513 - Keep 'Em Flying, United States, 1941. Dir. Arthur Lubin.

Monday, May 28, 2018

513 - Keep 'Em Flying, United States, 1941.  Dir. Arthur Lubin.

Keep 'Em Flying is the third service film made by Abbot and Costello to promote patriotism in the build-up to America's entering the War.

Each film focuses on each of three branches of the military as they existed in the early 1940s.

Buck Privates (1941) focuses on the Army; In the Navy (1941), on the Navy; and Keep 'Em Flying (1941), on the U.S. Army Air Corps, later known as the Air Force.  It would become the U.S. Army Air Forces that year, and give place to the Air Force in 1947.

Blackie Benson and Heathcliff work at a carnival as assistants to their stunt pilot Jinx Roberts.  Jinx flies in a daring aerial show that thrills the crowds, but he and his boss do not get along.  And Blackie and Heathcliff get into their own kind of trouble down on the carnival's boardwalk.  So the three of them are released, and they find themselves joining the Army Air Corps.

Jinx meets a singer at a club and runs into his former colleague and rival Craig Morrison.  Blackie and Heathcliff fall for twins Gloria and Barbara Phelps, and the film makes use of site gags with Big Mouth Martha Raye playing both roles.

Lou Costello will find himself on more than one occasion out on the wing, hanging from a plane, or falling in a parachute in ways that are outrageous and comical.