Reunited: M. Emmet Walsh & Robert Hooks

This may become a semi-regular feature here in Poseidon's Underworld. We'll see. But in the meantime, here we go with this one. As my loyal readers know, I'm crazy for 1970s disaster flicks and there are certain ones that I have to see every so often or I can feel my life force slowly dissipating. Ha ha! One of those is Airport '77 (1977.) I just can never get enough of it! As seen in this shot of the film, Miss Olivia de Havilland is meeting up with a trio of men with whom she'll soon be playing poker. (Such is the depth of talent in the film that even the smallish roles of the card players are enacted by the likes of George Furth, James Booth along with M. Emmet Walsh.) In the background, one can see bartender Robert Hooks plying his trade.

Hooks primary customer is the deliciously nasty Miss Lee Grant, who likes her glass full (and also doesn't mind collecting the little airline bottles of martinis and margaritas!) Walsh is busy with his card game, so the two don't have a great deal of interaction.

When hijackers drug everyone on board through the ventilation system (using gas masks to keep themselves alert), Walsh collapses face first onto the card table. One can see that, as luck would have it, he had a fistful of queens at the time!

In a continuity gaffe, Walsh's cards are suddenly not as good in this later shot!

Hooks has the misfortune of having asked to use the office phone to call his wife (who is expecting twins) and when the plane unexpectedly crashes into the ocean, he's felled by a heavy piece of equipment that shatters his right leg!

Really from that point on, his chief contribution to the film is to grimace feverishly and groan in agonizing pain.

Walsh, the only doctor on board, is kept busy seeing to the many injured passengers, including Hooks, who he helps get moved to a more comfortable spot in the plush cabin.

When he's unsure of Hooks' prognosis, the chief stewardess Monica Lewis presses him about how he doesn't sound very reassuring, whereupon Walsh reveals that he is a doctor of veterinary medicine (!) who sees after the plane's rich owner's set of horses.

Hooks isn't the only one who feeds Ms. Grant liquor. When she is faced with a jolting emotional shock about 3/4ths of the way into the film, he tries to ease her pain with a shot of scotch, but surprisingly enough she's not having it.

During the climactic raising of the plane from under the surface of the ocean, Walsh is deluged with water.

Meanwhile, the newly-disabled Hooks (who has inherited a steward who keeps him clamped in place during the onslaught of water) has to face his own wave of violent sea water. he comes out of it looking demonstrably better than his costar Ms. Brenda Vaccaro!

Walsh helps all the injured passengers out the plane's door and into waiting rescue rafts, including Mr. Hooks, but in a series of hapless moments, Hooks is dropped to the surface of the wing they're standing on and then plopped into a raft in which passengers keep hopping in and onto his damaged leg! But, hey, they made it...

Cut to 1981, both actors are cast together again. This time the movie is Fast-Walking, an outra- geously raunchy, serio-comic flick about a lackadaisical prison guard (James Woods) who finds himself embroiled in a mess when a high profile Black militant leader is transferred to his facility. Here we see the leader (Hooks) being escorted to his cell by Walsh, playing a crooked prison guard.

This time the actors' interaction is more consi- derable, with Walsh doing his best to intimidate, annoy and even entrap Hooks during his stay at the clink.

One scene includes Walsh forcing Hooks to exit his cell while young Woods is instructed to thoroughly search the place (and hopefully find the knife/shank that Walsh has just planted inside!)

But that's not enough. Walsh also instructs another guard to strip search Hooks, lest he be hiding any contraband in places not readily visible...!

The forty-four year-old Hooks was still in pretty good shape at this point. It should be noted that the forty-six year-old (and clearly NOT in as good of shape) Walsh has a full frontal nude scene in the film! It's a medium-to-long shot, but it's there.

Walsh, now eighty-four and still acting, is a remarkably versatile actor with many interesting roles and films to his credit. Slap Shot (1977), Ordinary People (1980), Blade Runner (1982), Silkwood (1983) and Raising Arizona (1987) are but a few titles from his extraordinary prolific career. His role in Blood Simple (1984) is most likely the best known and for good reason. Despite a slate of mind-blowingly funny, vivid and/or meaningful parts, he's never once been nominated for an Emmy, an Oscar or even a Golden Globe.

Hooks, now eighty-two, has only worked sporadically since 2000. Though he was also a versatile and busy performer, his work in television was more prominent than in movies. Fast-Walking was his very next film after Airport '77 while Walsh had about eight or ten within the same period along with television parts! He did costar in one of our very favorite guilty pleasures, Hurry, Sundown (1967) and later appeared in Passenger 57 (1992.) From 1967 to 1969, he and his Sundown costar Frank Converse starred in the well-received and often gritty police show N.Y.P.D. along with Jack Warden. And M. Emmet Walsh was a guest star on it in 1969. Hooks and Walsh also both appeared in the pilot movie for the 1990 series The Flash, which starred John Wesley Shipp.