So of course we all snort out disbelieving, derisive laughter at the sight of these films today, knowing what air travel has devolved into......one of the closest things to hell on earth that one can endure.
The 9-11 terrorists couldn't quell the resilient American spirit even with the horrific loss of precious lives they inflicted on us. But their one monumental victory, their lasting legacy, was the conversion of air travel into a nightmarish ordeal. Our flights now commence with a TSA hazing ceremony.....running a gauntlet of poorly selected, poorly trained ex-junior high school bullies. These woeful characters, their egos pumped up with uniforms, excel at security groping of children and grandmothers while routinely allowing guns and knives to slip right past them....
The airlines, ever greedy and incompetent, chipped in to all this misery, packing fliers into seating space not much larger than the overhead compartments for the carry-ons. And...oh yes....the overbooking of flights.....a lovely little airline 'screw you' to its customers that finally blew up in United Airlines corporate face like an exploding cigar.
The spectacle of seeing a paying passenger yanked from his seat and dragged down the aisle may have been the inevitable destination of our society's steady breakdown of civility.....especially the rapidly deteriorating civility between air travel personnel and air travellers. You hear the phrase 'de-escalate the situation' a whole lot, but nobody seems interested in doing that anymore. Instead of rational discourse.......authority figures choose chaos as a solution, even if everyone around them posts their misjudgments on youtube three seconds later. Everyone expresses outrage, but what the hell does it matter and why does any of this shock us anymore......didn't we just install a chaotic ignoramus to run our country? Chaos rules, folks.....it's a wonder there aren't regular Wild West saloon brawls between passengers and flight attendants.
Return with us then, to MGM's "Come Fly With Me", to the light, Technicolored romantic world of 1963 air travel, where three adorable stewardesses (Dolores Hart, Pamela Tiffin, Lois Nettleton) juggle boyfriends while fluffing passenger pillows and pouring coffee....
In this long ago dreamworld, you can dash through the airport and hop right on your plane....and everyone has enough space to stretch their legs out and enjoy sumptuous meals served by primly uniformed starlets.
Our trio of in-flight babes bounce effortlessly from New York to Paris to Vienna while Frankie Avalon croons the title song (made much more famous by Frank Sinatra's version.) Hart, in her last film before she ditched Hollywood and got thee to a nunnery, takes up with a suave, bankrupt Baron (Karl Boehm) who's making ends meet by smuggling diamonds. And we're talking serious suave here......when this guy takes Hart on a water-skiing date, he skims across the water with his business suit still on. (And we don't think it's meant as a gag, either....the Baron is simply....a real formal guy. Memo to Daniel Craig: let's see you top that one in the next Bond, buddy....)
Pamela Tiffin, the chattering dim bulb of the trio, sets her sights on the studly co-pilot (Hugh O'Brien) whose having an on-and-off affair with an old girlfriend (that classy Brit redhead, Dawn Addams) Lois Nettleton, the designated grown up the bunch (we guess because she's in her mid- 30's, which in a 1963 romcom, constitutes 'older woman' status) catches the eye of a lonely, kindly Texas millionaire played by Karl Malden. (This leads to our favorite moment: during a flight, Malden has to step in and gently strong-arm a drunken sleaze who's sexually harassing Nettleton.....Nettleton's such a vulnerable sweetie, we almost wish Malden could apply the current on-board punishment..... zap him with a fully charged taser and duct-tape him to his seat. Come to think of it, don't flight attendants do that now if you complain the pretzels aren't fresh?)
You can easily tell this all takes place in a kinder gentler age.......the husband of the woman O'Brien's carrying on with complains to the airline. The movie's mythical carrier, 'Polar Atlantic' doesn't fire O'Brien, preferring to punish him by exiling him to Middle East flights. That'll teach him! In another rib-tickling sequence, the practical joker flight engineer tells the brainless Tiffin that she can remedy the airplane's dangerous 'cavitation' by running the length of the plane and repeatedly flushing the toilet. Luckily, the passengers don't panic, no doubt expecting this wonderfully wacky behavior from their cutie stewardess......
With our girls' romantic pickles resolved one way or the other, the movie ends with some majestic shots of the Polar Atlantic jet ascending into the clouds......a perfect visual conclusion because we know this plane and everyone in it won't really land anywhere......we'd like to believe it's flying permanently into the clouds of our fond memories.....where it'll stay in flight forever, until we pop in the DVD again.
Air travel may have shifted in flight even worse than our battered carry-ons, but up in the clear MGM skies, Delores, Pamela and Lois are still smiling and serving coffee.....we'll hand out 2 & 1/2 frequent flyer stars. (** 1/2) for a look back at the once friendlier skies......
No comments:
Post a Comment