The Bride Came C.O.D.

The Bride Came C.O.D. (William Keighley, 1941) Supposedly, the idea was that Cagney wanted to do something lighter than his typical tough-guy gangster act, brought in his brother to produce, hired the sharp twins-writing team of Julius and Philip Epstein and started casting about for the romantic lead to play opposite him. Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell, and Olivia de Havilland were all in the mix at some point. But, somehow, Bette Davis got the part. Evidently, she wanted a change of pace from her dramatic roles and she and Cagney got on famously making Jimmy the Gent seven years earlier, so...why not?

 

But, did anybody consider the trouble that might come from putting the two biggest rabble-rousers on the Warner lot starring together in the same movie? One or two of the studio brothers might have been asleep at the switch, but the film did get made with neither of the stars being "suspended" but up-staged by some of the wiliest character actors ever in supporting roles.

The story is alarmingly close to Capra's It Happened One Night: A socialite, Joan Winfield (Davis) is sand-bagged with a marriage proposal in front of a night-club audience by her bandleader boyfriend, Allan Brice (Jack Carson), who is prodded into making the announcement by gossip columnist (Stuart Erwin) under deadline. Under pressure, she agrees, but California having a 72 hour waiting period before they can get hitched creates a problem. It's decided—by the scandal-monger—that they can fly to Vegas to tie the knot sooner. When her father (the booming Eugene Pallette) finds out he's apoplectic; he doesn't want the wedding to go through at all!

That's where cash-strapped pilot Steve Collins (Cagney) makes a landing in this mess. He's about to have his plane repo'd, but makes a deal with "Pater" Lucius K. Winfield to make a unscheduled stop from Las Vegas to Amarillo, Texas (where the father will pick her up), but with Joan only and it's been negotiated for his standard freight rate—$10 a pound. When the wedding party shows up at the local air-strip, the bridegroom-to-be and the mouth-piece are coaxed off the plane by Collins' mechanic Pee Wee (George Tobias, remembered best as neighbor Mr. Kravitz on the "Bewitched" TV series) and the pilot takes off with the prospective bride much to her protest. Technically, it's kidnapping, even if it's for hire.

But, Joan is a fierce fighter and once she gets ahold of a parachute, she'd determined to jump out of the plane en route, foiled by Collins banking the plane and throwing her—repeatedly—back into the cabin. But, all that maneuvering causes the plane to stall, and they end up crashing in the desert, close to the ghost-town of Bonanza that had sprung up around the old Enterprise mine. Hilarity ensues. The comedy is broad, bordering on slapstick, what with prat-falls and Joan constantly falling into cactus plants ("Oh, there must be something magnetic to a cactus that attracts me right to it...or vice versa!"). And Davis plays it broadly, trying to eke out the last drop of humor from any given situation...while Cagney just reacts to what she's doing, with either exaggerated laughter or venom.

In Bonanza, things get more complicated, what with search-parties looking for the pair under the command of William Frawley, and the town's only existing citizen (Harry Davenport) a mass of eccentricities and a way of changing sides at the drop of a plot-point. Soon, Collins is in jail, Joan goes on a wild desert ride in a flivver, and both end up lost in that abandoned mine, all the while waiting for either the fiancee or the father or both to show up before anything can get resolved. Cagney's character remains a bit stalwart, but Davis' changes her mind every ten minutes of movie-time. Things are further confounded with the minutiae of state law, matrimonial provisions, and some dubious reverse psychology. If everything was under federal law things would be a lot simpler, but the plot wouldn't go anywhere. State laws are funnier and more suited for comedy.

The movie was popular when it came out, and, as something changes every few minutes, one can see why audiences found it entertaining. And while Davis is out of her element, she is amusing, and Cagney doesn't fall easy victim to caricature until his laughing scenes. The only one who really disliked the film, in fact, was Davis, who didn't like the script, hated the desert heat of Death Valley, and was no fan of cactus, as she evidently did fall into one while filming. It's a light-weight vehicle pushed by two powerful steam-engines, so it's a bit of a mismatch. But, seeing the two play off each other rather seamlessly is the film's greatest strengths.

Air Force

Air Force (Howard Hawks, 1943) The day starts out like any other for the crew of the "Mary-Ann" the B-17 "Flying Fortress" no. 05564 of the 48th bomber wing out of Hamilton Field, California: they are assigned to fly to Hickam Field in Hawaii. The date, December 6, 1941.

They're a motley crew: The pilot is Michael Aloysius Quincannon (John Ridgley), his co-pilot Bill Williams (Gig Young) who's sweet on the sister of bombadier Tom McMartin (Arthur Kennedy); Monk Hauser Jr. (Charles Drake) is the navigator and son of a pilot from the Lafeyette Escadrille; master sergeant Robbie White (Harry Carey Sr.) is the crew-chief, aided and abetted by his assistant Weinberg (George Tobias) a native New Yorker (as he's only too glad to tell you); "Minnesota" Peterson (Ward Wood) is the radio operator and the rookie on the flight is his assistant, Private Chester (Ray Montgomery), who is wide-eyed, wet behind the ears, and only too eager to be on the plane; in marked contrast to him is gunner Joe Winocki (John Garfield) who was washed out of flight school by his instructor Quincannon and has no love for the air force...or the mission...or his pilot.

Winocki is the bad apple in the barrel. the fly in the ointment, the wrench in the works. Hawks likes his groups to run like well-oiled machines, but there's no drama without a bit of sand in the gears. Winocki doesn't really fit in, or his attitude doesn't allow him to fit in. 

His bitterness informs his posture and every remark that comes out of his mouth. He grates. He's an outsider (self-imposed) that goes against the grain of the collective. He's not a professional, that important term in the world of Howard Hawks, and if he's going to fit in—become part of the crew—he'll have to change, and in a turn-around that would impress Sergeant York.

He even has a crack on his lips in the most dramatic part of the movie—when the crew gets in radio-range of Hawaii, they hear, instead of landing instructions from the tower...nothing. A turn of the frequency and they intercept Japanese radio transmissions backed by the sound of gunfire. "Who're you listening to...Orson Welles?" he snears, before White shuts him up.

No. They're listening to Pearl Harbor, dying.

Quincannon and the other pilots get through to Hickam, enough for them to warm them off to land somewhere else. The squadron splits up, and "The Mary-Ann" makes its way to Maui, but not before they make a pass over the Harbor at Oahu and gaze out their windows at the devastation. The shots of the carnage are overhead shots of burning models. Far more representative are the darkened faces of the crew, their faces only illuminated from the fires below as they look out in disbelief.

It's a bit surreal, almost "Twilight Zone-ish:" taking off near San Francisco, the U.S. was at peace, and seven hours across the Pacific later, they're landing in the middle of a war they weren't expecting and, not having any armaments on these flights, for which they're unprepared. And under the worst of conditions. The Maui area on which Quincannon makes his landing isn't an airfield, it's just bare ground and the landing is inelegant and damaging, impairing one of their landing gear. The crew gets out, and split up—determined not to be stuck there, one group sets about to fix the gear, while Williams and Hauser do a little scouting of the vicinity. What they find, unfortunately are Japanese snipers who follow them to the B-17 and start firing on it—there's just enough time to get back in the air and head back for Hickam.

The airfield is a jumble of destruction, but the crew get ample opportunity to get intel, visit McMartin's sister who was injured in the attack, and pick up some mail from the soldiers to get home, and a fighter pilot Lt. "Tex" Rader (James Brown), who was involved in that accident, winning him the suspicions of McMasters and Williams. Then they have to get to Wake Island. On the way, they listen to President Roosevelt declare war on Japan, determine that McMasters sister will pull through. But, the reception at Wake isn't warm, Wake knows that their time is limited before they're overrun; they want the "Mary-Ann" off the island and in the air to the Philippines.

Williams and Quincannon listening to the declaration of war.

They take mail from Wake and one piece of contraband—a dog named "Tripoli" which has a running gag that the mutt barks every time he hears the name "Moto." Of course, it's against regulations, but the crew warms to the dog, even rigging up an oxygen mask for it when they get to higher altitudes. They then finish their grueling odyssey of "7,000 consecutive miles" to land at Clark Field in Manila, where the news is grim, and the "Mary-Ann" becomes involved in aerial combat for the first time on their journey...and in the war.

The third act is mostly action, for the first time in the film. Overall, the emphasis is less on combat—in these early days of the war—but more on perseverance despite hardship, playing on the American self-image of "stick-to-itiveness" that allows them to last no matter how much punishment they take. In that way, Air Force is a companion piece to They Were Expendable, John Ford's tribute to the Navy during the darkest days of the Pacific war, where victory is uncertain, but survival is the nearest thing to victory that can be achieved. Certainly, it added to recruitment efforts with its gung-ho spirit and its dramatic manipulations to seek revenge.

Of course, you expect that in a war film—while the war is going on, and certainly from movies of that time period. The basis of Air Force has its roots in some reality—there really was a a squad of B-17's that flew out of San Francisco to the Philippines on December 6th only to find their first stop at Pearl Harbor destroyed. The rest of the movie is fanciful, and even extends to outright lies about "treacherous" Japanese citizens forming sniper squads and using vegetable trucks at Pearl Harbor to damage planes on the ground (the Japanese bombers had an easy enough time of that as the planes were all grouped together on the ground—take out one and you took out a lot of them). There weren't any fifth columnists in Hawaii, not one—only victims of the attack. But fear, rumor, and suspicion make better stories than truth. All of those elements led to the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II—but only on the West Coast extending out to Salt Lake City. Truth is usually the first casualty of a war.