- 5/28/2025
Soaring Shadows (1935) is an exhilarating vintage aviation adventure that takes you high into the skies during the golden age of flight. Follow daring pilots as they navigate danger, mystery, and thrilling aerial battles. This classic film showcases breathtaking stunts and a gripping storyline that captures the spirit of 1930s aviation heroes. A must-watch for fans of historical action and vintage aircraft cinema.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00This is Jeremy Arnold. Welcome to the audio commentary track for Airhawks, a fun B-movie
00:00:08produced by Columbia in 1935, which was a pivotal year for B-movies. And the very fact
00:00:15that it is a typical B, and is in no way an important film in Hollywood history, actually
00:00:21makes it worthy of some attention. Because B-movies, which often did not garner much
00:00:26attention, and mostly still don't, were the backbone of 1930s and 40s Hollywood studio
00:00:31filmmaking. In that era, almost 75% of all films made in Hollywood were B-movies. The
00:00:39big five major studios, MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, RKO, they made roughly equal
00:00:46numbers of A's and B's once they established their own B-units. But the little three studios,
00:00:51Columbia, Universal, United Artists, they made many more. And then the smaller Poverty
00:00:57Row studios made only B's, all of which brought the overall percentage to roughly 75% of all
00:01:04films. I should add that when I say B-movie, I'm talking about the terms original incarnation
00:01:12in the 30s and 40s. B-films were small, low-budget pictures, without major stars, and with running
00:01:20times of 55 to 70 minutes. They were specifically designed to play on the bottom half of a double
00:01:26feature, an exhibition model that by 1935 had become widespread across America. Air
00:01:35Hawks began as an original story called Air Fury by Ben Pivar, who is also the film's
00:01:41production manager and went on to a career as a B-movie producer. The film was made to
00:01:46capitalize on a recent trend in Hollywood, and that is aviation. Films with aerial themes
00:01:53and content, they were just everywhere in the 30s. Plane travel was becoming more and
00:01:58more of a regular part of American life, and aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Wiley
00:02:03Post had captured the public's imagination and been treated like royalty for their accomplishments.
00:02:09And so really the main selling point of Air Hawks, in Columbia's mind, was the presence
00:02:14on screen of Wiley Post himself. He's billed third, which says a lot more about the movie's
00:02:21publicity than it does about his role. He gets a little over a minute of screen time
00:02:26toward the end of the picture, and I'll have more to say about him then. Air Hawks was
00:02:31shot in 16 days in February and March 1935, with location work at the Van Nuys Airport,
00:02:38then called Metropolitan Airport, and it was released that May. It got a not very good
00:02:43review from the New York Times, but it received uniformly positive reviews from the industry
00:02:48trade press. Variety called it, exciting entertainment, stands up as dependable program support. It
00:02:55has an exceptionally well-contrived story, sound direction, and convincing performance.
00:03:01Motion Picture Daily described it as, fairly entertaining adventure stuff, even though
00:03:05it stretches a point here and there. Thrilling action. Now, no trade review that I read classified
00:03:12Air Hawks as a horror film, and I think that's because, well, it really isn't one. Although
00:03:19it does sometimes appear in reference books to horror films of the period, and of course,
00:03:23I'm well aware that it's in this very Blu-ray collection entitled Columbia Horror. Air Hawks
00:03:29does have moments that approach horror. It has its moments, but the film is really a
00:03:35genre mashup. It's comedy, drama, romance, thriller, science fiction, mad scientist.
00:03:42They're all in the mix, and it's to the film's credit that they blend as well as they do.
00:03:491935 was an important year for Hollywood. The early years of the Depression had been
00:03:57brutal for most of the studios, especially the five majors, because they were vertically
00:04:01integrated and owned their own theater chains. Those five didn't just produce films, they
00:04:07were in the exhibition business, and in the early 30s, movie attendance plummeted nationwide.
00:04:13The industry responded by lowering ticket prices, and by giving moviegoers more for
00:04:18their money. Double features became the norm by 1935, and attendance did rebound significantly.
00:04:26Exhibitors would change the movies they played two or even three times a week, thereby consistently
00:04:31enticing filmgoers to return. And the nature of moviegoing was changing in other ways.
00:04:38Air conditioning became widespread, and concessions became a real part of the business. Until
00:04:44the 1930s, movie theaters were generally not in the business of selling food directly to
00:04:49their patrons. People would bring in their own candy or snacks. But now, exhibitors settled
00:04:55on popcorn as the dominant movie snack, and then cold, soft drinks, and this was all,
00:05:00of course, to help lure folks back to the cinema. And with the longer programs of an A and B feature,
00:05:06plus a cartoon, short, newsreel, and trailers, theaters would make intermissions a ritual for
00:05:13patrons to get more popcorn, drinks, and candy. Columbia Pictures, led by Harry Cohn, weathered
00:05:21the Depression very well. According to the film historian Douglas Gomery, it was the only studio,
00:05:27aside from MGM, that did not lose money in any fiscal year during the Great Depression. This
00:05:32was helped by the fact that Columbia didn't own theaters, but it was also due to Harry Cohn's
00:05:38shrewdness. He cut back on the number of his higher-end features and doubled his production
00:05:43of lower-budget Bs. Even the ones that were not very distinguished, which honestly was most of
00:05:49them, were capably made and did their job of filling out double bills. Cohn did not spend
00:05:55much or waste much. He kept his overhead low by rarely taking on long-term star contracts. He
00:06:03kept executive salaries low. He didn't expand the studio physically until 1935, when he acquired a
00:06:09studio ranch location in Burbank. And he was also clever at following trends in movies, be they
00:06:16prison movies or aviation films. And he was able to turn out his own variations on these trending
00:06:23genres very quickly, as the schedule for Airhawks proves, less than three months from filming to
00:06:29release. 1935 was Columbia's most profitable year to that point. It did so well that the next year
00:06:37it surpassed Universal as the biggest of the little three studios, at least for a few years.
00:06:42Harry Cohn was riding high. As Don Miller has written, he could afford to smile, although he
00:06:48did not avail himself of this luxury in public and among his charges too often. By the way, notice
00:06:54our introduction to this dog, whose name we will learn is Tailspin. Very important to work in this
00:07:02intro, because Tailspin is going to have a very big moment later on. Harry Cohn once said, I want
00:07:09one good picture a year. That's my policy. And I won't let an exhibitor have it unless he takes
00:07:14the bread-and-butter product, the Boston Blackies, the Blondies, the low-budget Westerns, and the
00:07:19rest of the junk we make. I like good pictures too, but to get one, I have to shoot five or six. And to
00:07:26shoot five or six, I have to keep the plant going with the programmer pictures, meaning the bees.
00:07:31We're learning that the story concerns a competition between companies to
00:07:44land an airmail contract. And perhaps surprisingly, films dealing with airmail comprised a subgenre of
00:07:51their own in this era. Movies and airplanes had been born around the same time. In 1903, the Wright
00:07:58brothers made their famous flight. And that December, Edwin S. Porter produced The Great Train Robbery,
00:08:03regarded as the first narrative film and an early landmark in film editing. Now movies, of course,
00:08:10became a part of Americans' normal life a lot more quickly than aviation did. Really, not until
00:08:16the 1930s did aviation have the same everyday impact on society. Even though World War I had
00:08:24major action in the sky, aerial World War I movies wouldn't really come along until Wings in 1927.
00:08:30The first trend in aviation movies was actually the mail service. Actual air delivery of mail
00:08:37started in 1918 and quickly grew to transcontinental service. The pilots became sort of heroic action
00:08:45figures in the public imagination because they flew these often unreliable airplanes through
00:08:50all kinds of weather with few instruments. Hollywood started making movies on this subject
00:08:55in the late teens and into the 20s. They tended to be like westerns with wings, with plots dealing
00:09:03with aerial bandits and thieves and things like that. More realistic films on the perils faced by
00:09:11these flyers came along later with 1925's The Air Mail starring Warner Baxter. In the 30s,
00:09:19John Ford made Air Mail, which featured Ralph Bellamy. And there were also the films Night
00:09:24Flight, Ceiling Zero, and Only Angels Have Wings. Air Hawks was sort of a reversion to the lighter
00:09:33type of this genre with a very brash heroic depiction of its pilot characters and, of course,
00:09:39an electrical death ray that brings planes down. The use of a death ray against planes was actually
00:09:46a popular device in other films of the era too, such as Columbia's Flight to Fame with Charles
00:09:52Farrell and the British film Q Planes. Death rays also popped up in more than one Hollywood serial.
00:09:59Another connection between aviation and Hollywood was that quite a few movie stars and filmmakers
00:10:07learned to fly and had their own planes. Cecil B. DeMille started his own airline after World War
00:10:13One to fly the mail. Richard Arlen launched an air delivery service that lasted into the 40s.
00:10:19And even the director of this film, Albert Rogelle, was a pilot.
00:10:23In a moment, we'll be in Arnold's Casino. No relation to me, by the way. Take a look at the
00:10:49headwaiter toward the left of the frame welcoming Ralph Bellamy. Right there, that's an actor named
00:10:59Gino Corrado. Now, even though he only has a few words of dialogue that we just barely heard, I want
00:11:06to take a few minutes to tell you about him because he had quite an interesting and unusual career and
00:11:11he deserves some recognition. Air Hawks is one of a whopping 29 films Corrado appeared in, in 1935
00:11:20alone. He has been accurately described by my friend Leonard Maltin as the screen's consummate
00:11:27waiter. Among his over 400 movie credits are an inordinate number of roles in which he played a
00:11:33headwaiter, a waiter, or a maitre d'. He was a waiter at Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. He was a
00:11:39waiter in Sunrise, in Top Hat, in Scarface. In Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, he served Al Jolson. In
00:11:46Citizen Kane, he is even referred to by his real name, Gino. He became so good at playing these
00:11:52roles that when work dried up for a time in the late 40s, he took a job as an actual headwaiter
00:11:59at a Beverly Hills restaurant and later owned an Italian restaurant of his own. He was born in
00:12:06Florence as Gino Lacerani and his family settled in San Diego around 1910. One day when Gino was
00:12:13about 19, Fatty Arbuckle came to town for a location shoot. Gino watched, was intrigued,
00:12:20and within a couple of years he had moved to LA and gotten his first role in D.W. Griffith's
00:12:25Intolerance. Not as a waiter, I hasten to add. After that, Gino worked steadily through the
00:12:33silent era, first in small roles, then in supporting parts in bigger films like La Boheme
00:12:38with John Gilbert and The Iron Mask with Douglas Fairbanks. A director told him that Lacerani was
00:12:43too hard for people to pronounce, so for several years he used the stage name Eugene Corey. But
00:12:50eventually he reverted to Gino and took on the last name Corrado. It honestly didn't matter much
00:12:55because once talkies arrived, he played bit parts in hundreds of films for which he almost never
00:13:00received screen credit. He said, when talkies came out, I started playing waiters because they
00:13:06thought I was best for the part. It didn't matter to me. I still got paid. Besides, I really knew
00:13:11how to be a waiter because of other jobs I'd had. I was a waiter in a cafe scene in Gone with the
00:13:16Wind. I even set the table because the director wanted it European style. I played those roles
00:13:22to perfection, he told the New York Times in 1949. I have observed the best maitre'ds in Hollywood.
00:13:29I go to restaurants and talk to them and watch their mannerisms, how to bow, lead to the table,
00:13:34seat a party, and so on. I have studied up on the subject and know everything there is to know about
00:13:40it. Now, I'm going to interrupt myself for a few minutes because this is the first scene of real
00:13:45style. The atmosphere is wonderful with the storm, the darkness, and this scene will give us our first
00:13:51inkling of science fiction mad scientist horror territory. Over these first 14 minutes, we've had
00:13:57a range of genre and tone. Now, we get a mad scientist. Here he is getting a fantastic screen
00:14:04entrance with low angle lighting from cameraman Henry Freulich. Edward Van Sloan is perfectly
00:14:13over the top as this mad scientist, Professor Schulter. We remember Van Sloan most for his
00:14:19horror movie roles, especially in his first years on camera. He played Van Helsing in the Broadway
00:14:24production of Dracula and then reprised the role for Todd Browning's film version in 1931.
00:14:32He played a doctor in Frankenstein and then a year later a doctor in The Mummy.
00:14:36And in all of these, he clashed with the vampire, the monster, or the mummy. In addition to his
00:14:43horror roles, he was also simply one of the more memorable character actors in B-films
00:14:47across various genres. He played doctors, be they mad or not, more than any other type of character.
00:14:54And we're now getting a good long view of his lab. Director Al Rugell pulls the camera back to show
00:15:01off his set so it has impact. The equipment comes to life and of course we can't help but think of
00:15:06the wonderful Kenneth Strickfaden equipment in Universal's Frankenstein films. And certainly
00:15:12the audience in 1935 would have made that connection. And certainly Columbia knew that
00:15:17they would. So no question, it's a reason it's shown here in this way. Bride of Frankenstein
00:15:23and Air Hawks even opens in theaters at about the same time. And this, by the way, is further
00:15:28evidence of how Harry Cohn had a talent for spotting trends and working them into his own films.
00:15:37Van Sloan was born in Minnesota of Dutch and German heritage. The plot of this film and his
00:15:44accent hints that Professor Schulter is German. And certainly a Germanic foreigner blasting U.S.
00:15:51planes out of the sky is something that can maybe be seen as touching on the anxiety of
00:15:56the rise of the Nazi party at the time, whether it was intentional by the filmmakers or not.
00:16:11And in fact, Van Sloan is about to deliver a line that almost sounds like a parody of Hitler.
00:16:17He really hams it up, gives his line delivery great zest, and well, he goes over the top,
00:16:22which is entertaining, but it also signals to the audience that this
00:16:26film is intended to be no more than lighthearted fun, in case we've forgotten.
00:16:47You have seen, give me enough money to build this in full scale and I will destroy
00:16:53barracks, battleships, airplanes, anything. He'll destroy anything and everything.
00:17:03Froelich's cinematography enhances the mood of that moment with the extreme low angle
00:17:08lighting of Van Sloan emphasizing his madness. Henry Froelich had started as a stills photographer
00:17:15for Universal when he was 15, thanks to his dad, who was head of the department.
00:17:21His first assignment was on the silent hunchback of Notre Dame. Now, still men at Universal were
00:17:27required to also train as assistant cameramen, which Froelich did. At First National, he worked
00:17:34as a camera operator, and then he went to Columbia Pictures. He later said, I got my training with
00:17:39Joseph August, Ted Tetzlaff, and Joseph Walker. My last picture as an operator was, It Happened
00:17:45One Night. In April 1934, Froelich became a full-fledged cinematographer, or cameraman,
00:17:52as it was then called. He was 27, the youngest member of the Cinematographers Guild at the time.
00:17:59He also shot many Three Stooges shorts, in addition to hundreds of B-features,
00:18:04and stayed at Columbia for 31 years. Just what would you expect to get out of this?
00:18:10All the money necessary to construct the machine full scale,
00:18:14and a little something for its use. A little something? The person who buys my invention
00:18:20will control the skies. Now, just to finish up with Gino Corrado, in that 1949 New York Times
00:18:28profile, Corrado said, I have played hundreds of waiters and head waiters, more than anyone in the
00:18:33movies. I used to get fan letters from maitre d's. He said he even turned down other parts that
00:18:39would have required him to shave his mustache, so that he'd always be ready for another maitre d
00:18:44role. Corrado's career also speaks to the fact that in the 1930s and 40s, Hollywood incorporated
00:18:52restaurant and nightclub scenes into so many films. So there was a constant demand for waiter
00:18:59characters and the like. Corrado is also remembered for his comic chops in Columbia Pictures short
00:19:05comedies, opposite Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. In the late 1940s, an economic recession
00:19:13affected Hollywood, and as Gino said, things are very quiet around the studios now. They have
00:19:19stopped building big restaurant and nightclub sets and pictures in order to economize. So Corrado took
00:19:25a job as an actual head waiter in a restaurant owned by his next door neighbor. He said, I am not
00:19:31ashamed to be doing this kind of work. I took the job with the understanding that if anything came
00:19:35along in the way of a movie role, I'd have the privilege of taking it. Patrons recognized him
00:19:41every night, and Corrado was constantly asked for autographs, signing as many as 50 menus a day.
00:19:47He said, this is also acting. It's all showmanship, down to the serving of the crepe suzettes.
00:19:52And he said, I liked acting, but if I was to start again, I'd never be an actor, never. I'd go into
00:19:58business like the restaurant. Pictures are all right if you're lucky. The man standing on the
00:20:06right, playing Druin, is the actor Robert Middlemass. He was 41 years old when he made this film,
00:20:13and in fact, this was just his second feature, in the sound era at least. He had a few roles
00:20:19in the late teens as well. Like Douglas Dumbrill, who is sitting at left,
00:20:26Middlemass was known for playing unpleasant characters, unsavory, somehow corrupt. Criminals,
00:20:33politicians, businessmen, sometimes detectives and police chiefs, but even then, usually with an air
00:20:39of untrustworthiness. This montage, by the way, is about 20 seconds long, and it is just wonderful.
00:20:46This is really a lost art, these types of multiple exposure montages
00:20:51that tell so much story in such a short time, and Air Hawks contains several of them.
00:21:06We're seeing now that Shulter has finally built his death rate of scale, and is about to shoot
00:21:13down one of Ralph Bellamy's planes, in what will be a surprisingly brutal little sequence,
00:21:18showing the agony of the pilot. It gives us one of the few touches of actual horror in Air Hawks.
00:21:28This entire death rate business is, of course, completely preposterous, but we buy it thanks
00:21:34to the film's storytelling craftsmanship, including the use of sound. All those long
00:21:39takes of equipment moving, blinking, humming, making weird noises, all of that helps us
00:21:45believe that this machine can use electricity to blow planes out of the sky. One trade publication,
00:21:52Harrison's Reports, was outraged by the violence of scenes like this. It called Air Hawks, quote,
00:21:58a demoralizing melodrama in that the characters are shown deliberately planning murders committed
00:22:03solely for monetary gain. Because of the deliberate murders, it is unsuitable for children,
00:22:08adolescents, or Sundays. So, I certainly hope that you are not watching this film on a Sunday.
00:22:38In the brief scene that we're about to see at the Mountain View Inn hideout,
00:22:55Leon the Caretaker is played by an actor named Egon Brekker. Brekker was Austro-Hungarian,
00:23:02and had a stage career as an actor and director in Austria and Germany before emigrating to the U.S.
00:23:07in 1921 and continuing to work in theater. Just a year or two before making Air Hawks,
00:23:13he went to Hollywood for the final act of his career, until his death in 1946.
00:23:27Brekker was one of those actors who, in this era, appeared in countless movies, in uncredited bit
00:23:33roles, as he does here, although occasionally he was billed for something more notable,
00:23:38as in one of his final films, the B-film noir, So Dark the Night.
00:23:52The pilot with the dog, Bill Lewis, is played by Robert Allen, who's about to have a major sequence,
00:23:58and so is the dog. Allen is best remembered as a B-western star at Columbia, but he actually made
00:24:04many more non-westerns, and also did much theater, including a role in the original
00:24:08Broadway production of Auntie Maine. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, as Irving Theodore
00:24:14Bear. He went to a military academy, then Dartmouth, and he got his first movie job by sheer
00:24:20chance. A Richard Dix football movie called The Quarterback was filming scenes on the Dartmouth
00:24:26gridiron in 1926, and they hired Bob Allen as a football playing extra. His parents didn't approve
00:24:33of him pursuing acting, so after graduating college, he worked as a truck driver and a bank clerk,
00:24:39and he actually trained as a pilot as well, which means he certainly must have liked making this
00:24:43picture. He remembered how much he had enjoyed that bit of work on the Richard Dix film, so in
00:24:491930, he came to Hollywood and landed a contract at Warner Brothers. He made a few films without
00:24:55credit, and he felt he was really going nowhere, so he moved to the stage, got some Broadway roles,
00:25:02and just sort of gradually improved his acting ability. In 1934, Harry Cohn spotted him in a play
00:25:10and offered him a contract. Allen got some good roles, but still felt like something was lacking,
00:25:15so he asked to work on a Tim McCoy western, because he admired those films so much.
00:25:21The studio said okay, and then to their surprise, he did very, very well. He looked good as a western
00:25:28hero, had a good physique, good horsemanship, and soon found himself starring in a series of B
00:25:34westerns called the Texas Rangers series. But after six films, Columbia dropped the series and let Allen
00:25:41go, because they had just signed a new western star, Buck Jones, and they didn't have room for Allen
00:25:46anymore. He tried to sign with Republic, but he lost out there to a fellow named Roy Rogers, because
00:25:52the studio was looking for a singing cowboy. So that was it for Allen's western career, although he
00:25:58did keep working on stage and screen and lived to the age of 92. Now as I've been talking, Allen has
00:26:04taken that dog, Tailspin, on his plane, and the only thing that the audience has been thinking about
00:26:12is, is that dog going to die when the plane is shot down?
00:26:30Smart filmmakers know that if your film story is going to kill a dog, you had better know exactly
00:26:37what you're doing, because audiences will not accept this unless there's a truly valid story
00:26:43reason for a dog to die. These characters are all worried about Lewis, but we're worried about that
00:26:50dog. This film had better not kill the dog, is really all we're thinking.
00:26:58And hooray, Tailspin lives to bark another day. This is a six second shot of that dog, which is
00:27:04quite a lengthy shot, and it shows an appreciation that the audience needed that moment to feel good
00:27:09about the dog surviving. The film shows Tailspin's fate before it reveals Lewis's. And now we see,
00:27:16of course, that Lewis has in fact survived as well. I want to speak a bit about Ralph Bellamy
00:27:22now, and where he was at this point of his career. When we think of Ralph Bellamy today, it's always
00:27:28first as the other guy, the overly sincere, nice other guy who never gets the girl and instead
00:27:36loses her to Cary Grant or another leading man. Bellamy played those roles to perfection in The
00:27:42Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, and others. But in fact, he had a much richer career than just that
00:27:48type of character, both on the screen and the stage. Over 60 years, he proved himself to be a
00:27:54versatile actor, from lead roles in early B-films, to second parts in A-level films, to big Broadway
00:28:00plays, and memorable late career movie roles, literally to the end. His last film, the blockbuster
00:28:07Pretty Woman, opened in 1990, just months before he passed away. Bellamy was born in Chicago, and he
00:28:15grew interested in acting at a young age. After he graduated high school, he joined a stock company
00:28:21and learned the craft. He later wrote, the old pros showed me how to make up and how to walk,
00:28:27and they discussed the fine points of voice and gesture, which they had learned from thousands
00:28:31of hours on the stage. I learned acting by acting and by watching others act. I am still convinced
00:28:37that there is no substitute for this experience. One essential is experience in front of a live
00:28:42audience. After eight years in stock, which basically went defunct with the advent of radio
00:28:48and movie palace stage shows, Bellamy in 1928 moved to New York. Now he was one of thousands
00:28:55of former stock actors in the city looking for theater work, and if you didn't have Broadway
00:28:59experience, you were at the bottom of the waiting lists. Bellamy was soon broke and starving.
00:29:05He later wrote, quote, I had one place on 8th Avenue where I could get a thick heavy soup
00:29:11and a quarter loaf of rye bread for 15 cents. That was my one meal a day, and it was sufficient.
00:29:17I was really broke. I got peanuts in the shells and ate the whole thing, shells and all.
00:29:23One morning he stole milk from a doorstep. A police officer caught him and let him off with
00:29:27a warning. He took odd jobs, almost gave up, but eventually got a couple of small parts and a brief
00:29:33mention in a New York Times review. He made his Broadway debut in October 1929, just days before
00:29:40the stock market crashed. Then he got another play, Roadside, which only lasted nine days but
00:29:46wound up being his big break. Talking pictures had arrived, and Hollywood needed actors who could
00:29:51read lines, and so movie scouts were combing every show on Broadway looking for talent.
00:29:57Bellamy's resonant voice only helped him, and quickly he had five separate offers of
00:30:02Hollywood contracts. He signed with Joseph Schenck for $650 a week. But I was so broke,
00:30:08he said, I had to borrow eating money for the trip west. But once in Hollywood, he said,
00:30:14for the first time in my life, I was making big money. $650 a week for 30 weeks was like a million
00:30:19dollars in those days. I had wonderful friends, James Cagney, Charlie Farrell. I enjoyed my parts,
00:30:25although I would now prefer to forget at least 90% of the pictures I made.
00:30:31He eventually moved on to a new contract with Columbia, and as he put it, I was in every picture
00:30:36Columbia made. He was a workhorse, acting in 10, 12 pictures a year. Many of them were leads in B
00:30:43films like Air Hawks. And Bellamy described life at Columbia in these days of the very early 30s.
00:30:50He wrote, the back lot was not paved or cared for in any way. When it rained, they had to put down
00:30:56planks to get you to the stages and keep you out of the mud. Those were the early days before
00:31:01Columbia became a major studio. But he was not happy with some of the relentless working
00:31:08conditions. At one point, he simply refused to stay on the set past 6 p.m. After he was marched
00:31:14to Harry Cohn's office, he told Harry that he was fed up with being forced to work into the late
00:31:19night hours and then be back at the studio very early the next morning. He threatened to quit and
00:31:24Cohn relented, which was a story that Bellamy loved telling in later years. He later explained,
00:31:30there was no such thing as overtime ever. The word was not known in Hollywood. So it's little
00:31:36surprise that Bellamy became a founder of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933, which instituted
00:31:41protections for actors that we now take for granted. Bellamy was very, very proud to be an actor.
00:31:47And he championed the profession through his entire life. In addition to being a founder of SAG,
00:31:53he was president of Actors' Equity for 12 years. And in 1960, he shepherded the signing of a contract
00:31:59that created the first Actors' Pension Fund. Now, as I've been speaking, we've seen Pat Flaherty,
00:32:06as the pilot Dunlap, flying back to the airport with a doll for his daughter. You know, it's
00:32:11interesting how audiences and movies have a mutual understanding. When we saw the dog in the plane,
00:32:17even though we worried about it, we deep down knew the dog was going to live, because movies generally
00:32:22don't kill innocent dogs. But we see the doll and we know this pilot is doomed. He's going to get
00:32:29shot down and the doll, in its own way, is going to die too. This is a well-cut sequence telling the story
00:32:37visually. And Dunlap is about to get shot down in another surprisingly brutal moment. It's the shot
00:32:45of him looking agonized just before the burning plane goes down, which conveys real horror.
00:32:52It's strong stuff for a film made after the enforcement of the production code.
00:32:57I mentioned earlier the outrage in Harrison's reports about these scenes making the film
00:33:01unsuitable for Sunday viewing. There was even a Hollywood Reporter article at the time about how
00:33:07to deal specifically with pictures like Air Hawks that got strong content past the code.
00:33:13So it was something that was noticed.
00:33:26In a moment, we will again see Ralph Bellamy's secretary, Mona, played by Billy Seward, who had
00:33:33only a brief film career. Born in Philadelphia as Rita Ann Seward, she worked as a model and a
00:33:40musical theater actress before Columbia signed her in 1933 and gave her the leading lady role in Voice
00:33:46in the Night, starring Tim McCoy. She went on to act in 18 features for Columbia in 1934 and 35,
00:33:54including prominent roles in More Bees and little parts in bigger films like 20th Century.
00:34:00In November 1935, not long after making Air Hawks, she quit acting to elope with Billy Wilkerson,
00:34:07the founder of the Hollywood Reporter and the owner of the Trocadero Nightclub.
00:34:12They divorced in 1939 and she returned to the screen, but only got a few very minor parts,
00:34:17and after a few more years she called it quits for good.
00:34:21She is billed sixth in Air Hawks and the LA Times review of the film called her,
00:34:26a smooth little bit of femininity who deserves to be pushed up several notches.
00:34:30She has a fascinating personality. And here she is about to deliver a very entertaining
00:34:37five-word line with great gusto. I gotta get a statement from Barry Eldon.
00:34:41Say, ain't he gonna answer the charges against the line? Yeah, what's going on in there?
00:34:46Listen, will you mugs scram? Just a college girl.
00:34:51Now, just to finish my thoughts on Ralph Bellamy, his other guy persona would start developing very
00:34:57soon after Air Hawks. Hands Across the Table came almost immediately after, and then in the next
00:35:02few years came The Awful Truth, Carefree, and His Girl Friday. So, at this point in 1935,
00:35:09Bellamy was a workhorse actor at Columbia, was about to start playing the type of character
00:35:15he'd be best known for, and was heavily involved in the affairs of the Actors Guild.
00:35:20He also around this time started becoming a frequent presence on radio, so he was very,
00:35:25very busy. Ralph Bellamy was not by strict definition a movie star headlining top A-level
00:35:32films, but he really was one in the minds of the audience. The audience knew him, welcomed him,
00:35:38and enjoyed him. There were supporting players who remained rather anonymous, and there were
00:35:45supporting players who developed real followings, and Bellamy was in the latter camp. He enriched
00:35:50and enlivened whatever film he was called to do. In 1942, Bellamy spotted a script on a producer's
00:35:57desk with this note on the first page. Wealthy oil man from Southwest. Able, but simple and
00:36:03naive. Typical Ralph Bellamy part. Bellamy saw that he had been completely typecast and would
00:36:09have a tough time ever getting other kinds of roles. I realized then, he said, that for me,
00:36:14Hollywood had become just a living and acting just a chore. It was a good living and a pleasant chore,
00:36:20but it had no meaning anymore. I had to get out. After a handful more films, he did leave
00:36:26for New York and found success in plays like State of the Union, Detective Story, and Sunrise at
00:36:31Campobello, for which he won the Tony Award for playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was absent
00:36:37from the big screen for decades. One exception was the film version of Sunrise at Campobello,
00:36:42and another highlight later on was Richard Brooks's excellent Mexico Western, The Professionals,
00:36:47in which Bellamy plays the ruthless and domineering husband of Claudia Cardinal,
00:36:52yet with a speck of sympathy that makes the character a tragic one.
00:36:56We know Bellamy now from his film work, but he found his greatest personal satisfaction from the
00:37:01stage, because of the presence of the audience, which he said was like meeting a new person each
00:37:07performance.
00:37:08I'll tell you my hunch about those three crashes.
00:37:10If it's as good as your hunches about ITL equipment, it must be swell.
00:37:13But you don't understand.
00:37:13Just a pal. Kick a friend when he's down just to get yourself a good headline.
00:37:18I tell you, I didn't write that job.
00:37:19I'll call you around.
00:37:20Wait a minute, Sonny, I want to tell you...
00:37:22The actor here playing Tiny is Victor Killian.
00:37:27When he made Air Hawks, Killian had just arrived in Hollywood to sign with Columbia.
00:37:32He'd had some sizable Broadway roles and acted in his first film in 1929,
00:37:37but his movie career really kicked off in 1935,
00:37:40and he later said that he regarded Air Hawks as his real film debut.
00:37:45The role of Tiny is a prominent one. It's not a tiny role.
00:37:50For the next 15 years, Killian played dozens of character roles like this one.
00:37:54As he said, I was Hollywood's best known unknown.
00:37:58But in 1951, he was blacklisted for his personal political beliefs
00:38:03and then unable to get any film work.
00:38:05Now, this resulted in a real oddity.
00:38:07He was playing the lead role in a low budget science fiction film, Unknown World.
00:38:13But because he was blacklisted during production,
00:38:16producer Robert Lippert chose to withhold any screen credit.
00:38:19So his name doesn't appear on screen, even though he has the leading role.
00:38:24It's a genuine rarity in Hollywood history.
00:38:29This sequence at the end is a really striking one for the fact that it's silent.
00:38:33Killian has been carrying the scene physically,
00:38:35and he's enhanced by some gorgeous low-key lighting from Henry Froelich.
00:38:45After he was blacklisted, Killian returned to the stage
00:38:52and eventually forged a new career on television.
00:38:55In 1979, he died in tragic and bizarre circumstances.
00:39:01He was watching television in his Hollywood apartment one night
00:39:04when an intruder broke into his home and beat Killian to death.
00:39:09He was 88 years old.
00:39:11Now, what makes this bizarre is that five days earlier,
00:39:14another veteran character actor in his 80s named Charles Wagenheim
00:39:18was beaten to death by an intruder in his Hollywood apartment.
00:39:22And both Killian and Wagenheim had recently acted together
00:39:26in an episode of the TV comedy series All in the Family.
00:39:30Two weeks after Killian's death,
00:39:32there was a joint memorial service at Westwood Cemetery.
00:39:35And three days after that, on March 25th, 1979,
00:39:39their episode of All in the Family aired on television.
00:39:43The police never connected the two killings,
00:39:45so they were considered to be a strange and morbid coincidence.
00:39:56I didn't mean it.
00:39:58Yeah, it's good.
00:40:00This is a very sweet little sequence between Ralph Bellamy
00:40:03and four-year-old Marion Edwards as little Dorothy Dunlap.
00:40:06Marion had just appeared in three R-Gang shorts,
00:40:10including Beginner's Luck,
00:40:12while also getting small roles in feature films
00:40:14such as Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland.
00:40:18Three weeks after Airhawk's wrap production in the spring of 35,
00:40:21Hal Roach signed her to an R-Gang contract.
00:40:25As it turned out, she only made three more shorts in that series
00:40:28and a handful or two of other feature bit parts
00:40:31before she retired from the business at the age of seven.
00:40:35Her biography file from Hal Roach Studios reported that,
00:40:39while, quote,
00:40:40she is fond of ice cream and candy just like other kids,
00:40:43she would sacrifice those goodies any time
00:40:46for a bottle of rich milk, her favorite dish.
00:40:51And Variety singled her out in its review of this film.
00:40:55Quote, the daughter of Geneva Mitchell
00:40:57does her first part flawlessly
00:40:59and has much poorer voice than her father.
00:41:01Does her first part flawlessly and has much poise and charm.
00:41:05Because of this film, she was invited to join R-Gang at Hal Roach.
00:41:09And this is a big and impressive scene for Marianne.
00:41:12She's able to register and convey some real emotion
00:41:16that the audience feels.
00:41:19Her mother, Gertie, is played by Geneva Mitchell,
00:41:21who had started her career as a teenager in the Ziegfeld Follies.
00:41:27She starred in Broadway musicals in the late 1920s
00:41:30and was signed by Warner Brothers and then later Columbia.
00:41:33She was married several times,
00:41:35but the love of her life was Lowell Sherman,
00:41:38the actor and film director,
00:41:40and they were engaged for several years.
00:41:43He died suddenly just two months before Airhawk started production.
00:41:46In a minute or two, we'll be back in Arnold's nightclub
00:42:11with Douglas Dumbrill and Tala Burrell.
00:42:14Douglas Dumbrill was a fan-favorite character actor in this era.
00:42:18His specialty was suave, but sinister, oily villain characters,
00:42:23a man you love to hate.
00:42:26He was often seen as crooked bank president types
00:42:29or Western sheriffs working with crooked ranchers,
00:42:31roles like that.
00:42:33He had a resonant voice and a commanding presence.
00:42:36He could also do light comedy,
00:42:38for example, some Marx Brothers movies
00:42:40and a Bob Hope Bing Crosby comedy.
00:42:42His personal favorite role was in Frank Capra's
00:42:44You Can't Take It With You.
00:42:45I was just about to make a phone call
00:42:47when somebody sneaked up behind me with a piece of lead pipe
00:42:50and plopped.
00:42:52When I woke up, it was morning.
00:42:54Tala Burrell, who plays Renee
00:42:56and who we will momentarily see singing in the casino nightclub,
00:43:01was one of several seemingly exotic European actresses
00:43:05whom movie studios brought to Hollywood in these years
00:43:08to try and mold into their own versions of them.
00:43:12They were versions of Greta Garbo
00:43:13to try and replicate the mark that Garbo was making at MGM.
00:43:17Now, this was an industry-wide trend
00:43:19and it was noticed and talked about in the popular culture.
00:43:23To cite one example,
00:43:24the May 1932 issue of the fan magazine Movie Classic
00:43:28had a cover article entitled The New Garbos of the Screen.
00:43:35It observed that in 1931,
00:43:37Hollywood had greeted the arrival of a number of actresses
00:43:41as potential rivals to Garbo.
00:43:43Marlena Dietrich, who was German,
00:43:46Evelyn Leigh, English,
00:43:48Jeanne Helbling, French,
00:43:50Susie Vernon, also French,
00:43:52and Tallulah Bankhead, who was actually American.
00:43:56She'd been born in Alabama
00:43:57and her father would serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
00:44:01But she nonetheless had exotic Euro looks
00:44:04and had moved to London
00:44:05where she had become an extremely popular actress on the West End.
00:44:10So she was, I suppose, an honorary European.
00:44:13I probably don't need to tell you that of those five actresses,
00:44:17only two, Dietrich and Bankhead,
00:44:20actually found Hollywood stardom.
00:44:22And as that magazine article stated,
00:44:24not by being second Garbos.
00:44:26Dietrich and Bankhead have survived the hysteria of their own press agents
00:44:31and have won large followings.
00:44:40Meanwhile, the film has been showing off Harry Cohn's new imports
00:44:47by giving Burrell the Marlena Dietrich treatment in that singing sequence.
00:44:52It was beautifully lit,
00:44:53but she just doesn't have that it quality,
00:44:57the magnetism that a star requires,
00:45:00and certainly someone like Garbo.
00:45:02I spoke earlier of how Cohn was always looking for trends to jump on
00:45:06and certainly this search for new European talent
00:45:09was a trend across all the studios.
00:45:12You remember the day that Rene's cab stalled?
00:45:14What about it?
00:45:14It was a plant.
00:45:15As soon as you got out of sight, it drove away.
00:45:17There wasn't anything wrong with it.
00:45:19That 1932 article pointed out that despite the first wave of European actresses
00:45:24who had not caught on,
00:45:26the studios were not giving up on their search
00:45:28as evidenced by the recent arrival of Sari Maritza and Tala Burrell
00:45:33to, quote, exotic new blondes, as they were described.
00:45:37The British Sari Maritza, brought over by Paramount,
00:45:40had a brief screen career that quickly flamed out.
00:45:44Tala Burrell, on the other hand, forged a longer career,
00:45:47although she never found stardom.
00:45:50The comparisons to Garbo and Dietrich helped her in her early days,
00:45:54although she personally hated being compared to Garbo in particular.
00:45:58She said, I do not want to be compared to Greta Garbo.
00:46:02It is bad business for a newcomer.
00:46:04I want to be Tala Burrell.
00:46:17She'd been born in Bucharest, Romania,
00:46:19to German parents as Natalie Bierl, B-I-E-R-L.
00:46:24So her stage name was a close alteration from her real name.
00:46:29Natalie became Tala, and Bierl became Burrell.
00:46:34When she was 15, she was spotted by Max Reinhardt,
00:46:37who signed her to a lead role in a play in Berlin.
00:46:40She was a success and started working on both stage and screen in Berlin and Vienna.
00:46:47Then a scout from Universal noticed Burrell in one of her German films,
00:46:51and the studio brought her to America
00:46:54to make a German-language version of the Universal film, Boudoir Diplomat.
00:46:59Afterward, Carl Laemmle signed her to a contract.
00:47:02As she worked on improving her English,
00:47:04Universal worked on finding her suitable roles.
00:47:07But ultimately, only a couple of pictures emerged.
00:47:10One of them, The Doomed Battalion,
00:47:12was an unusual World War I drama in the tradition of German mountain movies.
00:47:18Universal loudly described Burrell in that film's advertising as the new Garbo,
00:47:23and the picture was well-received.
00:47:25The studio also promoted her in media outlets like that 1932 fan magazine,
00:47:31which said, and this was probably handed verbatim to the magazine by a studio publicist,
00:47:37it said, Burrell comes the closest to being a real Garbo rival.
00:47:42She is more of an authentic exotic than Sari Maritza.
00:47:46Her movements have an awkward grace.
00:47:48She is the first of all the foreign charmers to have the Garbo figure,
00:47:51She is calm and quiet, which spells mystery to Hollywood.
00:47:55She is blonde, tall, willowy, unusual looking,
00:47:59not beautiful, but her face is singularly fascinating.
00:48:02She lives quietly and has never attended a Hollywood party from natural choice.
00:48:08Such isolation is so definitely a part of the Garbo legend
00:48:11that it will be difficult for Tala to deny that in this at least, she is like Garbo.
00:48:18Well, that universal publicist was wrong.
00:48:22It was not to be.
00:48:24Burrell's next film, Nagana, starring Melvin Douglas, was a big, big flop.
00:48:29And in neither of the two films did Burrell really catch the imagination of audiences.
00:48:36In 1933, she was cast in a film by a British filmmaker,
00:48:39and it was the first time she had ever been cast in a film by a British filmmaker.
00:48:44In 1933, after just two years, Universal canceled her contract.
00:48:56She later told the writer Robin Coons,
00:48:58quote, I was determined not to go home a failure.
00:49:01I told myself I should never join the parade of foreign players
00:49:04who come to Hollywood and go back without accomplishing anything.
00:49:08So she took a role in Columbia's Let's Fall in Love,
00:49:11which got good reviews and persuaded Harry Cohn to put Burrell under contract.
00:49:17For the next 15 years in Hollywood, she played supporting and bit parts
00:49:21from B-films like Air Hawks to grander productions.
00:49:25She did not become a star, but simply a working actress.
00:49:29After a couple of years at Columbia, she grew dissatisfied
00:49:33After a couple of years at Columbia, she grew dissatisfied and asked for a release.
00:49:39She went freelance, and in 1936, Universal signed her once again with Talk of a Buildup,
00:49:46only this time without the Garbo references.
00:49:48But again, only two films came from it.
00:49:58After her final Hollywood film in 1948,
00:50:02she moved to Munich to live with her mother.
00:50:04She worked as an acting coach, directed plays at an American theater in Berlin,
00:50:09helped organize theatrical shows for GIs stationed in Europe.
00:50:13By 1954, there was some concern in Hollywood regarding Burrell's safety and whereabouts.
00:50:20Walter Winchell claimed that she had, quote,
00:50:22disappeared behind the Iron Curtain in Germany.
00:50:25Her friends in Hollywood have not heard from her in over a year
00:50:28and fear she may be in serious trouble or may even be dead.
00:50:33Burrell heard about Winchell's column and wrote to Luella Parsons,
00:50:37it's true that I am behind the Iron Curtain,
00:50:39but I am well protected by the British, French, and American troops.
00:50:44The unique situation in Berlin provides us with a new and enthusiastic audience,
00:50:49the thousands of refugees seeking asylum in our sector.
00:50:53Burrell died a few years later of cancer at age 50 at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.
00:51:23How do I know that is?
00:51:24Burrell really doesn't have much to work with in this film.
00:51:28It's not a particularly good role.
00:51:30She has little to do, little opportunity to show off any real acting chops,
00:51:35but mainly she just doesn't command the space when she's in the frame.
00:51:39She doesn't have that, uh, that undefinable star quality.
00:51:44If you're on a level with me, I can't let you step out of this building
00:51:46while Arnold's men are watching it.
00:51:48It might prove embarrassing.
00:51:54Come here, I'm going to show you something.
00:52:01Arnold's been spending large sums of money for electrical equipment.
00:52:04I mentioned earlier that Air Hawks was an original story by Ben Pivar.
00:52:09He also served as the film's production supervisor.
00:52:12He had started his career as a film editor at Universal in 1927
00:52:17and moved to Columbia the next year.
00:52:19It was there that he really learned his craft,
00:52:22both editing and producing, according to Tom Reeder,
00:52:25author of a fine book about Pivar's career.
00:52:30Reeder says that Air Hawks, uh, quote,
00:52:33was the first film for which Pivar received any sort of publicity,
00:52:38if only in the trades, not, and not on the screen.
00:52:42Immediately after Air Hawks, Harry Cohn promoted him to associate producer.
00:52:47Pivar would spend his career at second tier studios,
00:52:51like Columbia and Universal,
00:52:54as well as poverty row outfits like Republic and Reliance Pictures.
00:52:58As Reeder aptly put it,
00:53:00Pivar's career affords us a snapshot of a segment of the industry
00:53:04that is frequently ignored, dismissed,
00:53:06or given fleeting mention in the various histories of Hollywood.
00:53:10The secondary studios were filled with lower budget fare,
00:53:13the bread and butter films that kept the contract players
00:53:16and studio technicians busy
00:53:18and helped whittle away each studio's overhead.
00:53:23Well, that's a good, concise description of the B world of this era.
00:53:28When we view a B movie, we, we enter a different mindset.
00:53:32We adjust our expectations.
00:53:34These films must be watched in the right spirit.
00:53:38We can overlook or forgive the cheap sets,
00:53:42the sometimes merely functional acting and directing styles,
00:53:46and of course the wildly preposterous stories,
00:53:49if the film delivers its expected ingredients cleverly, briskly, and entertainingly.
00:53:58B films didn't have much in the way of budgets,
00:54:01but they were overall treated seriously and respectfully by the studio.
00:54:06Harry Cohn may have called them junk,
00:54:08but if you really look at a typical Columbia B, like Air Hawks,
00:54:13you notice that care has been taken to frame shots,
00:54:17to light certain scenes in, say, a sinister style,
00:54:20and to edit together the action sequences quite fluidly.
00:54:25Well, it's getting a little too hot for me.
00:54:27The film scholar Bill Everson put it best when he described Air Hawks
00:54:32as vintage Saturday matinee fare from the 30s,
00:54:35professionally made with slick direction,
00:54:38a good cast, and polished production values.
00:54:41It's the kind of film that more than pleased us within its category back in the 30s,
00:54:46and thus it is unfair to apply more exacting standards to it today.
00:54:51In other words, we need to consider a film, or any piece of art,
00:54:56on its own terms, by what it is and not what it isn't.
00:55:01For a film without major names,
00:55:04shot in a couple of weeks on a low budget, Air Hawks delivers.
00:55:07Now, don't you worry about Alvin making any more trouble.
00:55:11I'd feel safer, I was sure.
00:55:13Well, suppose we slip out of town for a few days until the whole thing blows over.
00:55:16That's a great idea. Canada, maybe.
00:55:18For sure.
00:55:18In your plane.
00:55:19Of course.
00:55:20Make yourself a drink, dear.
00:55:24Hello.
00:55:25Get me Loy's Airport.
00:55:27Happy days, dear.
00:55:28The final portion of the story is now being set up.
00:55:32The way it ends, with both Bellamy and Dumbrill on a plane
00:55:37that's a target of Professor Shoulter, that's the way this story must end.
00:55:42We don't yet know how Bellamy is going to save the day,
00:55:45but it must happen in the air and in some sort of conflict with that death ray.
00:55:53Of course, the story and the death ray is ridiculous,
00:55:58but it doesn't feel that way as we experience it.
00:56:01This picture combines seriousness with absurdity,
00:56:04which is of a piece with the fact that it's a mash-up of so many genres to begin with.
00:56:11And there's our final glimpse of Tailspin the Dog.
00:56:13One flight was enough for him.
00:56:19Well, there she is.
00:56:21Another few minutes, we'll be on our way.
00:56:22Took something like this to make up our minds.
00:56:24Are you happy?
00:56:25You know I am, or I wouldn't be with you.
00:56:32Good morning, sir.
00:56:33Good morning.
00:56:35Good morning.
00:56:43I told you I always get what I want.
00:57:02Well, we're on our way.
00:57:05And here, finally, we see Wiley Post for a little over one minute of screen time.
00:57:15Well, I don't lose much time, but what's this all about?
00:57:18About to find a thing one guy...
00:57:20Wiley Post was a bonafide celebrity thanks to his aviation feats.
00:57:25Everyone in the audience would have known who he was and admired him.
00:57:29Four years prior, in 1931, Post and a fellow navigator made the first flight around the
00:57:35globe in a single-engine fixed-wing airplane.
00:57:38It took them a little under nine days.
00:57:40And afterwards, they were given a ticker tape parade in New York and fed it by the country
00:57:45and even the president.
00:57:47Two years later, Post became the first to accomplish the feat as a solo flyer.
00:57:53And this time, he did it in under eight days.
00:57:56In 1934, he developed the first pressure suit and set a record by flying to an altitude
00:58:02of 50,000 feet.
00:58:04And that is the suit we are about to see here.
00:58:07It was made of inflatable latex and canvas and had oxygen fed into the side of the helmet.
00:58:13When I woke up, it wouldn't be my fault, would it?
00:58:21Well, I can't say much for his acting chops.
00:58:24It's actually hard to understand his dialogue.
00:58:26And he also barely opens his mouth when he speaks.
00:58:29But Air Hawks, nonetheless, stands as Wiley Post's only movie appearance, which makes
00:58:35it historically notable.
00:58:37And as I've mentioned, he was part of the reason it was made in the first place.
00:58:47In Air Hawks, he accomplishes the off-screen feat of flying nonstop across the country.
00:58:53At the time he made the film, Wiley really was attempting to make the first high altitude
00:58:57nonstop flight from L.A. to New York.
00:59:00A handful of attempts were cut short, and he sadly never got the chance to try again.
00:59:06Because three months after the release of this film, Wiley Post was killed in a plane
00:59:10crash in Alaska, along with his passenger, Will Rogers, a tragedy that shocked the country.
00:59:22Air Hawks was directed by Albert Rogelle.
00:59:29Now, he is basically a forgotten director, except, of course, by diehard classic film
00:59:34fanatics.
00:59:36He had a long, prolific career as a B-film director.
00:59:39He was from Oklahoma, the youngest of nine children, and entered the film industry in
00:59:441916, when he was 15 years old.
00:59:47He worked as a carpenter, a stage electrician, a property man, a cameraman, and a cutter.
00:59:54He started directing in 1923.
00:59:56He made a series of westerns for Universal in the mid-20s, and then directed several
01:00:01Ken Maynard westerns for First National.
01:00:04His career really picked up after Air Hawks, in the late 30s, with an assortment of decent
01:00:09B-musicals, comedies, and mysteries.
01:00:11Point number one, we've got three shoes.
01:00:14One for each of us, and none for you.
01:00:16Among his other credits are the 1941 mystery comedy, The Black Cat, and the 1947 Robert
01:00:22Cummings charmer, Heaven Only Knows.
01:00:26Later on, Rogelle shifted to television.
01:00:30Point number three, this ship of yours is masquerading as an ITL plane.
01:00:35Rogelle had the versatility that was necessary to be a consistently working director in the
01:00:41B-world, where you would often just be handed one movie after another, in whatever genre.
01:00:47In his book, B-movies, Don Miller wrote, Al Rogelle could switch from a routine aerial
01:00:53tale, Air Hostess, to a similarly routine, but more enticing underwater adventure, Below
01:00:58the Sea, with a novelty in its technicolor sequences.
01:01:04Al Rogelle's directing chops really come off best when he does comedy, and the comedy
01:01:13sequences in Air Hawks are well handled, with good timing.
01:01:17He was no great auteur, just a reliable, seasoned movie maker, with a solid, if uninspired,
01:01:23grasp of technique and pacing.
01:01:26Variety's review of Air Hawks praised Rogelle's excellent craftsmanship.
01:01:34By more than one account, Rogelle leaned toward the autocratic on the set.
01:01:44Ralph Bellamy wrote this about working with him, Rogelle knew his business, having come
01:01:49up through the Mack Senate and scriptless and silent days.
01:01:52He was short, muscular, mildly profane, and husky-voiced.
01:01:57On location, he continually shouted orders through a short megaphone, and he usually
01:02:02lost his voice before the picture was finished.
01:02:06Columbia sound recordist Ed Burns didn't especially like working with Rogelle either.
01:02:12Burns wrote in his own memoir that Rogelle was his least favorite director, and that
01:02:16his tendency to shout at actors caused them to blow their lines.
01:02:21With Air Hawks, Rogelle does keep things moving, and he merges several genres quite well,
01:02:27playing up the humor, menace, and thrills as needed from scene to scene.
01:02:32Including right here, as tiny as making his exit a comic one.
01:02:39Albert Rogelle was also a civilian pilot himself,
01:02:43so he likely had a soft spot for Air Hawks and sequences like that one.
01:02:47Notice the way that Edward Van Sloan as Schulter has been moving his body physically when he's
01:02:54getting pummeled backwards by dirt or climbing up on his death ray machine, or just walking
01:03:00around.
01:03:00He sort of stutters around in a jerky way, and this adds to his character.
01:03:07He's a bit like a man, and he's a bit like a man, and he's a bit like a man.
01:03:11Walking around, he sort of stutters around in a jerky way, and this adds to him as a
01:03:17comic figure, a comic villain.
01:03:20And it helps create the feeling for us that this is all lighthearted fun.
01:03:24If he were moving around more smoothly, the humor of those moments would be a lot less.
01:03:29Now, his truck is about to be completely destroyed, and if you watch carefully, you can see what
01:03:36looks like a prop dummy flying to the ground on the right side of the frame.
01:03:40Presumably, it's Professor Schulter.
01:03:59Tiny, Tiny!
01:04:21In the 1930s and 40s in Hollywood, there were various grades or types of B-films.
01:04:27A B from a wealthy studio like MGM would have been an A-film for Monogram or even Columbia.
01:04:33So, one studio's B was not necessarily another's in terms of technical quality.
01:04:38Furthermore, there were films that fell between A and B status.
01:04:42Maybe they had some stronger star talent.
01:04:45Maybe they looked especially polished or sumptuous.
01:04:48Perhaps they were a tad longer than 70 minutes.
01:04:50These were called programmers, and sometimes shaky A's.
01:04:56What made a film a programmer was if it could be shown on either half of a double bill,
01:05:01depending on what it was paired with.
01:05:04Normally, the A-film came first, followed by the B.
01:05:07So, if a programmer was paired with a lavish B-film from Paramount or Fox, it would play second.
01:05:14If it was paired with a Poverty Row picture, or possibly another programmer, it would play first.
01:05:22Exhibitors, especially in rural areas, had some leeway to program the films as they wanted.
01:05:27And as I said earlier, they changed their programs out two or three times a week.
01:05:31By the way, the character of Holden here is played by an actor named Worley Birch.
01:05:36Birch had a very minor film career, was much more prominent on the stage.
01:05:40He was 52 when he made this, and Air Hawks was essentially his first film,
01:05:44aside from a brief screen appearance in 1916.
01:05:48And Holden, who has been revealed as the villainous mastermind,
01:05:52is about to exit this film and this world.
01:06:10To finish my point about the ways that B-films were programmed,
01:06:14I examined many issues of variety from 1935
01:06:18to see what kinds of pairings exhibitors made with Air Hawks.
01:06:21Here are some examples.
01:06:23In Providence, Rhode Island, it played second to Paramount's Paris in Spring.
01:06:28In Montreal, it played second to MGM's Vagabond Lady.
01:06:32In Denver, it played first with another Columbia film, Party Wire.
01:06:37In L.A., it played second to an unusually lavish and relatively long monogram film
01:06:42called Keeper of the Bees.
01:06:45In Tacoma, it played second to Columbia's Unknown Woman,
01:06:48which was also directed by Albert Rogelle.
01:06:51So a Rogelle double feature in Tacoma.
01:06:54And in New York, it played first on the double bill
01:06:57with Columbia's Justice of the Range, starring Tim McCoy and Billy Seward.
01:07:03So New York City got a Billy Seward double feature.
01:07:07Well, what do you think of me now, baby?
01:07:17I like this final bit of comedy from Victor Killian as Tiny,
01:07:22and he will actually get the last line of dialogue in the film.
01:07:26But first, he loses his desired girl, Billy Seward, to Robert Allen.
01:07:31And that is now being paralleled by Ralph Bellamy actually getting the girl.
01:07:37Imagine that.
01:07:39An unusual experience for Ralph Bellamy in an A film,
01:07:42but not uncommon at all in his many, many Bs.
01:07:48Listen, you don't have to be anywhere today at five o'clock, do you?
01:07:51Why, no.
01:07:52How about riding with me as far as Washington, lady?
01:07:56Thank you for listening to this commentary.
01:07:58I do hope that you enjoyed Air Hawks as much as I do,
01:08:01and that you continue to enjoy the countless B movies from the golden era of Hollywood.
01:08:07There are gems out there waiting for you to discover them.
01:08:10I promise you.
01:08:12This is Jeremy Arnold saying so long.
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