Airport or Towering Inferno?
I liked both, but definitely TO better.
It should be against the law to use 'LOL'; unless you really did LOL!
The Towering Inferno but I do like Airport
shareSame. Like Airport a lot but prefer TTI.
Kind of an apples-or-oranges comparison though. I'd compare Airport to other air disaster movies. In that context, Airport is best, with The High and the Mighty second. The three Airport sequels, however, are absolutely awful, with only '77 remotely tolerable (if ridiculous).
Airport 77 is more tolerable if you see the TV cut. The theatrical cut is incomprehensible from my standpoint. '75 I caught a year ago and it at least held up better than I'd remembered in comparison to the other Universal disaster film Heston had just finished before starting this one "Earthquake".
shareActually I think the TV cut of '77 is worse -- like the TV cuts of Earthquake and Two-Minute Warning. This was some goofy idea of Universal's in the 70s to pad out TV showings with new and extraneous footage. No, I'm a film purist -- no made-for-TV junk pointlessly complicating the proceedings.
You think 1975 is better than Earthquake? Not defending the latter, but the former, while it has its moments (namely the mid-air disaster itself), is just unconscionably awful, with the most egregious waste (and moronic use) of stars I've ever seen. Stupid from the word "Take off!" Okay, two words.
Not to mention that Airport 1975 is basically a ripoff of 1960's The Crowded Sky, right down to having the two planes piloted by the same two actors, albeit in the "reverse" aircraft. Give me the primitive silliness of TCS any day.
The TV cut of '77 is the one I'm used to. I was introduced to the film that way in its many NBC airings (about six) between 79 and 83 I think that when I first saw the theatrical cut it was like reading a book with missing chapters. The difference between '77 and the TV cuts of "Earthquake", "Two Minute Warning" and "Midway" is that all the footage comes from the original production shoot and were not shot a year later by another director etc. In the theatrical cut, George Kennedy doesn't even show up until after the crash and you'd have no idea why Kathleen Quinlan is all upset or why Darren McGavin suddenly has his arm in a sling (not to mention the fact that the theatrical cut also eliminates a nice scene at the end of Jimmy Stewart finding bartender Robert Hooks to tell him his pregnant wife gave birth to twins and is okay).
I don't disagree that Crowded Sky is better than '75 and they went for a purposeful injoke there. I just think its better than Earthquake which I revisited recently and is *really* bad from Marjoe Gortner's schizoid and pointless character, to the silliness of Lorne Greene as Ava Gardner's father, to the dislikability of Genevieve Bujold etc. and one of John Williams' most unmemorable scores and the cheesy blood on the camera moment when the elevator drops. '75 at least is more entertaining.
Yes, I can understand why, if you first saw the film in its padded TV form you'd think there was something missing from the actual movie (as indeed there would be). That said, I dislike this notion of unrelated footage being foisted into a film for TV showings.
However, there is a difference between TV broadcasts that include as you say footage actually shot for the movie but not used in the final print (outtakes) vs. filming additional stuff expressly for television. Some of the first broadcasts of The Towering Inferno also included such outtakes. Now, those I find interesting and as they were actually intended for the film I don't particularly object to them. They're the kind of thing that if included on a DVD today would be in the extras.
But the explicitly made-for-TV padding junk is just that: junk. Critics complained, correctly, that in the broadcast of Two-Minute Warning the added plot line (about a robbery if I recall; or was that Airport '77?) was so badly done and un-integrated into the actual movie that it was like watching two different films, with the rationale for the one plot thread totally divorced from the action in the real film. And since such scenes aren't filmed for theatrical release they even look like what they are: flat television inserts. Same with Earthquake: obvious, pointless inserts, though not as out-of-place as those in TMW.
As I said before, I'm not at all defending the high art that is Earthquake. Most of the characters are ridiculous and artificial -- and boring -- and while some of the scenes of crumbling downtown L.A. are cool overall the film has that by-the-numbers "product" look of most Universal films (and even TV shows and TV-movies) of that era. But I find this film, poor as it is, more entertaining than the intellectual assault that is Airport 1975 (aside from the cockpit crisis and midair transferral scenes). The rest of the film and its half-witted characters detract so much from the real drama at the film's core that that's almost like watching two separate films!
Though I have to say, I never understood why so many people get so worked up about Lorne Greene playing Ava Gardner's father Earthquake. Yes, it's ridiculous casting, but having someone just a few years older playing someone else's parent was hardly original to Earthquake. There are hundreds if not thousands of such instances littering Hollywood movies (and I'm not including films where the actor ages in the course of the story and winds up being the parent of a grown "offspring" now being played by an adult actor, as for instance in Giant). No one complained about Lee J. Cobb, at age 28 (yet!), playing the father of 21-year-old William Holden in Golden Boy, to cite just one of thousands such examples. Even Jessie Royce Landis playing Cary Grant's mother in North by Northwest, while remarked upon even at the time, was basically just looked at as an amusing curio, and testament to how good Cary looked (and until recently most people believed Landis's lie about having been born the same year as Cary, only ten months later, when in fact she was born eight years earlier -- still not an appropriate age). But for some reason the Greene-Gardner age gap, or lack thereof -- he was still seven years older than her -- has always been singled out for ridicule when there are hundreds of equally bad or worse examples. I've always assumed this was a reflection of the general opprobrium heaped upon the movie, but in this particular, given recurrent Hollywood practice, I think it is a bit unfair.
"Two Minute Warning" was the one that had the added plotline with new actors about an art heist which was ridiculous. Larry Peerce, the original director was so furious about that he had his name taken off the TV prints with that added material.
"Midway" had two additional subplots shot after the fact for TV airings, one of which depicted the earlier Battle of Coral Sea which actually wasn't bad IMO and gave some broader sweep to the story. What wasn't welcome was an added bit of soap opera with Heston having a girlfriend (Susan Sullivan). Ironically, the DVD and Blu-Ray of "Midway" did include as supplements the Heston-Sullivan footage but not the Coral Sea footage.
"Airport '77" thus benefits from the fact that all of the material is indeed from the original production and IMO the narrative is much more coherent.
When I revisited "Earthquake" a month ago I found that the most interesting parts of human drama were the scenes of the seismologists and the workers at the dam. If the main characters had been *those* people instead of these silly soap opera cut-outs, none of whom as I mentioned had any likability at all, the film would have been better. Amazingly, there *was* additional material cut from the film that clarified the characters better which was *not* restored for TV airings, such as the fact that Heston's anger with Gardner and the reason why he picks that day to cheat on her at last is because he discovers she got an abortion without her telling him (there was a cut scene where Lloyd Nolan as the doctor shows up at his house to attend to her fake pill overdose and lets slip the fact that she'd had an abortion a year earlier). There was also additional scenes showing us that Barry Sullivan and the seismologists were not killed in the quake. But the production's overall cheapness and the familiarity of the Universal backlot from TV shows of this era further kills the film's credibility whereas "Airport 1975" at least takes place away from the backlot and thus overcomes the run of the mill look comparatively speaking.
As for the absurdity of Gardner as Greene's daughter I think the chief problem is that Ava was looking too much her age at that point. She *seems* 52 and the effect is as silly as it was for a decade to believe that Lorne was Pernell Roberts' father on "Bonanza". One of the alternate names considered I am told was Jessica Walter who would have been perfect casting as far as bringing out the bitchy nasty side went. Gardner was being given too much deference to who she had been and it reached an even lower point in "Cassandra Crossing" where she looked even worse and the pairing of her with Martin Sheen as her boy toy was even more laughable.
Thanks for jogging my memory about Two-Minute Warning. I had heard but completely forgotten that Peerce demanded his name be removed for that TV print. I don't blame him.
Now of course the cut footage in Airport '77 restored for TV, having been originally filmed for the movie, would mesh with the rest of the film. This also happened with The Towering Inferno. At this remove I don't recall all of the outtakes inserted back for television (I think they may be extras on the DVD), but they included a prolonged sequence when Fred Astaire first enters the building and goes to see Jennifer Jones, who's still dealing with the little girl. (This is before the deaf mother comes to pick her up.) It establishes that they have a relationship early on but is otherwise pretty dull and poorly handled. There's also a longer confab between Holden, Newman and Wagner in Holden's office -- after Newman leaves, a cut sequence has Holden and Wagner continuing their discussion about plans for the party, and there's also a scene, completely cut from the theatrical release, of Wagner conferring with his p.r. people in his office, on the phone arranging for "the '29" to be shipped in from Phoenix that day. There are other bits dealing with the tech staff in the electrical room as well as a few additional snippets of O.J. doing his security thing, party shots, a little extra in the opening ceremony (Holden trying to convince Dunaway to keep Newman in town, the Mayor's welcoming speech), and the post-coital scene with Newman and Dunaway has a brief bit with Faye modeling the "vulgar underwear" Newman had bought her (which is about as vulgar as a Sears catalog). It's all kind of interesting, though there's nothing critical and you never get the idea that its absence from the finished film made any difference.
I remembered that business about Heston and his girlfriend in Midway and that's a good example of pointless padding as well as a necessarily unconnected plot element that just makes a so-so movie worse. Even the Coral Sea stuff seemed dragged in, as indeed it was. Even in its "pure" form I always found Midway a very disappointing, badly conceived and clumsily handled film -- just another shallow, soulless Universal "product".
I agree with you that the scenes in Earthquake concerning the technical people -- dam staff, seismologists and the like -- is far more engaging than the dopey soapy stuff. That's always the case, but filmmakers never seem to get this. Most people don't much care for the turgid "life-crisis" nonsense involving stupid characters these movies always insist on. But here again, this is the same problem that mars Airport 1975, made worse by the fact that most of the cast does nothing but sit in their seats saying and doing stupid things. At least in the original Airport the main cast gets to do things aside from sit in row 21. (Even in '77 they get to behave as something other than mannequins.)
But I never recall having heard of that extra Earthquake stuff. What strikes me most of all is the notion of Lloyd Nolan being Gardner's doctor and then amazingly turning up as the physician in charge of the makeshift street hospital post-quake. I mean, that's really stretching things. But the TV junk, particularly the let's-make-Marjoe-even-nuttier scenes, is even worse.
I still think that while making fun of the Greene-Gardner relationship is valid, this film is being somewhat unjustly singled out for a casting crime committed by lots of movies, and usually just as egregiously. The fact that Gardner looked haggard doesn't really make her supposed relationship with Greene's character any more or less acceptable, and Greene looked older than his 59 years anyway. (And of course in The Cassandra Crossing her appearance is irrelevant, since Sheen as you say is supposed to be a much younger boy toy.) I just wonder why Heston agreed to star with her after his unpleasant experience with her on 55 Days at Peking 11 years before.
Yes the extra footage for Towering Inferno is on the DVD supplements, though in more washed out quality and in TV aspect ratio I believe. I think the only item the footage overall clarified better was the nature of what Newman was leaving town to do (designing a whole rural community by the sea I think).
"Midway" I know has many weaknesses but I'll always have a soft spot for it because my first viewing (TV cut no less) on the CBS Late movie around 1979 is what got me to read "Incredible Victory" by Walter Lord and all other books on the battle. Midway is the only WW2 battle I ended up learning every inside-out detail of and the movie was the launching point for that, enabling me to connect easily with every other element of the story (it helped that "Incredible Victory" like a "A Night To Remember" was also a book easy to read for a nine year old!)
I think ultimately with "Earthquake", Mark Robson thought he was doing "Peyton Place" all over again and thinking that the point of the film was to show us some silly cross-section of humanity impacting all this. It was a silly approach. None of these characters are likable at all and I could have cared less about any of them (on top of that, he carries on Walter Matthau's cameo too far by having the camera linger on him during the quake negating the scene's impact for a cheap laugh).
Agree that "Airport 75" gives us a lot of silly stuff (and the Carol Burnett sketch spoofing this film by letting her do "Nora Desmond" again is priceless) but again, its more a case of which is more disgraceful.
Forgot to add that Heston wasn't keen about working with Gardner again because of "55 Days At Peking" but he had no final say at the matter and just accepted the studio's choice. His diary mentions his disgust over the fact that Universal was "high on her" and then in an editorial remark concedes, "This was a bit harsh of me but my memories of 55 Days At Peking were bitter ones."
shareYeah, Heston usually tried to be civil but his experiences with Ava were pretty bad...as were a lot of other actors' with her from about the late 50s on. She was just progressively drinking more and being more and more obnoxious, although she remained on good terms with a few people such as Gregory Peck (who took in her dog and her housekeeper after she died in 1990).
I remember reading a Newsweek article around 1974, about how major leading men of the 1950s were coping with changing Hollywood tastes. It said that Heston kept himself working by keeping his up-front price low ($250,000) plus a hefty percentage of the profits. This undoubtedly made him attractive to a studio like Universal that wanted its output to be as predictably production-line as possible, but unfortunately it wound up putting him rather indiscriminately in a lot of poor movies that may have been profitable but didn't provide much of a professional challenge or even a long-term career boost: Skyjacked, Earthquake, Airport 1975, Two-Minute Warning, Gray Lady Down et al. (Okay, Skyjacked came from MGM -- Chuck's break from Universal City!)
One of the most fascinating articles about Ava and her erratic behavior and drinking I read was in National Review after her death. Reid Buckley, younger brother of Bill and Jim had known her well in Spain throughout 1964 and his recollections of her in that period were compelling and sad (especially a story of her getting all excited for a meeting with Sinatra, and then there was a mixup in communication picking him up which led to an ugly shouting match over the phone between her and Sinatra and when it ended badly, she began drinking heavily again). There was obviously no ideological bonding there (he wrote of how she kidded him frequently about the 64 campaign and the pending LBJ landslide) but it was a social friendship that he recalled fondly and with sadness because he saw a good woman when she wasn't ruining herself with drinking.
Yeah, Heston was doing a lot of those films since he felt they gave him the funds needed to pursue personal projects like his disastrous "Antony And Cleopatra" movie. After "Gray Lady Down" though (which I think is a pretty good underrated film) his days as a film star getting the lead role in a big studio production were basically over.
Yes, but oddly Ava moved to London to protect her privacy, only acting when she needed money. Like most people she mellowed a bit as she passed 60 and ill health descended on her. She was only 67 when she died of pneumonia after years of bad health following a series of strokes. So if one cares to view it that way, she paid for her recklessness.
I actually like Gray Lady Down too, and think it's the best of the projects I mentioned, but as far as Universal was concerned it was just another "product". Heston made the disastrous film The Mountain Men, directed by his son, in 1980, and its failure caused him to leave movies for a full decade to concentrate on television. By the time he returned in 1990 he was nearing 70 and of course relegated to supporting parts.
A number of major actors of the 40s and 50s were largely absent from motion pictures in the 80s -- Heston, Peck, Kirk Douglas, Quinn, Brando -- and either did TV or were semi-retired. Too bad they left films during what would otherwise have been the last truly productive decade, given their ages, of their professional lives.
I did think it a little bit odd when Lorne Greene was playing Ava Gardner's father in "Earthquake." Possibly one reason is that I thought of Ava as being from the 40s and early 50s in terms of her prime career, while Greene I remembered only from the 1960s and "Bonanza."
But this was not the first time that someone poked fun at Lorne Greene's lack of much of an age separation to a child on a show. I seem to remember that in the Movie "Tin Men", one of the salesmen ridiculed Greene and Bonanza as a show "with a 50-year old father and three 47-year old sons."
For some reason I thought of Greene as prematurely grey and not that old and Ava Gardner as an actress, who although she was still beautiful, had not aged that well. In any event, I never thought it was so odd as to ridicule the pairing. The film "Earthquake" itself was entertaining, but nearly as much as TTI or Poseidon.
I think you make a very good point. We were all used to Greene from Bonanza and knew he wasn't old enough to be father to at least two of his "sons", Pernell Roberts and Dan Blocker. (He was old enough to be the father of Michael Landon, though not by much.) And because we didn't really see him until the late 50s, vs. Ava having been around since the early 40s, in our movie consciousness their ages seemed more obviously out of whack than they might have seemed for other impossible but (to us) plausible-looking parent-offspring castings.
shareOf course that was not Lorne's hair that was "prematurely grey". 😀
"Bonanza" was actually before my time and I was more used to Greene on "Battlestar Galactica" playing father to actors who plausibly could have been children! (Richard Hatch, Maren Jensen. Can't think of either as a sibling to Ava!)
Of course let's not forget that "Earthquake" also gave us the equal absurdity of Victoria Principal and Gabe Dell as brother-sister and there was about a 30 year age difference between them!
Ah, if only Leo Gorcey had still been alive. Now he would have been convincing casting as Vicki's bro. "I resemble that!"
Well, I'm definitely old enough to remember Bonanza from its inception (though I never watched it until around '62 or '63), but as to Lorne Greene, I still recall Mad magazine's riff on the program, called "Bananaz", in which part of the plot involved a gold-digger out to get "Ben Cartwheel"'s fortune. On the way to the "Pawderosa" aboard a stagecoach, she tells her partner in crime, "I'll never forget Ben Cartwheel at our high-school prom -- with that phony, spray-on gray hair" and some other stuff I have forgotten!
But it did show that even in the early 60s people were on to Lorne's hair color, straight from the can...or so it appeared!
Slightly back to the thread question: Earthquake premiered just a couple of months before The Towering Inferno, and a number of theaters across the country decided to feature both on a double bill advertised as "Shake 'n' Bake". Don't know who came up with the idea originally (I did hear at the time), but it caught on like wildfire and rocked the industry.
I feel the same way about the two films, Hobnob. Somehow I think of TTI as a pure disaster movie and possibly the best ever, while Airport was more of a drama, albeit an excellent one.
In his autobiography, Paul Picerni, who played the doctor in Airport, said that Burt Lancaster, the leading star of the film, helped Picerni get the role by calling the producer. Picerni said that in the first rehearsal of his part, after Jacqueline Bisset is severely injured in the explosion, Picerni attended her and the first thing he did was to open Jacqueline's blouse to feel her heart. Jacqueline (who was well endowed) asked Paul if he was a real doctor. The director, George Seaton, replied: "Yea! He got all his training at Warner Brothers." (lol)
Hi manage. Yeah, I never truly thought of Airport as a "disaster movie" in the sense that things like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and some others were. Possibly this is because the term wasn't used until those other films came out in later years. The Airport sequels, poor as they generally were, were more accurately disaster films in my opinion, as one commonly thinks of them. But I guess Airport does qualify as a disaster movie.
Great story about Paul Picerni. His sons and grandsons became stunt people in Hollywood. Three of them worked on Die Hard, for example. You can also hear his voice off-screen in a couple of early 50s WB films, such as Hitchcock's I Confess. After Montgomery Clift is acquitted of murder and walks out of the courthouse out to the street, you hear a disembodied voice in the courtroom call out "Take off that collar!" (Clift played a priest falsely accused of murder). A few moments later, out on the street, that same unseen voice shouts, "Preach us a sermon, Logan!" Paul Picerni, unmistakably.
George Seaton took over as director of Airport after the first director, Henry Hathaway, left the production. Knowing his reputation for coarseness and gruffness, I can imagine what Hathaway would have said about Picerni's roving hand!