Disastrous Demise: Are You Reddy for This?

We continue to see members of our beloved Disaster Movie Club pass on the next plain. It's inevitable, yet we still have wistful feelings about that collection of performers who had featured roles in one or more of our beloved all-star disaster movies of the 1970s. Miss Helen Reddy was an anomaly. Chiefly known as a recording artist, she only performed a handful of legitimate acting parts during her career. But the one she did in 1974 became strikingly (in)famous! Since we're dealing with a musician here, much of the content will be made up of videos. Apologies in advance for any annoying ads that have to be sifted through.

Reddy was born to show business parents (who toured on a Vaudeville circuit) on October 25th, 1941 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Her mother was later a working actress on Australian TV. Basically told that she was going to be a star, the reluctant Reddy instead broke away at 20 to marry an older man. Soon left as a single mother when the union dissolved, she found herself having to sing for her supper in order to survive! After winning a trip to New York City where she thought she was going to audition for a recording contract, she instead wound up struggling to make ends meet, finally singing in Canada where she was able to work without a permit.

She wed for a second time in 1968 to an agent who eventually helped to build her career in the U.S., though the union was stormy throughout (they wed three days after meeting!) He tirelessly prodded Capitol Records to allow Reddy to cut a single and they relented so long as he promised not to call them for a month. The B-side of that unsuccessful single ("I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar) became an unexpected hit in Canada and before long Reddy was gaining notice. A string of Top 40 hits, three of them #1, followed.

When the A-side, a cover of Mac Davis' "I Believe in Music" didn't knock 'em dead, the single was released featuring the more popular B-side.

There was "I Am Woman" in 1971, which caught on with the feminist movement and earned her a Grammy as Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Reddy notoriously thanked God "because She makes everything possible" in her acceptance speech. Reddy had co-written the song when she couldn't locate one that matched the message she was trying to impart.

The next #1 in 1972 was "Delta Dawn," which had been a Top 10 country hit for Tanya Tucker the year before.

In 1974, she scored another #1 with "Angie Baby." These songs are only a few of the numbers that Reddy had success with in the 1970s.

In 1974, Reddy was cast (along with everybody and his grand- mother!) in the big-screen disaster flick Airport 1975. Playing a young nun opposite Martha Scott as fellow sister, she had fresh-scrubbed appeal if not exactly Sarah Bernhardt-level acting prowess. (Curious, too, was the fact that the lady who championed the advancement of women's rights was portraying such a character!)

In the rear of the plane is a sick little girl played by Linda Blair (not as sick as she was in The Exorcist a year prior!) Her fretful mother Nancy Olson hovers over her as they fly off to meet with a new kidney that's been earmarked for the young lady. 

Reddy decides that she's going to go visit with her and before you know it, she's picked up Blair's guitar/ security blanket and is tossing off a ditty called "Best Friend" (which Reddy also penned.) Reddy was nominated for a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer - Female, but the award went to another member of the DMC, Susan Flannery of The Towering Inferno. 

The sight of singing nun Reddy, on the heels of Julie Andrews' Fraulein Maria and Debbie Reynolds' Sister Ann, became a ripe prospect for parody as you will see in a moment...

The brief sequence in which Reddy entertains the beatific Blair contains a few things to watch out for. Firstly, the female extra in the chair behind them... She has her own mini-melodrama going on throughout the film but takes a breather here to listen. Also, there is the unintentionally hilarious moment when the other passengers - and chief stewardess Karen Black - crane their necks to see what the hell is going on.

 

 

The Carol Burnett Show wasted no time in parodying Reddy (along with many of the other folks found in the film) in a lengthy sketch called "Disaster 75." Below is just one of several moments in which Vicki Lawrence sings to the passengers on a crippled airliner.

In 1980, the hammer fell on the disaster genre with Airplane!, a hysterical movie which poked fun at many of the conventions of the trend, most especially those set in the air. In this instance, it took two people to parody Reddy's portrayal. Once was Maureen McGovern as a nun who carries a guitar:

But then when it came time for a song sung to the sick little girl, stewardess Lorna Patterson did the trick. This hilarious sequence features Jill Whelen (of The Love Boat) and Joyce Bulifant as the concerned mama. Note that the woman from Airport 1975 is in this movie, too! Now married and ill with food poisoning. And take note of the reactions from the passengers to the sudden singing. Ha ha! I thought Lorna sounded great on this song, apart from the comedy.

Reddy did not proceed to many more instances with acting, but there is the 1977 Disney semi-animated musical Pete's Dragon. Her role is substantial with plenty of singing and dancing, some of it with Mickey Rooney. One of the more memorable things to come out of it was the plaintive love song "Candle on the Water," which Reddy sings atop a lighthouse while hoping her long-lost fiancé will make his way back to her.

There's another sort of interesting career path-crossing with Maureen McGovern in that "Candle on the Water" was written by the same team who did "The Morning After" and "We May Never Love Like This Again," both of which won Best Original Song Oscars and both of which were made famous by McGovern. (And all three end with repeating phrases.) "Candle on the Water" was nominated, but lost to another sort of illumination -- "You Light Up My Life" from the film of the same name. Below we see Maureen (with her original nose) in the year between TPA and TTI..

 

I had gone many, many years without seeing Pete's Dragon. I was one of the kids who saw it on the big screen when I was 10 (and probably didn't care one whip-stitch about Reddy's missing love.) When I saw it again for the first time a few years ago, the song stood out very distinctly for me and I appreciated it a lot. Obsessive person that I am, I began watching countless versions of it and this one, from a high school choir, is my favorite. It takes a while to really build, but by the end is really pretty nice. (Jump to 1:50 - I tried to embed it that way but it wouldn't work...!)

By the time Reddy popped up at the deranged tail-end of 1978's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, flailing away next to Frankie Valli and in the midst of Carol Channing and Tina Turner, the superstar songstress couldn't know that her days as a top vocal artist were numbered. Her records were not selling as they once had and her marriage came apart amid drug abuse issues with her husband. An acrimonious divorce occurred in 1983. A few TV appearances came, followed by a successful string of stage performances in things like Blood Brothers and Anything Goes. By 2002, she announced her retirement from singing and went to live in Australia again. She also became a hypnotherapist (following a nearly lifelong interest.)

Despite the smiles, this union had a lot of ups and downs. Reddy later claimed that some of her concert appearances in the early-1980s were either canceled or prevented from being booked because of her ex's influence. A third marriage (to the drummer in her band) lasted from 1983 to 1995 before ending in divorce.

After a decade in retirement, Reddy sang at her sister's 80th birthday celebration, decided she liked what she heard, and made a brief return to concert stages in bother Australia and the U.S. She sang some of her hits along with other less familiar songs from her recording career which held a special place in her heart and which she felt deserved a bit more notice. Her fans enthusiastically greeted their once-dormant songbird. 

Unfortunately, not long after 2015, Reddy began to experience the onset of dementia and ultimately moved to the Samuel Goldwyn Center (formerly the Motion Picture Home and Hospital.) She passed away on September 29th, 2020 at age 78. She had developed Addison's Disease in addition to her other health concerns. Having lost two grandparents to dementia, believe me when I tell you that the end never comes soon enough in cases like this...! We salute the talented and inspiring Miss Helen Reddy, yet one more person who helped make disaster movies special to me during my own life.

Disastrous Demise: George Kennedy 1925-2016

The Underworld felt a slight tremor the other day when one of our beloved 1970s-disaster-movie iconic veterans was taken from us. George Kennedy was one of the kings of the genre, though his career went far beyond that, providing a versatility that not everyone realized. He also had the distinction of appearing in an avalanche of movies whose classic camp value cannot be overstated.

Starting his on-screen acting career on television in 1959, he soon won supporting roles in feature films such as Lonely Are the Brave (1962) and Charade (1963.) In 1964, he worked successfully with both Bette Davis in Hush, Hush...Sweet Charlotte and Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket (as seen here), which ought to have indicated that he'd be a Hollywood survivor!

Always busy from then on, he scored one of his best parts in the captivating prison yarn Cool Hand Luke (1967), playing opposite Paul Newman. The brawny, brawling role fit him to a tee and resulted in an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. (A Golden Globe nomination resulted in a loss to Richard Attenborough for Doctor Dolittle!)

Two years prior, he'd taken part in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), a plane crash drama with an all-star cast of excellent male actors. This was the precursor to a career that would involve more than a few exploits concerning aircraft in peril.

In 1970, Kennedy was part of the sprawling, all-star cast of Airport, which wove several story threads into one climactic moment involving a blocked runway and a bomb-damaged passenger jet. Kennedy was nominated for a Golden Globe as the cigar-chomping Joe Patroni (losing to John Mills in Ryan's Daughter) and thereafter appeared in the blockbuster's three subsequent sequels.

In Airport 1975 (1974), he again appeared alongside a mammoth cast of performers in jeopardy, this time due to a midair collision between a private plane and a large passenger jet. I couldn't resist sharing this shot of Kennedy amidst several of the movie's ladies: Nancy Olson, Martha Scott, Augusta Summerfield (aka Linda Harrison) and Miss Myrna Loy.

He took time out from terror in the sky to take on the rumblings of a massive Earthquake (1974) with his Airport 1975 costar Charlton Heston and another raft of actors in trauma. Each one of these disaster flicks was a box office champ of one degree or another.

For the inevitable third Airport movie, Airport '77 (1977), he was mostly relegated to the sideline, holding a fretful James Stewart's hand as the multimillionaire considered the fate of his daughter and grandson, trapped with a large handful of others in a private jet at the bottom of the ocean in The Bermuda Triangle! The expanded TV version of this movie gave him somewhat more to do and even brought back his son from the prior installment. Kennedy had previously appeared in four of Stewart's movies. 

By the time of the fourth and last of the series, the utterly preposterous The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979), he was promoted to a leading role as pilot of the title vessel which is in constant danger of being blown to bits by a selfish business magnate whose onboard girlfriend has information that could ruin him.

If you thought that Concorde marked the end of Kennedy's sojourns into airplane drama, think again. He later appeared in the TV-movie International Airport (1985), which starred Gil Gerard and also included Susan Oliver as Kennedy's wife along with Concorde costar Susan Blakely, to name only a few.

Another favorite film with an all-star cast that included Kennedy was 1978's Agatha Christie mystery Death on the Nile, which reunited him with Bette Davis, this time as a costar of hers rather than in a bit part.

Kennedy also appeared in favorite disasters of another type, such as the deliciously, deliriously bad Hurry Sundown (1967), an overheated racial drama with yet another galaxy of major names.

And who could forget the captivatingly rotten musical Lost Horizon (1973), in which a plane he was on crashed (it was ever dangerous to fly with or near this man!) in the Himalayas where its survivors were rescued by members of an idyllic hidden society.

In 1988, he followed many other once-serious actors of the 1950s, '60s & '70s who'd found a new home in zany comedies such as Airplane! (1980) when he joined Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad and its two sequels. As late as 2014, the stalwart actor was still appearing before the camera.

Mr. Kennedy, who'd been in an assisted living facility and had suffered from heart trouble and lung cancer, passed away on the morning of Sunday, February 28th. He was ninety-one.

Departure From Columbia 409

Two years ago I did something a little different in that I paid tribute to all the performers we lost the prior year who had been featured in my beloved 1970s disaster movies. I didn't do it last year (even though we lost Miss Karen Black in 2013!), but this year I couldn't help noticing that in 2014 three participants from 1974's Airport 1975 flew away to that great beyond in the sky. So I'm belatedly giving them a little send off.

First up, in alphabetical order, is funnyman Sid Caesar. Though he got his start in the movies in the mid-1940s, it was really television that put him on the map. His legendary spoofs and skits on Your Show of Shows (1950-1954) along with many other variety show performances assured him a spot in TV history.



As you can see below, he was a rather nice looking guy in his youth.

He, however, got the most mileage out of screwing up his face into zany expressions for comedic effect.

Never afraid of being (in fact, eager to become) a buffoon for the cameras, he worked like a dog on the weekly, LIVE ninety-minute show.

Shown with him here is his partner in crime from Your Show of Shows, Imogene Coca, who some of you may recall as the crotchety Aunt Edna in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983.) (In real life, Caesar had one of showbiz's most successful marriages, lasting nearly sixty-seven years and ending only with her death in 2010.)

Caesar was paired closely in Airport 1975 with Miss Myrna Loy. He played an eager-beaver bit actor who was proud that a movie he'd recently appeared in was being shown on the flight.

She played a lady who enjoyed having a beverage or two, specifically a boilermaker (a combination of beer and whisky!)

Caesar's other memorable films included It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Silent Movie (1976) and Grease (1978), to name a few. He was ninety-one when he died of natural causes on February 12th, 2014.

Next up is Ed Nelson. Nelson started out with bit roles in low-budget, mid-1950s movies, many by director Roger Corman. Among the prestigious titles he toiled in are Swamp Women (1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), Teenage Cave Man (1958) and The Brain Eaters (1958.)

He proceeded to steady work in television, appearing on countless episodes of various popular dramas, adventures, crime shows and westerns.

In 1964, he landed the principal male role on the prime time soap opera Peyton Place (on which he appeared until 1969.) He's seen here with costars Mia Farrow and Dorothy Malone.

The goings on of the small, yet elegant, town of Peyton Place gripped viewers as the series ran twice a week (and, for a time, three times per week!)

The cast changed quite a bit over the course of the show, but Nelson was on for the entire run (along with Barbara Parkins and - except for a period of illness - Malone.)

Nelson's role in Airport 1975 is small (and his face is obscured during much of it due to the heavy fur around his hood, his helmet and the goggles he wears.)

He plays the Air Force major who attempts to dangle from a cable attached to a high-speed helicopter and insert himself into the cockpit of the disabled airplane (which has a gaping hole on one side caused by a mid-air collision.)

Nelson continued to be a fixture on television through the '70s, '80s and '90s. Like Caesar, he had a very successful marriage (and six children), the sixty-three-year union only coming to an end upon his death of heart failure on August 9th at the age of eighty-five.

Lastly, we come to Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Zimbalist first began acting on the stage. Then, after an earlier abortive attempt in the movies (partly halted due to his wife's terminal illness from cancer), he began working in them with more frequency in the late-1950s.

Among his movies were Too Much, Too Soon (1958) with Dorothy Malone, The Crowded Sky (1960), in which he flew a small jet into Dana Andrews' passenger liner - the exact opposite of what happens in Airport 1975, and By Love Possessed (1961) opposite Lana Turner.

He also played Jane Fonda's love interest in the hooty 1962 film The Chapman Report.

However, TV was his primary bread and butter. He starred on the highly successful detective series 77 Sunset Strip from 1958-1964.

Then he proceeded to the even more successful and long-running series The F.B.I. (1965-1974), as seen here with hunky William Reynolds.

In 1967, he played Audrey Hepburn's husband in the thriller Wait Until Dark.

His role in Airport 1975 was that of the stalwart pilot whose facial expression reflects the oncoming small plane, piloted by Dana Andrews, that is headed right for them.

As a result, he is badly injured, blinded, yet insists he be kept conscious in order to help provide possibly helpful information to the stewardess who's been left to fly the aircraft. Zimbalist's remarriage was one that lasted fifty-one years and yielded his third child, daughter Stephanie, who became a successful actress in her own right (notably with Remington Steele, 1982-1987.) When he died of natural causes on May 2nd, he was ninety-five years of age.

These three gentlemen enjoyed longevity in career, marriage and life and in the wacky, warped universe that is Poseidon's Underworld, they are immortal because they were hired to work on a sometimes tacky, often silly, sequel to a Hollywood blockbuster. But that is life in the Underworld. We worship what we want, no matter what the surface dwellers might think! We thank them for being part of our universe.