306 - Only Angels Have Wings, United States, 1939. Dir. Howard Hawks.
I'd never ask a woman to do anything.
So says Geoff Carter.
Geoff Carter the airline pilot. As played by Cary Grant.
Geoff Carter says, "I'd never ask a woman to do anything."
Three years later Humphrey Bogart will say, "I stick my neck out for nobody."
Cary Grant's Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings shares some similarities to Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942). Geoff is an American. He lives in a foreign country. He runs an American company (in this case a small freight airline instead of a restaurant). He is popular, beloved, and powerful in his small circle of friends. He is loyal. He is stoic. He has been hurt in the past by a woman, and he protects himself by not talking about it and not making himself vulnerable again.
After 30 movies in 6 years, Cary Grant hit his stride. He made a pair of screwball comedies last year, in 1938, in which he presented to the world the cool debonair for which he would become legendary.
He starred with Katharine Hepburn in both of them, and their comedic chemistry was palpable. They had already worked together in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and that film planted the seeds for what was to come.
The two 1938 films were Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, both involving fast-talking, quick-witted banter between man and woman as well as physicality with abandon.
It was a long way from the role of the Mock Turtle in 1933's Alice in Wonderland.
Where he looked like THIS:
Yes, folks. If Cary Grant could play the role in the picture above and then be an international star five years later, then there is hope for you. Pursue your dreams.
Cary Grant would work with Katharine Hepburn in four films, three of which were directed by George Cukor--Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story (1940). George Cukor was known as a woman's director--in fact, he made a movie entitled The Women (1939), starring only women--and his comedic style was a great fit for Grant's urbane masculine charm and easy grace.
But the other movie, Bringing Up Baby, the one where Cary Grant plays a paleontologist, the one with the leopard, was directed by that marvel of a director, Howard Hawks.
Howard Hawks.
We could write an entire book about him. Many people have.
He was one of the great directors. He worked in a system that rewarded reliability. Show up and do your job. Do it well, and be invited to do it again. Because he did it, he kept working. His real-life work ethic was similar to what we are about to see in today's film.
Cary Grant made five movies with Howard Hawks--Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), and Monkey Business (1952).
Most of them also show him in that role in which he shined--the debonair leading man in a romantic comedy that walks on air to get the girl, and who is so self-confident that he can make fun of himself without ever losing his cool.
But in the midst of those romantic comedies, where Cary Grant developed the fine art of playing Cary Grant, he made two adventure films where he played something different from the typical Cary Grant image. These two movies both came out in 1939. They were George Stevens' Gunga Din and Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings.
When a film comes out in 1939, it is worth taking note.
There was something special about that year. The studios considered the film industry to have begun in 1889, making 1939 the 50th year anniversary. In the Fall of 1938 they began planning their next year, and they decided to pull out all the stops and put their best efforts into their 1939 slate of films. They put more money, more time, more craft, more heart and soul, and more love into the 1939 films than they had ever done before. The results continue to amaze. There are more great movies made in 1939 than any other year. And Only Angels Have Wings shares that same something that so many 1939 movies have.
Geoff Carter runs a small airmail operation in a place called Barranca in the Andes Mountains. The company is owned by a man called Dutchy, and he is trying to prove himself in order to win a new contract. The company is barely solvent. He can pay his pilots and maintain his planes, but he is always one crash away from going under. If he can prove himself over the next six months, then he will win the contract, which will guarantee steady business and put him and his employees into good fortune.
Only Dutchy and Geoff know about this test. Dutchy does not tell his pilots because they would push themselves too hard and put their lives in danger for him. They are brave and proud men. We begin the story at the end of the six-month trial period, with one week to go.
A ship arrives at port.
Bonnie Lee gets off. She is joyful and vivacious. A couple of pilots--Joe Souther and Les Peters--strike up a conversation with her. They invite her to come hang out at the air field while she waits for her next ship to depart. Their boss Dutchy has steak! Juicy American steak. That clinches it for her. Bonnie Lee is a good sport. She comes and hangs out with the guys.
Bonnie Lee is played by the one-and-only Jean Arthur, a screen veteran. If Cary Grant made his thirtieth film in Bringing Up Baby, making this one his thirty-fourth, Jean Arthur is approaching her eightieth feature with this one. She is only four years older than Grant, but she started working in pictures nearly a decade before him. (He was performing with a traveling acrobatic troupe before making movies.) She also has a couple Frank Capra films under her belt. She can walk and talk and wisecrack in her sleep. You may know her from Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Talk of the Town (again with Grant), and Shane. Oddly, however, for all her work in the beginning of her career, she did little later. She spent nearly forty years in retirement before dying in 1991 at the age of 90. (The roles did not dry up. She retired. The roles kept coming but she turned them down.)
But here she is in her prime, able to be one of the guys and a very special woman at the same time. Both Joe and Les vie for her, and she is game to go along. They make a date for that evening. But first, Joe is called to make a mail run. He must fly through the pass in deep fog.
Geoff Carter, played by Cary Grant, is a professional. He takes his work seriously, and he does his job. He himself is the best pilot, and he makes runs that no one else can. He will not put their lives in danger, however. He keeps constant tabs on the weather and orders his men to return when conditions worsen.
Unfortunately, conditions have just worsened. Geoff gave Joe the go-ahead and Joe has taken off and started flying. However, the fog has set in and made the pass unpassable. Geoff orders Joe to return. He does. But the fog has set in so badly that Joe cannot land here either. After a couple of aborted attempts, Geoff orders Joe to stay above the fog until it clears. He has enough fuel for three hours, so he is to circle around and land when it clears.
Joe is played by Noah Beery Jr. Whom you may know and love for his 121 performances starting thirty-five years later as Joseph Rocky Rockford, James Garner's father, on The Rockford Files.
Joe disobeys orders. He has a woman on the brain. He has a date with Bonnie Lee, and he cannot break it. Geoff demands that he break his date. Joe tries to land anyway. He crashes. Tears up his plan. And dies. Geoff is furious with Bonnie Lee for distracting Joe. But he controls it. He controls all of his emotions. And he and the other men move on.
Bonnie Lee cannot believe what she sees. The men have a way of dealing with grief and pain by not talking about it, by focusing on their work, by remaining committed to their professionalism. She learns quickly. Their approach is necessary for survival.
They play the piano and sing.
As Bonnie Lee gets to know Geoff Carter she finds him intriguing. He will never ask a woman to do anything. He guards his heart. He protects himself. He does not talk about it. They get along well, but he will not be vulnerable and let her in. She misses her boat on purpose to get to know him better. When he returns from a mail run she is still there. He did not ask her to stay. He would never ask a woman to do anything. He blows her off.
The story involves his best friend Kid Dabb, played by Thomas Mitchell, the man who is everywhere.
And a man named Bat MacPherson. Or really Kilgallen. Played by Richard Barthelmess.
Richard Barthelmess talks!
Barthelmess was a silent film star, most remembered now for D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919). He had worked with Howard Hawks before in an airplane talkie, in 1930's The Dawn Patrol. He appears here in one of his final performances.
Once Kid realizes MacPherson is really Kilgallen, all bets are off. They have a past. In fact, Kilgallen changed his name to MacPherson to hide that past.
But the past catches up with him.
Geoff is going to have to make some decisions that Kid will not like, which will hurt him, but Kid valiantly understands. As men they abide by their code of honor. They put work first. They are professionals.
MacPherson has a wife. Like Victor Laszlo has a wife.
Of all the airports in all the towns in all the world . . .
In walks his old fling Judy.
Judy! Judy! Judy!
Cary Grant never says that in the movie--nor ever--yet Goober Pyle makes the phrase famous with his "imitation" in The Andy Griffith Show. It comes from this film, though it is not said in this film.
Judy MacPherson is played by a young woman named Rita Cansino. She has been working in the movies as a singer and dancer and her star is on the rise. She has recently changed her name.
To Rita Hayworth.
The artist futurely known as Gilda. The Lady from Shanghai. Salome. And Miss Sadie Thompson.
She is the perfect foil to Bonnie Lee.
Where Bonnie Lee is the girl next door, the kid sister, one of the guys, Judy MacPherson is feminine, mysterious, and seductive. Both are desirable, but in different ways.
And the love triangle develops around a man who was not looking for love in the first place. A man who would rather be left alone.
He will not be left alone.
He will have more dangerous flights to make, for himself and for his men. He will have more testing to endure. More death. More hardship. More difficulty.
And in the end he will place his fate and his future in the flip of a coin.
Well . . . maybe.
And the man who would never ask a woman to do anything will discover a woman who wants him to. And Jean Arthur is given one of the great lines in film history.
As Bonnie Lee says,
"I'm hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me."
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