"19" About "75"

I watched the hooty disaster classic Airport 1975 (released in 1974, natch!) the other day for what is probably the twentieth time in my life, if not more. I have to see my all-star '70s disaster flicks with some degree of regularity or else I suffer pangs of withdrawal. It amazes me that, after all these years (and this one I distinctly recall seeing in the theater as a pup of seven!) that I can still find new details with each viewing. I covered this movie (all about a jumbo jet that is struck by another plane during flight, leaving a sizable hole and a mostly empty cockpit behind) briefly once before, but I always like to keep my site dotted with posts from this genre and I thought it would be fun to share some of my most recent observations (or at least ones that I haven't droned on about yet!)

1.  How in God's name I could have seen this movie as much as I have and never once realized this first one is beyond me. Karen Black, as first stewardess Nancy Pryor, is wearing a wiglet (a fall) on her head! I always thought her hair was kind of fugly in the movie, even in 1974 (I never went in for those curled-under, bowl-style haircuts), but since you can see her hairline and part very clearly and her hair isn't particularly big or full, I never suspected that it was anything but her own tresses.

Now that I've seen the movie in 55” high-def, I can clearly spot the fall positioned just above her own hair, an inch or so back. It's a slightly lighter color than her own hair and you can no longer spot the part since the wig has been sewn together snugly at the center line. My big question is WHY?? Black's hair has no need at all to look coiffed after the first thirty minutes of the movie. She could have done a hundred things from a short 'do to a bun to a slicked-back look with a ponytail. Why was this straight, unspectacular mop attached to the crown of her head? I'd love for someone to tell me.

2.  I'm more than familiar with Charlton Heston's flab-revealing, lemon yellow turtleneck (often covered up for the most part by a more flattering, taupe cargo jacket), but in his initial scene in the movie, which takes place during the opening credits, he's dressed differently. He's wearing what was then “on trend,” a semi-loud, plaid dress suit made of rather drab, pukey colors.

Just when he turns his back to the camera to walk away and you wonder to yourself, “Who is responsible for this awful piece of clothing??”, the credit comes up “Costumes by Edith Head”!! Now, even though she and her work are not very popular in certain circles today, you won't find any Head bashing here. I typically love her smartly-tailored, clean-lined clothing in the movies, but even giants (and after half a century in the biz and eight Oscars, she does qualify as one!) occasionally trip up a bit.

3.  On the subject of costumes, surely Ms. Head had nothing to do with the air traffic controller at the Salt Lake City airfield choosing to wear a lavender dress shirt that is almost precisely the same color as the tinted sunshades that protect the employees from sun glare? Right?? I can't imagine that she bothered to have anything to do with that, but it's distractingly coincidental.

4.  Anyway, as the stewardesses and flight crew head towards the plane, you can spot various passengers behind them who will also be departing on Columbia 409. I appreciate the fact that someone thought to have the background extras in these scenes played in many cases by folks who will later be seen on the doomed aircraft. Among them are a young couple in love (presumably newlyweds) and a gaggle of middle-aged ladies (one of whom is played by the extraordinarily busy movie and TV actress Virginia Gregg.) Note, though, that the male half of the couple is in a different outfit!

5.  As the passengers embark, several Hare Krishna followers present their tickets without any sort of fanfare, humor or irony. It's likely that they were inserted into the mix in order to add some variety amongst the passengers and perhaps make it look as if the movie were relevant to a movement that was burgeoning at the time. Six years later in Airplane! (1980), a far more satiric approach would be taken as that movie presented members of a similar sect annoying patrons at the airport. (Within that span of time, the leader of the movement had died and a case of brainwashing had been filed which went all the way to The U.S. Supreme Court!) For whatever reason, the Krishnas are dead last to be evacuated from the plane, by the way!

6.  In the earlier post I did on this movie, I noted the presence of a lady seated near sickly Linda Blair who managed to carry on her own personal through-line during the course of the flight. She's clearly bothered by something, all stressed out and requesting drink after drink from the stewardess. She's completely a background character, but this chick is selling it for everything that it's worth!

It's interesting to see that she later turns up with a more substantial role in Airplane! (1980) as the passenger who becomes sick from food poisoning and exclaims, “I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.” Then Leslie Nielsen, with sleight of hand, begins extracting whole eggs from her mouth! This isn't a new observation here, but this time I at least have some photos to share regarding it.

7.  Also on board Columbia 409 is character actress Alice Nunn as a lady who's sneaked her little Yorkshire terrier onto the flight in a basket. He's on his way to breed with another dog named Fifi! She's shown animatedly chatting away to it as she files her nails. Once calamity strikes, she doesn't even pretend to hide the pooch anymore and clings to it in fear.

Nunn, a Broadway bit player who'd only been working in television since 1965, holds a special place in my heart because apart from this role, she also portrayed Joan Crawford's maid Helga in Mommie Dearest (1981) - “Helga... when you polish the floor you have to MOVE the tree.” - and more importantly gave the world the utterly unforgettable figure Large Marge in 1985's Pee Wee's Big Adventure! "On this very night... ten years ago... on this same stretch of road..." She also popped up in other hooty “classics” such as Lucille Ball's Mame (1974) and the Madonna debacle Who's That Girl? (1987) before passing away of a heart attack at only age sixty in 1988.

8.  Another passenger is played by character actor Ray Ballard. He's the one who gets all nervous and agitated when George Kennedy's young son proclaims that his dad practically runs the airline. Kennedy's wife Susan Clark clarifies that he is vice-president of operations and Ballard exclaims, “Some operations!” Ballard's character might have very good reason to be upset since, according to imdb.com, the actor also played a passenger in 1970's Airport! (It's rare for anyone not named George Kennedy to have been in more than one of the four films in the franchise.) That time, a mad bomber blew a hole in the back of the airplane, so by now he'd seen the worst of both worlds.

9.  Some stunt casting of a sort comes in the form of two pro football players seen on board the airplane. New England Patriots quarterback Jim Plunkett and San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Gene Washington are briefly chatted up by the male steward. Why these two men from different teams are flying together from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles is a mystery. And while they seem to be in first class, they are in the back of first class, smushed into a corner.

At first glance, it would seem that they filmed this insert over the course of a couple of hours or so, but Plunkett does show up again, peering around the corner as Helen Reddy sings and when Black makes a bullhorn announcement, and is even seen sliding down the inflatable emergency flumes near the end of the picture with Blair in his arms. Washington proceeded to do a little bit more acting while Plunkett mostly steered clear of that arena (in his primary scene, he looks directly into the camera. A no-no), but enjoyed greater success as a player (notably leading the Oakland Raiders into two Super Bowl wins.)

10.  While we're on the subject of football, Sid Caesar is seated near a slim, casual woman who is working intently on a needlepoint project. His overly demonstrative, faux-ingratiating character can't help himself from commenting on it. He tells her he hears that “Rosey Grier does that.” Grier was a mammoth, 6' 5” former tackle for the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams who turned to an acting career (he was in 1972's Skyjacked with Heston) and might seem an unlikely candidate for the art of needlepoint. However, he really was into both needlepoint and macrame and released a book called “Needlepoint for Men.” Groovy, baby!

Incidentally, the needlepoint woman Caesar accosts is an actress billed as Joyce Cunning who slept with the director in order to win her part. You see, she was actually Joyce Smight, director Jack Smight's wife, who acted on TV in the 1950s, then retired, only to come back in the '70s with this new moniker and take bit parts in her husband's films and TV-movies. Their son Alec Smight went on to a successful career as a TV editor, working on shows such as L.A. Law, Chicago Hope and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

11.  Most devotees of Airport 1975 recall the snippet that shows two elderly women snickering over one of the passages in a (fake?) book called “Epicurean Sexual Delights.” One of them is Susan French, a supporting player who remarkably went from this movie to an uncredited role in the 1975 disaster drama The Hindenburg. She's also known to many folks as the elderly version of Jane Seymour in Somewhere in Time (1980), who beckons Christopher Reeve to “Come back to me...”

12.  One of my favorite background passengers is the lady shown here who, immediately upon realizing that there has been a collision, proceeds to stand up, grip the seat in front of her and scream her head off non-stop, in a single, sustained bleat! (For years I was convinced this was gossip columnist Marilyn Beck, but it's not.) What's really funny is that action moves away from her to the cockpit, but then later she's shown again, still standing there in place screaming!

As the immediate terror subsides, she hunkers down into her seat and, hilariously, keeps her ears covered with the sides of a purple blanket until practically the end of the movie. Many others barely register any demonstration of being cold after the initial collision as the plane careens across the Rocky Mountains (though Gloria Swanson does break out a fur coat), but this lady acts like she's sitting in Doctor Zhivago's ice-encrusted holiday bungalow.

It gets better, though. Now I want every single one of you people who is familiar with Hollywood movie-making, billing, star-power and the like to really think about this... Airport 1975 featured a downright plethora of stars.  Some big, some small, but nevertheless a name actor in practically every part.  But for the belated release of this movie in Turkey (Dubbed "Airport 2" or "Airport 80," depending on your language and released there in 1980), this dress extra, an unbilled bit actress won a showcasing spot directly in the center of the poster, her head generally the same size as the six stars shown below!!!  Talk about a score!  Take my advice folks, if you are ever an extra in a movie, do NOT phone it in.  Stardom awaits you in a foreign country!

13.  Back to Swanson, who pontificates on the benefits of health food while being referred to repeatedly by everyone, to her face and elsewhere, as looking amazing; she is seated in first class, but brings her own tea to the airplane, apparently not even trusting that Columbia airlines would have the type of leaves that could meet her stringent approval. Her assistant Linda Harrison (billed here as Augusta Summerland in an unsuccessful attempt to steer her career in a new direction) orders “a martini.” Is it really so that there was a time when one could order “a martini” and not have there be any other description? I assume she got a gin martini, served up with an olive? Now, there are vodka martinis, martinis on the rocks, martinis with flavored liquor and hundreds of ingredients and variations.

14.  Like Harrison, most of the stars on board (and there are plenty!) get only a few lines here and there in order to try to establish some sort of pat, cliched characterization. Some, like Susan Clark, Myrna Loy and Sid Caesar, are afforded a smidge more screen time, but most often, the actors are given scant dialogue to be certain. Linda Blair, then a major name thanks to The Exorcist just a year prior, has only a handful of lines. Martha Scott, an Oscar nominee for 1941's Our Town and a costar in The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), both of which had her playing Heston's mother by the way, is left to rot in a seat by herself once fellow nun Helen Reddy (who somehow landed sixth billing in her film debut over a host of other stars) goes to play the guitar and sing for ailing Blair.

15.  Nancy Malone, as Blair's fretful mother, is another one who gets short shrift in the dialogue department. She also has one of the movies very strangest moments. During the flight, the camera closes in on the hole of Blair's acoustic guitar and weirdly ominous music strums. Then Malone, who's seen reading quietly, removes her glasses and stares at Blair with grave concern and alarm even though nothing untoward, or even remarkable, is happening (except bizarre, disembodied guitar strumming on the soundtrack.)

It looks like something almost supernatural or extrasensory is about to happen, but, in fact, it's absolutely nothing. In one of many lunatic circumstances in the film, Blair is headed for Los Angeles for a kidney transplant, but when the accident diverts Columbia 409 to Salt Lake City, Utah, they miraculously "have a kidney waiting at the hospital" there, too, because, you know, organs, especially in 1974, were always just lying around ready to be transplanted regardless of tissue typing or any other such concerns! No line, no waiting!

16.  The big point of impact between Dana Andrews' private plane and Efrem Zimbalist Jr's jet has long been considered a miss thanks to some questionable rear-projection work. We never really see anything much beyond footage of a plane through the jet's windshield, followed by smoke, sparks and a big hole in the side with the co-pilot (who'd been standing up to investigate a noise) being yanked out.

Co-pilot Roy Thinnes probably wasn't even on the set the day they shot his stunt dummy being sucked out of the cockpit. This is also very poorly handled with a straight up and down figure suddenly soaring horizontally out. At a speed of almost 200 miles per hour, wouldn't he go more to the side of the plane? I'm no physicist, but even gum goes sideways out a car window going 45 (do not ask me how I know this.) Also, I could swear that an alternate take of this shot is featured in the trailer for the film (shown above left) and that it's a better one because the legs of the body look more realistic! (They seem to have more bend to them.) NOTE: Upon repeat viewing, I've discovered that the shot in the trailer is framed wider and goes on a tad longer (and may be different altogether.)

17.  During a rescue attempt, U.S. Naval major Ed Nelson tried to deposit himself into the cockpit of the partially disabled jetliner via an umbilical cord dangling from a helicopter. He clanks up against the plane as stewardess Black flounders around trying to guide him in. Once inside, he is supposed to release the tether line he is connected to by pulling on a silver handle, but as fate would have it, the handle gets caught on a gnarled piece of metal skin before he's inside.

Of course, what's really ridiculous about it is that the entire right side of the co-pilot's area has been ripped away by the collision with a small craft, but the remaining shard of aluminum skin happens to be not only in just the right location and just the right size to activate his toggle pull, but even juts up and back to create a perfect grabber that it would almost take precision in order to hit! (And, hysterically, he keeps bobbing up and down and around it. One can almost envision the riggers off to the side of the set desperately trying to ensure that Nelson somehow manages to make this connection which is akin to having a man with swollen, calloused hands undo the clasp on a woman's delicate necklace!)

18.  Much has been made over the years regarding the hilarity of (then seventy-five) Gloria Swanson's stunt double whizzing down the escape slide while trying to obscure her face. Her concentration on the cowl of her hood was so great that she neglected to shield the audience from a shot of her white panties. Unknowing viewers may have been duped into thinking that they saw up Miss Swanson's skirt, but I assure you it wasn't her.

However, seventy-one year-old Myrna Loy really did fly down the inflatable chute and, believe it or not, there is a brief flash of her drawers, too! She flashes her undies and a garter belt, revealing the fact that her hose are not "panty-hose." One would probably have to go all the way back to 1933's The Barbarian to see this much of Miss Loy! Kudos to her, though, for having the guts to jettison herself down this slide for the cameras.

19.  This is a Universal film and that studio had its had in quite a few of the disaster epics of the day, so it's common to see the same actors here and there in the various movies. For their own part, Heston and Kennedy ran long on the filming of Airport 1975 and had to sometimes hop from set to set as they were beginning Earthquake! (Shown at right.) They played close comrades in that one as well.

Kip Niven (the ex-Mr. Linda Lavin), who plays a rather snooty naval secretary here also popped up in Earthquake as the fledgling seismologist who can't seem to make anyone believe his theory that “the big one” is about to hit Los Angeles. Likewise, Dana Andrews' friends at the airport (both seen below) turn up in other disaster flicks as well. Bob Hastings had portrayed the New Years Eve emcee in 1972's The Poseidon Adventure (a 20th Century Fox movie) while Gene Dynarski would, like several aforementioned folks, proceed to Earthquake. He played a dam worker who gets caught in an elevator and drowns.

There we have 19 tidbits about Airport 1975. I probably could have even coughed up more, but does anyone besides me even give a care?! It didn't take long at all for this flick to be parodied (long before Airplane!)  Take this installment of The Carol Burnett Show.  This is part one.  If you enjoy it, part two is available to the side at the link!

As a P.S., I give you this hilarious publicity photo featuring Miss Gloria Swanson, who was returning to the screen after a twenty-two year absence and convinced the producers to allow her to play, not just a fictional actress of a certain age, but HERSELF! Always ready for her close-up, she posed inside the cockpit of a 747 as part of the hype. Can you imagine this movie if something had felled Karen Black and Glo had to take the wheel?? That would really have been something.

Grilling The Hindenburg

Did you honestly think I was out of 1970s disaster movies?? I’m getting dangerously close to the end of them. I guess I’ll eventually have to go back over each one and ruminate some more until I’ve discussed every background extra and every piece of Styrofoam rubble! For today, though, I give you one of the most unique (and, to be truthful, pretty dull) entries in the genre, The Hindenburg. Released in 1975, it failed to ignite the public's fascination to an extent that would help justify its $12 million budget.

In what was one of the mid-20th century's most startling (and baffling) events, the massive German dirigible The Hindenburg was landing in the U.S. after crossing the Atlantic and suddenly burst into flames, killing roughly a third of the people on board and one ground crewman. No one has ever definitively proven what went wrong that day and this film presents a case for sabotage. Based on a detailed book by Michael Mooney, it fabricates a fair amount of storyline, but does boast some very authentic casting and some really impressive attention to detail in the art direction.

In 1937, a time of much espionage, George C. Scott plays a German colonel sent along on the airship to investigate any potential misdeeds among the passengers and crew. Roy Thinnes is a Gestapo agent, also on board, whose methods of investigation differ greatly from Scott's. The men clash at times and Scott even grabs Thinnes by the throat at one point.

A large spectrum of passengers includes: Anne Bancroft as a despondent, pot-smoking countess en route to join her deaf daughter in America, Gig Young as a nervous (and visibly drunk) advertising executive, Robert Clary as an excruciating Jewish entertainer, Rene Auberjonois and Burgess Meredith as untrustworthy gamblers, Peter Donat and Joanna Moore as a decadent Broadway writing couple and Alan Oppenheimer and Katherine Helmond who, with their three children, are returning to America after a visit to Germany.
Among the crew, William Atherton plays a shifty-acting rigger, Richard Dysart is the designer of the ship and Charles Durning is the captain. Scott entertains a sort of German Hercule Poirot stance, sizing up the people on board as the floating vessel billows its way towards its destination until, finally, he discovers the dastardly plans to blow the whole thing to smithereens. At one point Scott grabs Atherton around the neck as well! (Had the Countess been played by Ava Gardner, he no doubt would have half-strangled her, too, as he tended to do during their stormy romance during the filming of The Bible: In the Beginning…!!)

That the ship eventually explodes should come as no surprise to anyone unless he was born under a rock. We really will probably never know for certain what caused the baffling event. People have been debating it for more than seventy years.

Wise, a fine editor (of no less than Citizen Kane!) prior to becoming a highly accomplished director, was in a stage here of filming everything with a numb-inducing solemnity (see also the dire Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which began and probably would have ended the franchise were it not for the more energetic and colorful sequel a few years after! This is an ironic prelude to that film, which also employed many slow shots, paired with lush music, of a giant vessel either hanging stationary or careening around.)

The title vehicle is gorgeous to behold and is shown against varying beautiful landscapes, sunsets, clouds, etc... while some lovely, at times, majestic music by David Shire is heard. Virtually no detail went unchecked in recreating its look, inside and out. It is practically the whole show here since the human element gets short shrift. The scale model work and effects photography are exemplary for 1975 and the 25-foot long “miniature” that was used now hangs in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

The over-sized cast, with a couple of exceptions, is barely able to make the slightest impact, if at all, as the story covers not only the airship, but plenty of on the ground activities as well. Note how the poster (in the then-popular box format, featuring all the stars and using the same labeling method as The Towering Inferno – “The Captain,” “The Countess,” etc…) has some complete nobody in one of the squares! “The Smuggler.” WHO??

Scott, (who really needed his shiny, blotchy, bent nose powdered in his restaurant scene!) brings some much-needed weight to the film with his thoughtful, shaded portrayal. Atherton does a decent job until his preposterous final moment involving a dog, something that didn’t occur in real life. He also has a hair-raising repair scene on the exterior of the zeppelin. Thinnes comes up with a nice amount of smarmy menace in his character.
Bancroft demonstrates why she was the Mommie Dearest producers' first choice before dropping out, haughtily mouthing off in her period clothes and camping it up a tad bit much. She wears a huge, thick ponytail at one point that could not possibly be reworked into the scant bun she displays during the rest of the film. She does, at least, manage to hold the viewer's attention, which is more than can be said for some of the less colorful personalities present. Despite some big names, the cast seems to get lost in a pallid sea of banality. I’ve seen this film many times and still am always surprised to see people in it who I had forgotten because they are so vaguely drawn and colorless. Those who only know Helmond from Soap and Who’s the Boss? will be hard-pressed to even recognize her here.
Clary, who in real life was imprisoned by the Nazis, is nevertheless an acquired taste on screen. His brand of mugging and performing is not something that will thrill everyone. His piano-playing cohort Donat is another actor whose appeal has always escaped me. While he isn’t terrible in the film, someone with a bit more charisma and flair might have been able to put across his scenes a little better.

Moore is stuck with an unduly thick and fake looking blonde wig. The mother of Tatum O’Neal, she had previously been the wife of Ryan O’Neal and had a tumultuous life. Orphaned when a car crash (in which she was not involved) killed everyone in her family but her (her father dying within a year due to injuries), she later lost three fingers in a car accident of her own. Her marriage to O’Neal only lasted long enough for two children to have been conceived and born. Their bitter divorce helped aggravate a serious drug and alcohol problem and cost her custody of the kids. She died in ’93 from lung cancer.

If you come here regularly, you know that I pay tribute to both 1970s disaster movies and to handsome hunks. However, the two topics scarcely ever converge because for some odd reason, these films rarely have any hunks in them! Meandering through this movie in a subordinate role is the closest thing I could find to a hunk, Colby Chester. Probably best known for playing Jill Abbott’s divorce lawyer on The Young and the Restless back when crazy Brenda Dickson had the role, he is cute even now as a salt ‘n pepper daddy type, but never really got very far in movies. He did land more than a few TV guest roles, however. Love that name, too!

Another familiar face in the cast (who isn’t even listed on imdb.com as being in it!) is that of Susan French. French began as a theatre actress before moving to TV in the mid-60s and then to supporting film roles. She’s probably best known as the old version of Jane Seymour’s character in Somewhere in Time (“Come back to me…”) She has a line of dialogue or two, playing a wealthy, haughty passenger on the Hindenburg and is shown many times. Ironically, she was also a passenger on Karen Black’s damaged 747 in Airport 1975! (And Thinnes was the co-pilot in that one, too.)

Of course, the most infamous person in the cast is Young, who is clearly intoxicated even when he isn’t meant to be. He’d been fired from Blazing Saddles (in the Gene Wilder part!) due to his alcoholism and would soon be replaced by John Forsythe as the voice of Charlie on Charlie’s Angels for the same reason. A handsome young man in the 40s and 50s, career disappointments and personal demons would eventually lead him down a destructive and very sad path. Just three years after this movie, he would marry a German actress forty-four years his junior and in a matter of weeks shoot her, then himself, to death.

For the big finale, the film suddenly turns black and white. This is so that Wise could interpolate actual archival footage of the Hindenburg explosion. On the one hand, it adds to the film because it’s spectacular, if unsettling, to see, and it’s unlikely that any recreation at that time could top it. And the new footage matches reasonably well with the old, though it can certainly be discerned. On the other hand, it feels like a cop out. It’s as if Wise decided not to create his own effects and stage his own stunt sequences and instead just ran the old footage with a few new bits interspersed. The entire finale, while decidedly eye-popping, is very murky and disjointed. It’s hard to see what’s happening and to whom, at times. Our eyes, used to color, have to adjust to the already bland characters in monochrome.

During the course of the movie, the script spends too much time on the ground and with various military and government officials for the passengers to be fully fleshed out and worthy of any concern. Rarely has it mattered so little who gets out all right. In real life, the stories of survival were otherworldly and people suffered tremendously during the event. The stories of burning and broiling among those who died and, in some cases, lived are horrible. Here it’s all so slipshod and slapdash with the possible exception of Dysart’s emergence from the tangled inferno and Donat’s use of his hands. So negligible are the characters’ fates that, instead of being shown what happens to each of them, a narrator blurts out a few, but not all, of their statuses (i.e. - "Survived", "DEAD", "DEAD") after the fire as some grainy pictures pop up on screen.

It's a striking story and the film does succeed in presenting the elegant setting and also in setting up a reasonable amount of suspense. It fails in creating any particularly compelling people or a rewarding resolution for them. Maybe the writers didn’t want to offend any potential survivors or their offspring? It could also be that audiences had little concern for an airship bearing the swastika and containing a hefty amount of Nazis. It also has to be said that while it’s sort of fun to watch people like Stella Stevens, Richard Chamberlain and Michael Caine ward off flames and heights, when it’s a real situation, the guilty pleasure begins to have the accent on the guilt. James Cameron later proved, however, with his massive hit Titanic that audiences would go (and go!) to see a fact-based disaster film while being fully aware of the outcome as long as they cared about the people involved.

Then there’s Roger Ebert who pointed out that most disaster flicks are entertaining because the catastrophe occurs pretty early in the picture and we experience the survival along with the participants while, in this case, the final twenty minutes or so are spectacular, but are swift and scant payoff for having sat through a lot of tedium beforehand. Other (less polite) critics made reference to the massive gasbag, comparing the film as being about the same in long-windedness and pace!

Due to its inherently disastrous circumstances, this is always lumped into the disaster movie genre when, in actuality, it's really more of an all-star whodunit (or is about to do it) style of mystery, but without interesting enough characters (or, in some cases, actors) to pull it off. It's a bit of a hybrid, featuring none of the best attributes of either genre, but floating by on the merits of its attention to detail and its overall craftsmanship. The film was nominated for three Oscars in the categories of Set Decoration, Cinematography and Sound and was granted two special Oscars for achievement in Sound Effects and Visual Effects.

To demonstrate how really careful the casting was, I’m linking to a wonderful page that shows the real life passengers and crew paired with screenshots of the actors who either played them or played people inspired by them. The author, Dan, has done a terrific job with this page. The main concession to 1975 seems to be that most of the men, when it came to their hair, eschewed the 1930s center part for the more up to date side part. Otherwise, many of the actors suggest the people they are portraying rather well, or at least some thought was put into it.

http://www.airships.net/blog/the-hindenburg-1975-movie

Lastly, I came upon this shot of Mae West at one of the premieres with Robert Wise. For some reason it cracks me up that Mae would be present for a photo op at a movie like this. I have no reason to think it’s funny other than the fact that I just do! Maybe some of you will find joy in the moment of the picture as well… Perhaps she could have made a cameo appearance in the movie to liven up the joint. And as a final note on the film, I think it comes off better on a second viewing. I just don’t know how many people are going to want to subject themselves to two go-rounds of it!