that this was even more funny now than when I first saw this all those years ago, that's for sure! I especially thought that routine in which the Abbott character tells the Costello character to not make any orders since they're short on money and he's offering to share his order only for Costello to renege quickly because Abbott keeps insisting he order something was much better than a similar routine Laurel & Hardy did in Men O'War which was my last review before this one. Speaking of L & H, the producer of this picture was Glenn Tryon who was previously an actor who, among his earlier appearances, was in the short 45 Minutes from Hollywood which was the first time Stan & Ollie were in the same Hal Roach short-having first previously appeared together in The Lucky Dog for another company-though they missed actually being together in that one. And if the names of Carol Bruce and Martha Raye are familiar to you, you probably saw them in their later years during the late '70s when Ms. Bruce had a recurring role as Mama Carlson in "WKRP in Cincinnati" and Ms. Raye likewise had such a role as Mel Sharple's mom in "Alice"! A few more things about this movie: I thought the moving torpedo and the standing-on-the-wing-of-a-flying-plane sequences involving Lou were partly convincing enough to me to excuse the obvious use of moving background projection (it should be noted that Pat, Lou's brother, was the stunt double for these segments), that the serious parts of the Jinx storyline was fine with me, and that the musical interludes were entertaining enough especially Carol and Martha's "The Boy with the Wistful Eyes" number. So that's a high recommendation of Keep 'Em Flying. Oh, and continuing my reviews of A & C and L & H doing similar movies, my next one will be on the latter's Our Relations in which Stan and Ollie have their own set of twins encountering mistaken identity...

A fun, likable film with a good supporting cast. I have the first volume of the Abbott & Costello collection and I would rank this movie up there with Hold That Ghost as the highlights of the collection.

For Keep 'Em Flying, Bud and Lou are friends of Jinx Roberts, a 1940s version of Tom Cruise's Maverick (Top Gun). He does his flying his own way! Good chemistry between the three. Dick Foran plays Jinx. I remembered him from two Universal Studios Mummy films.

Then there is great supporting characters played Martha Raye, Carol Bruce, and William Gargan. Raye is especially funny playing twins that befuddle our heroes.

I was surprised to find out that Carol Bruce was in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (she plays Joy). I'll have to look for her in it.

A pretty decent storyline, maybe a few too many songs, and a hilarious scene involving a runaway torpedo on land. Check it out!

This is the third and last of the armed services morale films that Universal made in 1941. All were with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. "Keep 'Em Flying" reached theaters for general release in the U.S. on November 28. It likely was still playing in most theaters around the country nine days later when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. While the antics of Abbott and Costello surely helped calm the anxiety and tensions of many people in the months leading up the war, after December 7, 1941, people wouldn't be in the mood for comedy for a few more months, especially regarding military service.

Still, America's favorite comedy team then had done much, and they would do one short of a dozen comedy films during the war years to provide the home front and troops away with laughter. In "Keep 'Em Flying," Martha Raye and Carol Bruce replace The Andrews Sisters for the musical portion. Bud and Lou, as Blackie and Heathcliff, get into all kinds of mishaps around aviation. They follow a friend, Jinx Roberts (played by Dick Foran) to Army pilot training camp, and wind up as ground support.

As with the earlier two service morale films ('Buck Privates" and "In the Navy"), this one has some historical value as well. The Army pilot training is done at Cal-Aero Flight Academy. It was a civilian aviation school that had been started before WWII. With the war spreading in Europe and Japan expanding in the Far East, the U.S. began building an Armed Forces from a peacetime military that was but a skeleton. The Army didn't have enough training pilots or facilities to quickly train the thousands of pilots that would be needed. It had pilot training schools in Alabama, California and Texas, but still needed more. So, the Army contracted with Cal-Aero to train pilots. The trainers were civilians, but they operated under a military command with military procedures. That's what we see in this film.

Cal-Aero was located near Chino, California, east of Los Angeles. The Cal-Aero Academy closed on Oct. 16, 1944. It had trained 10,365 fighter and bomber pilots for the war effort. In 1940, Army flight training had been reduced from nine to seven months in order to get more pilots ready. But that was reduced even further in early 1941 when flight training was set at 20 weeks, as is the case in this movie. Also, on June 20 of that year, the Army Air Corps was redesignated the US Army Air Forces. (USAF). It would be designated the U.S. Air Force and comprise a separate branch of the Armed Forces on Sept. 18, 1947.

At the end of the war, the Chino Air field became one of the large airplane bone yards for surplus planes. Today the Chino Airport has a large air museum.

One other historical note about this film is its introduction of the U.S.O. clubs. The United Service Organizations formed on February 4, 1941, to provide entertainment and comforts for American service men and women away from home. Six groups responded to a request from Pres. Franklin Roosevelt and formed the U.S.O. They were the YMCA, YWCA, Salvation Army, National Catholic Community Service, National Jewish Welfare Board, and National Travelers Aid Association. In this film, we see a U.S.O club with its doors open outside the Cal-Aero Academy. Martha Raye, playing twin sisters Gloria and Barbara, works at the USO, as does Carol Bruce, a singer who plays Linda Joyce.

After the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, young men flocked to recruiting stations around the country to sign up for military service. I can imagine that Cal-Aero had a flood of applicants for its pilot training. And, those pilots who graduated within two weeks of this film's release would be among the first wave of American aerial combatants to serve in Europe, as well as at Army installations in the Pacific.

"Keep 'Em Flying" has some excellent stunt flying sequences. The comedy, romance, flying, locale and historical notes all add up to a fine movie. It makes a good addition to any film library for students of wartime or American military history, or for those who have a comedy library.

When high-flying stunt pilot Jinx Roberts joins the air corps, his two assistants Blackie and Heathcliff follow him into the service out of loyalty and lack of other options. While Jinx gets a pilot's position they find themselves essentially at the level of janitors with little in the way of glamour or prestige. They end up causing more trouble than anything else – not least of which in the world of romance where the attention of twins Gloria and Barbara causes more confusion.

This film was part of several made in a short period by Abbott & Costello in support of the war effort and the structure is roughly the same. A "straight" guy pursues a girl while Abbott and Costello trail along behind getting involved in various escapades and misunderstandings in support of the "straight" guy's romantic efforts. This should not surprise anyone and the only thing of concern should be whether or not the film is funny and makes good use of the comic abilities of the stars (by which I do not mean Foran). The answer is "sort of" and it is because of this that the film is quite amusing for fans but not good enough to really win over others or stand out as one of their best. The plot with Jinx does take up a bit too much of the running time and, as is often the case, the film is padded out with too many songs (although at least one of them is actually pretty good) and I didn't find myself laughing often enough. There are some good bits though; the scene where they order food in the restaurant is brilliant stuff and had me laughing out loud but, a few good lines here and there and that is pretty much it. The torpedo sequence is the normal stuff but lacks inspiration while the flight stuff, although quite good suffers badly from poor back projection and basic model work – OK both are of their time but still.

The cast do reasonably well and the fault for the film perhaps being a bit lacking is not with their performances. Both Abbott and Costello do good work as you would expect but it is just a shame that they don't get better material to work with. What they do benefit from is a female co-star who isn't just a cute love interest for Costello. Raye plays it in a way that echoes Costello's style but it does work and she is funny and adds a bit of variety which is needed when you consider the "main" plot. Bruce, Gargan and Foran are all fairly dull and stiff – again it is a shame that they take so much of the time from the others.

Keep 'em Flying is an OK Abbott & Costello film that has enough about it to please most fans however it is still not as funny as it should be and it has too much stuff that either pads (the songs) or detracts (the main plot). If you like them it is worth a look but only a few scenes here and there show what the two are capable of.