#758) Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

The Plot: In the fictional South American port of Barranca there’s a small airway company run by the enigmatic Geoff Carter (Cary Grant). Operating out of a local bar/hotel, the airway carries mail through the dangerous Andes Mountains and is one missed delivery away from going out of business. One night, the American Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) arrives in Barranca when the banana boat she’s traveling on docks there for the night. Infatuated by Carter and his business, Bonnie opts to miss her boat and stay in Barranca. Things get complicated when Carter hires new pilot Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess), who may be keeping a few secrets about his past from his wife Judy (Rita Hayworth). There’s plenty of intrigue and flying sequences to go around in this drama from Howard Hawks.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls the film the “’quintessential’ Howard Hawks male melodrama”, praising the “sparkling dialogue” and the “dazzling air sequences”.

But Does It Really?: This is a minor minor classic. We’ve got plenty of Howard Hawks and Cary Grant on the list, and this one is barely relevant enough to consider NFR-worthy (Of Hawks’ 10 films on the Registry, this was the tenth to make the list). “Only Angels” is routinely hailed as one of Hawks’ best movies, and maybe I’m just partial to his screwball comedies, but this didn’t do anything for me. The performances are all great, as are the flying scenes, but overall I was thrown by the movie’s lowkey toxic masculinity and somewhat static presentation. In terms of the great movies of 1939, “Only Angels Have Wings” is second or third tier on that list and makes the NFR mainly for its reputation and the pedigree of its creatives.

Title Track: Howard Hawks’ original treatment was called “Plane from Barranca”, and the film went by the working title “Plane No. 4” during production. I’m glad they spiced up the title, because “Plane No. 4” is an unquestionably bland name for a movie. But hey, at least they didn’t just call it “Plane”. Who’d be dumb enough to do that?

Seriously, Oscars?: A hit upon release, “Only Angels Have Wings” received an Oscar nomination for its Visual Effects (that category’s first year), losing to the disaster film “The Rains Came”.

• Bonnie, upon meeting two English-speaking pilots in South America: “It sure sounds good to hear something that doesn’t sound like Pig-Latin.” Yikes.
• This is one of at least five NFR films to feature character actor Sig Ruman, Hollywood’s go-to for German and German-adjacent characters. Here Ruman plays “Dutchy”, the airways owner who looks a lot like a live-action Geppetto.
• Fun bit of trivia: One of the pilots in the film is played by Allyn Joslyn, who a few years later would play Mortimer Brewster in the Broadway production of “Arsenic and Old Lace”, a role played in the film version by…Cary Grant.
• It takes a while for Cary Grant to show up, but when he does he has a nice movie star entrance, wearing a ridiculously large straw planter hat. Cary is good as always in this, but I worry the character is too stoic for his own good. This is why I never liked Robert Mitchum: I can’t read him!
• Playing grounded pilot “Kid” Dabb is Thomas Mitchell, your MVP of 1939. In addition to “Only Angels Have Wings”, Mitchell’s 1939 filmography included performances in “Gone with the Wind”, “Stagecoach”, and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. And that’s just his 1939 movies that have made the NFR! As much as he deserved his Supporting Oscar for “Stagecoach”, I’m beginning to see how that win was also for his great work throughout the year. One question: Why does everyone keep calling him “Kid”? He’s 47!

• I’m enjoying the model work of the planes in the flight scenes. It’s very low budget by today’s standards, but it works. Unfortunately, the HD print I was watching occasionally reveals the strings holding the model plane up.
• One of the film’s more interesting choices is to have no underscore outside of the very beginning and very end. This must have been Dimitri Tiomkin’s easiest assignment. The lack of score certainly makes the silent moments stand out more, especially the eerie quiet surrounding Joe trying to land his plane in the fog. The one downside of no score: I watched “Only Angels” on an overcast Sunday afternoon and almost fell asleep. 

• This is an actual exchange between Carter and Kid once they learn that Bonnie’s missed boat won’t be making a stop in Santa Maria: 

• At last, a Richard Barthelmess performance on the NFR where he isn’t miscast due to being too old or not Asian (though funnily enough his characters in both this and “Tol’able David” are mail carriers). And yes, that’s a young Rita Hayworth in an early film performance as MacPherson’s wife Judy. She doesn’t have much to do here, but you can see how people would take notice of her after this film. Rita’s casting was at the insistence of Columbia head Harry Cohn, who was in the process of transforming the exotic bit player Rita Cansino into the more glamorous leading lady Rita Hayworth.

• Side note: Although Carter calls Judy by her name several times throughout the film, he never says “Judy, Judy, Judy” a la later Cary Grant impressions. That bit allegedly stemmed from comedian Larry Storch doing his Grant impression at a nightclub when he spotted Judy Garland walking in. Grant never said “Judy, Judy, Judy” in any of his films, though apparently he uttered it in an outtake of one of his later films as a practical joke (possibly “Charade“, but I couldn’t find anything definitive).
• The shot of Carter flying the plane straight down is unintentionally hilarious. It’s obviously a regular shot of Cary Grant with the camera turned sideways.
• This movie has a “Casablanca” vibe to it; a bunch of foreigners with mysterious pasts in an exotic location, waiting in a bar for a plane to show up. If only this movie had a Max Steiner score and a couple of standards to jazz it up a bit. As “Only Angels” moves into its third act, the film starts getting more like “Red Dust”, complete with rainstorm!
• Speaking of “Red Dust”, Cary Grant is a strong contender for the 1939 Clark Gable prize for best reaction to getting shot: No reaction whatsoever. He just stands there as everyone huddles around him to examine the injury. It’s keeping with the character’s stoicism, but come on!  

• [Spoilers] I had no idea what to expect from the film’s ending, but I didn’t have “bird strike with condors” on my Bingo card. I definitely didn’t see that coming. Sadly, neither did MacPherson or Kid.
• Somewhat ironically, this film takes a long time making a landing for its ending. We know Carter is going to take off in that plane and we know Bonnie is going to stay and wait for him, but there’s like 10 minutes of everyone saying goodbye to each other before any of that happens. Just go already!

• Rita Hayworth’s star continued to rise after the success of “Only Angels”, and within a few years was starring in several big musicals while simultaneously becoming a popular pin-up girl with our boys overseas. Hayworth spent the 1940s as a bonafide movie star, including in the NFR films “Gilda” and “The Lady from Shanghai”.

• The film’s repeated line “Calling Barranca, calling Barranca” is referenced in the 1940 Merrie Melodies cartoon, “Ceiling Hero” (its title a spoof on Hawks’ “Ceiling Zero”). Apparently, the phrase pops up in several other Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes shorts, but I could only confirm “Ceiling Hero”. Maybe “Ceiling Hero” played a lot in TV reruns?