Columbia Crew Takes To The Air
Precode In Flight With Air Hostess (1933)
Desire to know what became of the guy from The
Crowd can be satisfied here. James Murray was director King Vidor's discovery
who came to sorry ends, according to KV's memoir which positioned Murray as cautionary fable of what too much Hollywood could do to a
man. Otherwise, Air Hostess is Columbia
pudding not too thick, or enriching, theirs mixed by gallon to fill lower bills
or lead for smallest houses. There are rickety planes lined up and aloft. You
wonder how any pilots survived for long, never mind if there were wars in
progress. Air Hostess starts with sacrifice and promise made after dogfighting,
flashes forward to '33 for what's posited as pay-off. Murray has bombast but little flair. I see
Doug Jr. or the like playing it better at Warners. Evelyn Knapp stayed in B's,
even a serial (as updated Pauline, as in Perils Of ...). She's fresh and
appealing, but judging by career stall, not enough so? There's a train/plane
rescue for the finish with lamentable miniatures, but such was fun of
programmers like Air Hostess done on hope that crowds would forgive. The modest
pic collected $172K in domestic rentals. It turns up on TCM in a beautiful Columbia transfer.
Someone there needs a medal for inventory maintenance.
After watching James Murray's wonderfully naturalistic performance in The Crowd, it's sad and a little disconcerting to occasionally spot him in small, often unbilled, parts in early talkies.
ReplyDeleteHe can be seen in the early scenes of Heroes for Sale as a war vet returning home. I was also surprised to spot him, unbilled again, as the lout that rapes Stanwyck in a boxcar in Baby Face.
It's a shame that Vidor never was able to pull together that project that he wanted to make based on Murray - The Actor, I believe it was called.
Of course, you also know that Murray is representative of countless others that couldn't handle success in the Hollywood fishbowl.
His story, however, is a particularly tragic one, one that would haunt King Vidor.