Full of Hot Air!

Oh, I'm no dummy. I realize that the title of this post could also apply to me! Ha ha! But, seriously folks, we're going to head down an avenue today that could cause gas or bloating. I'm referring to movies that center around dirigibles (airships which are powered in a way that allows for steering, versus balloons which, for the most part, just drift in the air.) 

One of the most famous and longstanding dirigible lines: The Goodyear Blimp. (As an aside, my father happened to sell Goodrich tires and on his office wall was a poster that read "The Goodrich Blimp." It was a photo of, hilariously, only the sky...!)

First up is the 1929 film The Lost Zeppelin. Admiral Byrd's recent explorations of both the North and South Poles had led to increased interest in these areas from the public. Sound in films was still a new element when this epic was put together and the requirements of microphones on set made for some stodgy early scenes which were noted even in its day.

Like many a film of this sort, there's a love triangle with a lady on the ground while two opposing gentlemen are at risk. Seen here are Ricardo Cortez and Virginia Valli, the wife of his commander!

The commander is played by Conway Tearle, who's witnessed his wife in the arms of his associate and "friend."

The first 20 minutes or so having consisted of a banquet scene and aspects of the trio's lives, it's at last time for the launch of the dirigible, which is headed for the South Pole. 

Tearle and Cortez are in the air...

...as fretful Valli watches from below. 

There's a dog on board (!) and if you're anything like me (and I know some moviegoers are), you're far more concerned about him than any humanoids. 

The vessel is close to a base at the pole and can be seen by the men stationed there.

Unfortunately, a horrendous storm hits, sends them off course and ultimately leads to a crash in the icy wasteland!

Valli is at home, suffering in silk, as a radio play-by-play transmits the state of the zeppelin to the world. 

So far as I can tell, the dog survives...! 

Only two years later, Columbia Pictures spent a then-record for them $650,000 to make Dirigible (1931.) Though this was not a substantial hit the way The Lost Zepplin had been, it at least survives in a far clearer and cleaner print than the prior movie and is less static in its blocking of the actors. 

Once again, there is a love triangle at the heart of the story. Fay Wray is married to handsome and daring Ralph Graves, a daredevil pilot who has just completed a coast-to-coast flight. His buddy, Jack Holt, is a naval pilot who has been working with dirigibles.

This was two years before Wray went blonde (and went ape!) in 1933's King Kong. We recognize her in closeups, but in medium and long shots she rather resembles Miss Gloria Swanson.

I found Graves' callow, flighty, spirited character (named "Frisky!") to be pretty handsome and appealing. But because he doesn't seem to grasp the level of Wray's concern for his exploits, she wants to divorce him...

He's supposed to go on a mission aboard this dirigible, but she secretly conspires to get him relieved of duty. Graves, not knowing of her deceit, blames his buddy Holt and ends their friendship over it. 

The ship runs into serious trouble, eventually breaking in two and crashing into the ocean!

This leads to a frantic escape as Holt and his men tear through the outer skin of the zeppelin and to safety. 

Still thirsty for adventure, Graves takes on a dangerous trip to the South Pole, which results in a fiery plane crash and injury to some of the party.

Meanwhile, an unaware Wray, who has determined to divorce her husband, is canoodling on the beach with his former bestie Holt. However, once Holt hears of the crash...

...he uses his latest dirigible to head to the pole and send rescuers down by parachute to the stranded men. 

This film has a rather bizarre bit of trivia attached to it. Veteran performer Hobart Bosworth plays the leader of the South Pole expedition. As the wintry scenes were filmed (naturally!) during a heatwave, the actors were given little mouth cages with dry ice inside in order to simulate steam on their breaths. Bosworth was both annoyed by the cages and also hot and popped a bare piece of the "ice" into his mouth which led to significant injury of his teeth, tongue and jaw! 

1934's Here Comes the Navy isn't about a dirigible, but one is featured on the poster and figures into the movies climax. I'm including it here for a certain reason or two. 

Venerable James Cagney plays a sailor with a chip on his shoulder towards...

...frequent costar and close chum Pat O'Brien. 

Gloria Stuart plays O'Brien's sister, who also happens to love Cagney, to her brother's chagrin. 

Though Cagney is playing "Chesty," it's O'Brien who (in a rare instance?) shows the audience his. 

I won't lie and say I've seen many of O'Brien's movies, but I don't recall ever seeing him without his shirt on. 

It's also of some interest that Stuart is filmed on board the USS Arizona, a ship that would in real life be sunk by the Japanese during Pearl Harbor. Interesting because her greatest claim to fame would come from being cast as a surviving passenger of the Titanic (1997), which sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Late in the proceedings, Cagney is assigned to the USS Macon.

Even though the USS Akron crashed into the ocean the year before, killing 73, the Macon was a proud component of the US Navy at this point. 

It served as a small aircraft (biplane) carrier and was a promising addition to the armed forces, but it too crashed into the drink the year after this movie! Thankfully, all but two crewmen survived that time.

Anyway, in this movie, the ship is coming in to land during a very gusty day. 

Cagney and a fellow sailor open up a hatch in order to drop guide ropes. Unfortunately, one of the men on the ground becomes tangled up and as the airship is forced to rise, he's rising with it, but dangling and ready to drop!

Fortunately, fast-thinking Cagney dons a parachute, shimmies down the rope to rescue the man and - of course - it's his frenemy O'Brien!! The two manage to excise themselves from the situation in time for a happy ending. (Speaking of, check O'Brien's mitts here. Ha ha!) 

Mention must be briefly made of 1937's The Go-Getter in which George Brent's character is at the helm of the USS Macon during the first five minutes of the movie. 

Actual footage of the real Macon is paired with model work as the dirigible makes its final voyage. 

As the (rather unlikely) Brent steers the ship, word comes through about an oncoming storm.

I would not have said "no" to a little bit more from the radio operator supplying the weather information...!

At any rate, the storm tears apart the rear fin of the airship and from there its an inevitable slide into the ocean. 

Brent and the others are forced to "ditch," jumping from the gondola into the ocean as the dirigible begins to break apart. 

This is all within the earliest part of the film. Brent loses a leg in the catastrophe and spends the rest of the movie trying to make it in life (and with costar Anita Louise), principally in the lumber business.

I'm guessing very few have heard of this one...! Murder in the Air (1940.) This was the fourth and last in a series of B movies in which Ronald Reagan portrayed a secret agent named "Brass" Bancroft.

This lobby card intrigued me as to why Ronnie was shirtless in a room full of tough guys. 

Turns out he's undercover, posing as a spy. The organization he's infiltrating sports a particular tattoo on their right arm near the elbow and so this interrogation scene has the former lifeguard shirtless for about three minutes.  

Next, he poses as a sailor and is on board the USS "Mason" (intended to ape the aforementioned Macon.) 

In what is a sort of science-fiction element, the Mason features a secret weapon on board, which the spies are after. 

Called an inertia projector, it's a ray gun that can stop the engine of another craft cold in its tracks. 

Reagan makes contact with one of the spies and attempts to gain his trust.

'Course you know that this dirigible is not going to be staying in the air for long...!

The flight crew struggles to keep the vessel aloft, but it's hopeless. 

As the ship loses altitude and sinks lower and lower, the sailors begin offloading ballast and anything they can think off that's heavy. Several shots of the airship and emergency sequences are cribbed from the aforementioned The Go-Getter.

As it nears the water's surface, the men head down the gangplank to make a jump for it. But Reagan is unconscious back in the cabin! Still, you know in a 1940 movie that the good guy isn't going to go down with the ship in the end. 

Following that considerable spate of blimp-oriented movies in the 1930s, the genre rather ran out of steam, so to speak, and it wasn't until 1961 that a major movie featured a dirigible in its plot line. That was American International's Master of the World, based upon a Jules Verne novel.  

AIP wanted to delve into the world of sweeping adventure in the wake of 1956's Around the World in 80 Days, which won a Best Picture Oscar and raked in tons of money. This would be their most expensive movie to date (though it incorporated stock footage here and there.) 80 Days took place in a balloon, but this story involved a dirigible. A remarkable model was created of the Albatross, which was later housed in this library display case.  

The four folks shown here had been in a hot air balloon which was shot down (for getting too close to discovering the Albatross.) Recognize a young Mr. Charles Bronson among them?

Their new "host" (captor?) explains why he has fashioned his floating warship. He's a pacifist and is roaming the globe, blasting the hell out of countries who are engaged in warfare with one another. 

He's played, of course, by a typically florid, yet atypically bushy-browed Vincent Price.

The model in action as its seen in the film. 

Eventually, the foursome is issued new sets of clothing, though the only clothing on board is the same striped sailor suits that Price's crew wears. 

When an escape plan is hatched (and thwarted), Bronson and costar David Frankham are dangled from the bottom of the Albatross (sort of an airborne "keelhauling?")

They have to dodge trees, terrain and so on.

The movie is okay for what it is, but what really drew me to it was the presence of ship's helmsman Richard Harrison, a gloriously handsome bodybuilder who soon made a distinct impression in Italian sword and sandal flicks. 

With perhaps Bronson aside, I was far more interested in Harrison than this lot...

See what I mean, Vern??

In the latter part of the movie, he reports to the bridge to steer the ship shirtless...

...which is how it ought to have been all along! (And I doubt that Vinnie would have objected to it either.) 

His plans to become "master of the world" thwarted, Price drives the Albatross into the sea with his loyal crewmen opting to stay aboard even though he had offered their escape. 

Closing out the decade was the Russian-Italian production of The Red Tent (1969), based on a true incident. 

Peter Finch plays real-life explorer Umberto Nobile, who sought to reach the North Pole in the dirigible The Italia. 

Claudia Cardinale is a nurse whose boyfriend is among the crew.

Finch is successful in reaching the pole and drops a cross with an Italian flag on it. 

Guess what... there's a doggie on board as well!

It's after the mission's completion that trouble sets in. Before the blimp can make it out of the arctic and back home, ice forms and causes the ship to become far too heavy. 

Ultimately, the dirigible begins to scrape bottom, tearing across the icy terrain. 

The gondola begins to break off, men go flying about...

...and while most of the men are on the ground in the remains of the cabin, a couple are still up in the helium-filled section as it blows away to only God knows where! 

From here, the movie becomes a story of survival against the elements and incredible odds. 

Sean Connery costars as real-life explorer Roald Amundsen, who is reluctant to revisit wintry conditions after his own adventures. Still, he sets out to rescue Finch and company. 

This was quite an unusual look for Connery in 1969. That same year, Marlon Brando adopted a vaguely-similar sort of appearance for Night of the Following Day. I have to say it looks pretty good on Sean in certain moments. 

Only because it has become an unintentional theme in this post, I give you the sweaty, muscular Russian stoker who's helping the rescue ship gather speed. 

In 1971, Zeppelin came careening into theaters. 

In WWI London, citizens are living in fear of attack from the Germans' most recent weapon, a (natch!) zeppelin which floats high in the air, then bombs the cities below. 

Michael York is a British officer carrying on with Alexandra Stewart, a spy. 

In fact, he's somewhat late to a briefing on the enemy aircraft because he was lolling about in bed with her...!

Because he's part-German, his superiors want him to appear to have switched sides and head to Germany, with Stewart's assistance, where Anton Diffring accepts him as one of his own. 

Then there's (brunette!) Elke Sommer as the young wife of an older professor, who has developed the zeppelin of the title. 

York is taken to the airfield/hangar where he meets up with the vessel. He thinks he's only going to go for a brief test run...

But Diffring and Sommer have other (avia)trix up their sleeves. They are headed on an actual mission to destroy a military outpost and, like it or not, York is along for the ride!

Off they head into the night sky.

York is issued some new, warmer, clothes by towering, blond baddie Peter Carsten. 

But York's attention is focused on Sommer, despite her hubby being on board.

The zeppelin can, and does, land on water, allowing soldiers to exit the blimp and attend to their mission. 

York, as a double agent, has to sneak into the radio room and signal the Brits that danger in imminent. 

The zeppelin is engaged in battle and eventually begins to lose gas, which means losing altitude. 

After tossing as much as possible overboard, Sommer and York can only observe in fear as the ship begins to glide towards the water. 

And now we come to my unquestioned favorite film in this genre, 1974's Island at the Top of the World. Seeing this one in cinemas as a 7 year-old simply blew my mind and stayed with me for a long time after. Does it hold up 100%? Well, not exactly. But it's colorful, adventuresome and entertaining. 

David Hartman (no one's idea of a leading man) and Donald Sinden decide to head off in search of the island where whales go to die. The only clue they have is an old whalebone map. Not only is the island the site of highly-valued ambergris, but Sinden's son had gone there previously and has been missing ever since. 

And how does Sinden propose to take them there? In his spanking new dirigible, the Hyperion!

What is it with dogs continuously being on board dirigibles?!

Josephine belongs to the captain, Jacques Marin. 

So off they go, into the wild blue yonder.

Marin navigates through perilously narrow passageways in the Arctic. 

On the way, they make a stop in order to pick up (kidnap, actually!) Mako, who is the only survivor of Sinden's son's expedition. 

During the voyage, they spy whales headed north, presumably on their way to the fabled island. 

Unfortunately, they are felled by heavy winds which knock the Hyperion into the side of a mountain and, ultimately, to the frozen ground. 

Marin (with Josephine) remains with the airship while the other three set out on foot. Soon, they are met by Norsemen!

The Norsemen journey, with the strangers in tow, to a lush, green settlement. It's nestled in a valley which protects it from the harsh outer terrain. (No, it's not Shangri-La!)

Upon meeting with the village's leader and trying to explain their presence there...

...they (and we) meet lovely Agneta Eckemyr. Eckemyr was a Swedish model who landed in New York City in 1971 to begin an acting career. (The year after this movie, she was featured in Playboy magazine!)

Anyway, complications ensue, including the visitors inciting the wrath of a fiery and enraged lawmaker who wants them dead. 

A variety of hurdles face the explorers. They're aided by Eckemyr, who is no typical piece of window dressing, but proves to be rather resourceful. I loved her and the movie in general despite a campy feel and some dodgy blue-screen effects from time to time. 

At last reunited with Marin, the remaining explorers board the seriously disable Hyperion in an effort to make it back home.  

Most of you could reasonably have expected this post to culminate with that most famous of all blimps, The Hindenburg, which was the subject of a 1975 movie.

However, I did a deep dive on this movie 16 years ago (!) so if you want to find out more about that one, you can read about it right here. 

Likewise, the only remaining movie with this sort of theme that I would be mentioning in today's post has already been given the P.U. treatment. I speak of 1977's Black Sunday, in which terrorists overtake the Goodyear blimp in order to cause mayhem at The Super Bowl. You can read more about that one right here. 

I'm now pretty much out of gas, but I'll leave you with one final image. The climax of Zeppelin leaves our hero and heroine sopping wet along a shoreline. This picture is of them (incongruously changed into swimsuits between takes in order to nab some sun) being directed by Etienne Perier as to what they can expect when the next shot takes place. 

Happy Landings until next time!