“Surely you can’t be serious.”
“I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
“You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.”
“A hospital? What is it?”
“It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.”
40 Years Passed Since This Classic Movie Was Released
You likely already know to which movie this article refers based on the aforementioned quotes: Airplane! was released to theaters on Wednesday, July 2, 1980 — and no one at that time definitively knew that one day, this quirky movie filled with puns and slathered with copious amounts of quick-witted fast-paced slapstick humor would become a classic in every sense of the word.
Although obvious that Airplane! was a spoof of the spate of airline disaster movies which had been released over the years prior to 1980, what many people apparently did not know at the time of its release was that it was actually a parody of the 1957 dramatic film Zero Hour!, which starred Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden.
This video gives a comparison of the scenes from both Zero Hour! and Airplane!
One of the elements which caused what is now considered to be one of the funniest movies of all time — which was originally called The Late Show and then Flying High! — to be so successful was its cast. Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, and Robert Stack were all known as serious veteran actors prior to being cast in a film of purely comedy; and their deadpan seriousness ironically enriched the movie with a depth that many previous comedies had not achieved; while two unknown actors at the time — Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty — were cast in the lead roles…
…and the trio of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker wrote the script for the movie after repeatedly watching Zero Hour! — not knowing at that time that it would forever change their lives.
Summary
The success of Airplane! opened the doors to other roles for the actors who were cast in the movie — but arguably none more so that the career of Leslie Nielsen, who perfected the genre of a serious actor doing comedy.
The 1982 television series Police Squad! — in color, mind you — was too far ahead of its time to be successful when it was cancelled after only six episodes were broadcast on network television; but it spawned the series of three The Naked Gun films a few years later. I consider the first of those three movies — The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! — to be one of my favorite comedies of all time; and that likely would not have happened had it not been for Airplane!
I believe that the following paragraph from this article — which was written by for Esquire and delves more into the history of the movie — sums it up nicely:
Forty years later, Airplane! now resides in some very classy company on the Library of Congress Film Registry. Something that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone who can quote large stretches of the film’s indelible dialogue. It also manages to hold up amazingly well — certainly a lot better than most comedies from the Carter and Reagan era. The reason for that longevity may be because, aside from still being ridiculously funny, it’s the rare Hollywood comedy that doesn’t rely on quickly-dated pop culture references for its humor. It’s both of its time and of no time. More than anything, it’s a satire of a certain style of acting — a wooden earnestness that will always come with a bullseye pinned on its back. After all, as long as there are actors—whether they’re A-list stars or bit players—who take themselves too seriously, puncturing and deflating them will never go out of style. Like Airplane! itself, it’s timeless.
Thank you for the laughs, Airplane!
Photographic illustration ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
