Given her lawlessness it would be difficult not to question her stories about visiting her grandchildren. My question does the movie leave it up the individual to believe what they want to believe or is that the actual reason for her actions?
shareI think you can take her reasons for going to New York -- to visit her daughter and grandchildren -- at face value. She just lied about everything she had to do to get there.
What I don't get is why her daughter didn't either know about this, or step in to stop it. If Mrs. Quonsett didn't have enough money for the air fare wouldn't her daughter know this? Didn't she wonder how she could afford to fly east all the time? And since Mrs. Q. never took any luggage with her what did she do for clothes, toiletries, etc., wherever she landed? Didn't her daughter figure something was wrong there either?
When you think about it this is a very weak plot point.
Mrs. Quonsett is my "most favorite" character in the movie: years ago, when they showed it on major network channels and, as a pre-teen, I was bored with most of the story, Helen Hayes always made me laugh; in fact, one of my favorite phrases has always been: "My husband was a teacher of geometry, and he always said to examine every angle." I always stopped watching soon after that because I didn't think she'd have much more to do.
Today, for the very first time, I watched the entire movie, and found myself enjoying a great deal of it. And Helen Hayes has some wonderful moments - she's still my favorite character, though I got such an unexpected laugh out of the priest crossing himself that the cat jumped off the couch. I think, likely, except for her actual stowing away, she's pretty honest - she has no reason not to be, and, like a good con woman, she would be wise to keep her traceable statements as simple and truthful as possible!
She was pretty open about how she managed to board an airliner. But she was still pretty selfish and stubborn. When she ditched the kid ordered to mind her (by pretending to grow weak and needing to lie down), she obviously didn't give a damn that she might be endangering his job and at the very least get him in a lot of trouble and hurt his standing with his bosses. Her obsessive trickery was hardly a "victimless crime".
Also, when the pilot (Dean Martin) talks to her in the cockpit, she tells him her plan was to go to Rome because she figured they'd try to get rid of her as quickly as possible and just put her on a plane for New York. But how would the airline know she was a stowaway unless she turned herself in? And if she did, they would surely take steps either to prosecute her or at least alert all the airlines to her scheming. Either way, her stowaway days would be over. Also, there's no guarantee they'd fly her back: she got there by her own devices, let her figure out how to get home by herself. It's a stupid scheme, and a plot point full of holes.
I can't believe you never watched this movie beyond her "You must consider every angle" line (which I find more cutesy than funny). You really didn't think she'd figure in the rest of the movie? After all, she won an Oscar for this role...although Maureen Stapleton, who was also nominated, was much better. Anyway, you certainly missed the best parts until you saw it today.
By the way, Hayes was not the original choice for the role. Jean Arthur wanted it and was initially promised it by producer Ross Hunter, but when Hayes (who also wanted it) learned she was invited to a party at which Hunter would also be present, she dressed as she thought Mrs. Quonsett would, and an impressed Hunter gave her the part instead. It would have been interesting to have seen Arthur in the role, since her last movie had been Shane back in 1953, and in that film her husband was played by Van Heflin -- who played the bomber D.O. Guerrero, seated next to Mrs. Quonsett, in Airport. Jean Arthur never made another film, and Airport was Van Heflin's last movie.
Well, figure that I was under 12 in those days, watching on a small black and white screen (I'm old...!), and not interested in disaster, crime or similar stories in those days (now I am, depending on the script, but at least now when I start a movie, I almost always watch it all the way through).
Mrs. Quonsett didn't have a passport, so she'd be caught at customs no matter what, and she would have figured that. They would have had to do something with her, as they couldn't let her leave the airport without a passport. My guess is she would have donned the role of a senile little biddy so they wouldn't arrest her, but have her escorted to NY, probably calling her daughter first to meet her in NY.
As for her ruse with the poor young kid put in charge of her, I think she took his measure and the measure of his supervisors and figured they all knew he wasn't the brightest tool in the drawer, and that if he hadn't lost his job by now, he wouldn't this time either ... Miss Livingstone was hard nut who confiscated tools of the trade, but that nice, athletic Mr. Bakersfield would know how easily the poor boy had been taken in, so all would be well in the end.
Interesting about Jean Arthur, one of my favorite actresses. Yes, it would have been nice to see her with Heflin once again, but such was not to be. I've read she was very shy and grew less inclined to act as she got older. Here's a bit from the "Foreign Affair" IMDB trivia section that always stuck in my head:
Director Billy Wilder said famously of his difficulties with Marlene Dietrich and Jean Arthur in the film. "I have one dame who's afraid to look at herself in a mirror and another who won't stop looking!"share
Well, I think I'm a little older than you, but I understand about not seeing some movies all the way through until many years later. Still, since you liked that "angle" line, I thought you might have stuck with it to see what else she did!
But I disagree about the kid put in charge of her. Of course, as it turned out, he got yelled at and called an idiot but did keep his job. But Mrs. Q. had no way of knowing that would be all that would happen. She was thinking only of herself. (Also, since he worked for Trans-Global and not the airport, Mel Bakersfeld couldn't have helped him -- he wasn't his employee.) I hadn't thought about her not having a passport (actually, did anyone ever say she didn't have one?), but if that were the case why fly all the way to Rome with all the risks that entails -- not to mention all the time flying back and forth across the Atlantic, without a change of clothes, just on the chance she'd be picked up by her daughter? This whole business becomes less and less credible every time I see the movie.
And I still ask, where is her daughter in all this?
I know that quote from Billy Wilder regarding Jean Arthur. I've never really been a particular fan of hers, though I appreciate her talent. She was a bit weird I think. On the day her contract with Columbia ended in 1943, she reportedly ran through the studio lot shouting, "I'm free! I'm free!" After that she made only two movies, A Foreign Affair and Shane.
Curious that the role of Mrs. Quonsett went to another actress who also rarely appeared in films. In fact at the time of Airport, Hayes had not been in a film since 1959's Third Man on the Mountain, and that was only a brief unbilled cameo done as a favor to her son, the film's co-star, James MacArthur. Her last real movie role had been in Anastasia in 1956, one of only two films Hayes starred in in the 1950s (the other being My Son John in 1952), and she'd appeared in only one film in the 40s, another cameo (as herself) in Stage Door Canteen in 1943. Hayes's only sustained period of movie-making was in the early 1930s...yet she still won the only two Oscars she was ever nominated for -- this film, and The Sin of Madelon Claudet in 1932.
The "you must consider every angle" line incidentally was in the book. Hailey did establish though that Mrs. Quonsett was prone to telling a lot of tall-tales about her husband to others. All the gimmicks she describes about sneaking aboard are also lifted verbatim from the book (about having lost a boarding pass and may I please have another; carrying a marker etc. She also describes how she'll sneak aboard a flight that has stopped over by saying to the rep she's going back on but left her boarding pass in her seat).
Jean Arthur never did another film after "Shane" but she did appear on one episode of "Gunsmoke" in 1965 which then led to her failed sitcom the following season. The "Gunsmoke" is now on DVD so it is possible to see her on film post-Shane (her sitcom will never see the light of day again most likely).
I suppose one day I should read the book. I read Hailey's Hotel so know how that differed from the movie, which I like better than Airport.
Jean Arthur also taught drama at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, but by the time I went to grad school at the University of Missouri at Columbia she had, like the Golden Argosy, departed. (Jane Froman lived in the town, however, speaking of plane crashes.) I guess Jean just couldn't bring herself to stay long at anywhere called Columbia.
Here is a clip of "The Jean Arthur Show" from the 1966 CBS Fall Preview show. In a way you can sort of get a glimmer of how she might have approached the Mrs. Quonsett role in this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA21Jxtubuo
I occasionally saw the show back in '66, but that clip reminds me why it was canceled when they got to page 4.
Jean Arthur always looked several years younger than her actual age. This is one reason why, throughout her career, she was able to get away with claiming she was born in 1905 when in fact she was born in 1901. (Most of her leading men in the 30s and 40s were several years younger than her.) That also meant she was only one year younger than Helen Hayes, but Hayes always looked older, and physically she fit the character of Mrs. Q. much better than Arthur would have. Also Jean Arthur was always much more stylish than Helen Hayes, and that would also have worked against making the character as convincing.
After her TV show was cancelled, Jean did make an aborted attempt at a Broadway play. William Goldman's book "The Season" on Broadway in the 67-68 season has a whole chapter on it. It was called, I kid you not, "The Freaking Of Stephanie Blake" and basically would have had her in a role showing her bonding with the whole counter-culture movement. There were a *lot* of difficulties behind the scenes and she ended up withdrawing after doing only a couple previews, whereupon the whole show then folded before its official opening.
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Mrs. Quonsett is a lying old thief and i wanted her to die. i hated her
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