Air Hostess (1933 film)
| Air Hostess | |
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| Directed by | Albert S. Rogell |
| Produced by | Martin Johnson Osa Johnson |
| Written by | Milton Raison (adaptation) |
| Screenplay by | Milton Raison Keene Thompson |
| Story by | Grace Perkins (uncredited) |
| Starring |
Evalyn Knapp James Murray Arthur Pierson |
| Cinematography |
Joseph Walker Elmer Dyer (aerial scenes) |
| Edited by | Richard Cahoon |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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67 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Air Hostess is a 1933 American Pre-Code aviation-themed melodrama based on a serial published in a 1919 True Story Magazine article called Air Hostess by Grace Perkins, also known as Dora Macy. Director Albert Rogell who had moved from shorts to B-films, had been interested in aviation having already helmed a similar feature, The Flying Marine (1929). In Air Hostess, the studio had attempted to merge flying and romance. Advertising stressed, "A date in the skies ... a rendezvous in the heavens...where love zooms with thrill after thrill ... but finds a happy landing!"
Evalyn Knapp plays a TWA air hostess attracted to a grandstanding pilot, despite the better advice of the blind mechanic and other employees who watch over her. (In reality, TWA did not initiate the use of air hostesses until 1935, when the Douglas DC-2 was introduced.) Knapp was being touted as a future star, with a starring role in Sinner's Holiday (1930), but eventually lost her A-status and was relegated to such B-fare as Air Hostess.
James Murray appears here five years after his triumph in The Crowd. Another notorious drinker and former baseball star Mike Donlin appears as "Mike", a few months before his fatal heart attack.
In World War I, pilot Bob King is shot and killed in France. His friends Ted "Lucky" Hunter (James Murray) and Pa Kearns (J.M. Kerrigan) pledge to look after his daughter, Kitty (Evalyn Knapp). Years later, after the war, Kearns, now blind, works at an airport as an engine expert while Kitty is a TWA stewardess. Her father's friends still look after her as meddling chaperones.
A grandstanding Ted flies over the airport, meeting Kitty who is enamored with him. After a night on the town, he flies her back to the airport, but is met by angry mechanics and pilot Dick Miller (Arthur Pierson), who is in love with Kitty and ends up in a fight.
Ted soon announces his marriage to Kitty and forces her to quit her job. Dick gets her her job back when Ted is unable to make a living. Rich, three-time divorcee Sylvia Carleton (Thelma Todd) offers Ted a chance to build a radical new aircraft that can fly across the Pacific. A tête-à-tête between Ted and Sylvia in Albuquerque turns into a fiasco when Kitty and Dick arrive to find them both drunk.
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