AIRPLANE! The 1980 Comedy

[quote]Barbara Bilingually

Never heard of her

Julie Haggerty got a MUCH better role after Airplane

[quote] Barbara Bilingually

She spoke two languages - English and jive.

My last movie

I think Julie Hagerty had emotional/mental health problems.

[quote] Never heard of her

OMG!! That is SO funny!! HA! You took the typo and made a joke out of it. You are SO clever and dry and original!! OMG!! I cannot stop laughing.

I think of Airplane as good example of a movie most people like or love.

I love "Airplane!" but I put it on for my nieces and nephews about 5 years ago, when they were teenagers, and they just stared at it without laughing.

Much of AIRPLANE! is straight from ZERO HOUR!, word for word. For some reason though they didn't keep the best part of ZERO HOUR, where Jerry Paris makes a Margot Channing joke.

I remember when Stephen Stucker, who played the gay control room worker, appeared on Donahue and created quite a stir among the audience member when talking about AIDS. He died a few days after this was aired. I thought he was a riot.

Which do YOU think is funnier: “Airplane!” or “Blazing Saddles”?

I saw Julie Hagerty in "House of Blue Leaves"; she was wonderful as the deaf nun. I always thought that she and Robert Hays should have had much bigger careers after their success in "Airplane". Both very funny and very cute.

Would SJW‘s of today approve of Barbara Billingsley speaking Jive? Or would they riot in the streets?

Julie Hagerty gives Otto the automatic pilot a blow job.

Robert Hays married Cherie Currie of the Runaways and their son, Jake, is adorable.

R6 don't be defensive about being stupid. It's tiresome.

They couldn't make that movie nowadays.

Last time I saw it, they took out two funny jokes because they would be "problematic."

Stephen Stucker was hilarious and it's sad that we didn't get to see much of him before he died.

He died a couple DAYS after that? Wouldn’t he have looked a lot worse?

What year was that?

Phil Donahue was more intelligent and thoughtful than any of the so called woke ppl today.

[quote] Last time I saw it, they took out two funny jokes because they would be "problematic."

who took them out?

Here is the find a death page for Stephen Stucker

The Donahue appearance was in 1985 and he died in 1986.

He was already looking ill in a movie I can't remember the name of. I think the lesser Belushi was in it.

[quote]I love "Airplane!" but I put it on for my nieces and nephews about 5 years ago, when they were teenagers, and they just stared at it without laughing.

I feel like modern comedy is so try-hard; every joke and gag has to be telegraphed to the audience and amplified ("THIS IS COMEDY!!!!!") in case, god forbid, we miss the joke.

I thought Robert Hays was so sexy back then.

It's a shame Julie Hagerty didn't find success commensurate with her talent. Such a funny lady. But she does seem to work a lot.

Ah, it was TRADING PLACES where he looked so sick, which is kind of scary because he looked fine in AIRPLANE 2 the year before. AIDS was terrifying back then. Not that HIV is a real treat today.

Didn't Stucker deny AIDS existed? I can't get the Donahue to play but I thought he was in denial at that point.

AIRPLANE had a TV edit like a lot of movies did back then, so it's possible that some channels are still showing that edit with some jokes removed. Hallmark shows things like SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF with the "damns" edited out.

Julie Hagerty works on stage in NYC a ton.

I love how many classic stars are in this Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Ethel Merman. Although all of their respective careers were in decline, it's kind of amazing how many agreed to do something so lowbrow. I forgot who said it but one of them read the script was horrified, showed it to their kid who said "dad you have to do this."

I'm not surprised kids don't get into it, they've probably never seen the ridiculously dramatic type of film it is spoofing. Also at the time it was very daring and unique, but it spawned a whole genre of parody that kids today take for granted.

That Donahue audience is ruthless.

"There is no time to lie anymore," said Stephen Stucker, an actor, musician and comedian who has had AIDS for five years. "I'm way over the time limit at more than five years. As far as I'm concerned my life is an open book. I have no secrets. I'll get on TV and talk about it.

"But this five years have been so hard on my friends and family. My parents are beautiful, and my sister, too. They have been so supportive and they don't give up. But they suffer twice as much. They don't know what to do because they're afraid."

Stucker, who was diagnosed as having "every kind of cancer symptom in 1979" believes he actually had AIDS then, but no one knew what it was. "I had blood transfusions in San Francisco when I had an appendectomy. Then, when I was living in New York, it was a very fast life. The parties, the needles. I was the fool that did that. I was using a lot of drugs. I was sick a long time."

Then Stucker went to a doctor in New York for tests. He remembers the exact date his physician called to tell him he had Kaposi's sarcoma. "It was 10 after 4 on July 12, 1984, when the actual diagnosis of AIDS and Kaposi's came. Since then I've had Kaposi's and then Pneumocystis twice. I'm still here and I refuse to give up. You can't just roll over and quit."

Stucker, 36, has been treated by Dr. Nathan Green at Valley Presbyterian Hospital and also by Dr. Robert Brooks. He has had Interferon, as well as radiation. He also has changed his diet, stopped eating red meat, takes vitamins and quit smoking.

He goes to the AIDS seminars sponsored by Brooks, and to meetings with Hay. He meets regularly with Nassaney, Proctor, Andy Davi and Bob Rogosuch, all longtime AIDS patients.

Rogosuch, who holds the meetings each Sunday at his home, has had AIDS for three years; Davi contracted AIDS in September, 1983, two months after his late roommate, Bill Bader, died of AIDS that July.

"I can't do a normal job," said Stucker. "But I can play my music and entertain people. Sometimes I have to take a day and just rest. AIDS is a dangerous disease and you have to take care of yourself."

Stucker currently is writing a pilot for a TV show and writes songs for Brooks' AIDS Update seminars.

"People need to do whatever they can, chant, read the Psalms, meditate to reach that voice inside and get in touch with it. Then they'll know what to do. I do believe we have control over our lives. You take it one day at a time. You find that higher force that's in all of us, and you can find that force to help us heal ourselves.

"It's time that people knew that there are people who have had this as long as I have," Stucker added. "Yes, I have lost 40 friends now (to AIDS). There are three people a day dying in New York, San Francisco and L.A. But you've got look look at the positive side. It doesn't kill everybody. You've got to live. Life is for the living. Let's hear some good news.

I miss the classic Zucker comedies.

I'm saving the last episode of POLICE SQUAD for a rainy day because I can't bear to lose the last drop of this great comedic style.

The imitations and the Zuckers' 21st century work is all lame.

I still think of this every time I offer someone coffee.

I still laugh at Ted Striker saying (to people who are killing themselves to escape from him), "I could go on and on, but I'd probably start to bore you."

Also, "And don't call me Shirley."

R31 That was one of the two jokes I remember being cut for broadcast recently.

The other was "Do you watch gladiator movies?"

Julie Haggarty was also great in the Albert Brooks movie, Lost in America.

She was Corrinna, r12......

Compare....

r27 Peter Graves didn't like the script. His wife and daughter convinced him to take the part.

Too often overlooked is Elmer Bernstein's spot-on score.

I'm fond of this one....

[quote] I love "Airplane!" but I put it on for my nieces and nephews about 5 years ago, when they were teenagers, and they just stared at it without laughing.

I'm ancient, and I remember seeing this on opening night at the Royal Theater, on Polk Street in San Francisco. The audience was SCREAMING with laughter. You couldn't hear some of the jokes because of the laughter from the previous one kept rolling along.

After reading R8 I thought back to watching old Laurel and Hardy movies on television with my father. He thought they were so funny and I was mostly bored (and wondering why two grown men were sleeping in the same bad, but I kept that to myself).

Tastes change.

First there was Jackie on Assistance, and now there is Barbara Bilingually.

R31 Me too!

Every day when I wake up and remember Trump is in the WH, I say out loud . " I picked a bad day to :stop chewing gum, tobacco, smoking, sniffing glue, doing opioids, heroin, weed, magic mushrooms, etc. " I mean it and it's not even mildly amusing. But I still love all the Zuckers movies. And sorry-not sorry but anyone who doesn't think they are funny has too low an IQ to understand or realize the humor.

The young people today seem to love toilet and fecal jokes. Say "mud pies" and the little shits roar with laughter. And yes. I am a middle aged gay and proud of it-sort of.

I saw it at the Royal Theater too. Crazy laughter. Great fun.

I agree that it still holds up.

Airplane and What's Up, Doc are the two most consistently hilarious films ever made. They're also as funny today as they were when first released. I doubt they will ever be topped.

This was one of my favorite sequences.

^ they bring the heart transplant patient to the heart and not the heart to the patient!

Booze:Zero Hour! :: Coke:Airplane!

Like a couple of the other posters above, I first saw this in the theater. There was a guy behind me who we thought was going to have a heart attack because he was laughing so much he could barely breathe. Several in the audience was paying more attention to him than they were to the movie.

In addition to this and What's Up, Doc, I'd add Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles as the most consistently funny movies ever.

Don't you tell me which zone is for loading, and which zone is for unloading.

The airport announcers who end up trading barbs about Betty having an abortion... oh man you could not do that today!

I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan film.

R33 I'm sure the line "have you ever seen a grown man naked?" was cut too. That would never fly today (no pun intended).

The Tupperware party was my favorite. Reminded me of this....

I bet kids today would find it funny as well. A few months ago, I showed my students the "Odessa Steps" sequence from The Naked Gun and they are still talking about it. I will show some scenes to them and report back.

r57, do you mean this scene from The Untouchables?

Here is the Naked Gun version, r58. I had my students watch the Naked Gun version and the original in the Battleship Potemkin-- I thought the Untouchables version would be too violent for them.

Tis still makes me laugh so hard. And I love "Police Squad" as well. So dumb and lowbrow, one can't help but be amused.

Robert Hays is a deplorable now and was a member of Friends of Abe.

McCroskey: “Ease off, Rex, he hasn’t flown for years. It’s not his fault. It could happen to any pilot.”

Johnny : “It happened to Barbara Stanwyck!"

Off topic, but the Pet Shop Boys wrote a new score to Battleship Potemkin which is brilliant. I think there must be a copy on youtube for those who want to hear and see it.

Leslie Nielsen's first comedic role and he was worried that he wouldn't be funny. He built up a career playing dramatic roles and heavies and was told to play the character straight and he made comedy gold.

The boy revealing that the co-pilot is Kareem is funny.

it was a pretty funny movie......I liked especially the Barbara B jive part and the captain sexually harrassing the kid.....(all in good fun, I know its not politically correct)

My mom showed me this when I was 13 around 1998-1999. She wasn't sure I would like it but I laughed so much, probably more than I have for any other movie prior. I proceeded to watch it many times after that. It stayed funny each time and as I got older I got more of the humor. The little girl saying she liked her coffee like she liked her men was a line I used in school and it was the biggest hit. No one ever said anything about it sounding "gay" they just thought it was funny. I didn't tell them about the movie until later on.

Robert Hays led me to some serious masterbating on my part. Too bad he is a deplorable now.

Almost 40 years later, still mighty pretty.

Wasn't Hagerty with Bob Fosse at this time or shortly beforehand?

Sad to hear Hays is a deplorable. Sadly David Zucker became a hardcore Republican.

I think so much of this movie is funny even today. I think it's aged well.

I cannot take Airport '75 seriously anymore. This film brilliantly made fun of it.

I like her in this....

I loved the dance scene.

[quote] Stephen Stucker was hilarious and it's sad that we didn't get to see much of him before he died

There is more then you might think. See if you can find him in this clip. Look carefully because he blends in.

[quote]Sadly David Zucker became a hardcore Republican.

His own brother disowned him and pointed out his contributions to their films were slight, as evidenced by his own forays in film making.

This does age well and has so many laughs using a variety of techniques. Wall to wall funny. Almost the perfect spoof movie.

Robert Hays was on the tv show ANGIE (1979-1980) before AIRPLANE was released. My oldest brother would drool over Donna Pescow on that show.

I love this movie and even though I know all the jokes I still laugh every time.

After you see it try watching The Poseidon Adventure with Leslie Nielsen as the captain.

[quote] Airplane and What's Up, Doc are the two most consistently hilarious films ever made.

I'd add A Fish called Wanda to make it three.

R73- She seems very sweet.

I vividly remember going to see AIRPLANE! with my parents. I was 13; they were 53-54. I'd never seen either of them laugh so hard -- especially my dad! He & I were beside ourselves at all the Kareem-Abdul Jabbar/Roger parts (as huge Lakers/UCLA/basketball fans).

"I've been hearing that shit since UCLA. You tell your old man to drag Walton & Lucas up and down the court for 48 minutes!!"

Here is that scene,

I saw Blazing Saddles on broadcast TV once and for that version they changed the sound effects of the bean-eating scene from farts to burps.

Thank you, R81. Lanier/Lucas, whatever. The Song Remains the Same.....and hilarious!!

Barbara Billingsley's part was written with Jane Wyatt, the mom from Father Knows Best, in mind. She accepted it and came in for the day that was required. They rehearsed all morning and tried to shoot in the afternoon. None of the footage was usable. She simply couldn't do the jive.

Eventually the part was offered to Billingsley. She came in and read the part in the morning, and then got the scene perfect on her first take.

I saw the broadcast edit of BLAZING SADDLES as a kid and they kept the n-word but completely removed almost all sexual innuendos from Madeline Kahn's part.

Had no idea about the abortion argument in AIRPLANE until I saw it on cable years later.

It was called Flying High here in Australia. I still giggle when I think of those brawling girl scouts.

By the way, does anyone know how to fly a plane?

Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da help!

The sequel was pretty good too.

I was 16 when it came out and saw it in a packed theater in Connecticut and the audience was screaming with laughter, non-stop. A memorable evening to be sure. Despite seeing Young Frankenstein numerous times, and being a big fan of the 70s Woody Allen comedies, I never caught up with Blazing Saddles until a few years ago. I don't remember laughing more than a couple times. And I dvr'd Young Frankenstein a couple of weeks ago and deleted it after the first 20 minutes. I admired the photography and sets but it wasn't funny to me. It must be Mel Brooks I find overrated.

Poor deluded Stucker. His obstinent ignorance probably kept him alive for longer however. The only people with AIDS who didn't die were those who scraped along until medicine was actually effective. There were HIV+ people who were "non-progressors" so they survived, and they never had AIDS. He looks terrible on Donahue. I remember that look all around. Horrible times.

Robert Hays was one of the first clues I had that I was probably NOT straight!

Very good points regarding the fact that this movie was spoofing the disaster genre of the time. If you didn’t see [italic]Towering Inferno[italic] or [italic]Airport ‘77[/italic] with their gravitas, you lose a big part of why [italic]Airplane![/italic] is funny.

Robert Hays is a pretty bad actor—I cruelly think it worked well on Airplane. He had a deadpan delivery that wasn’t faked.

Meant to say “actually” at r94, but “cruelly” works!

[quote] I saw it at the Royal Theater too. Crazy laughter. Great fun.

I THOUGHT I saw you there!

I agree with R93. Without prior knowledge of what it was they were spoofing, many of the references would fall flat today. And the cameos like Merman, Raymond Burr, Howard Jarvis, and Jimmie Walker would just go right over people's heads.

Part of the fun of seeing it in the theater, aside from laughter being infectious, were the murmurs of recognition that went through the audience when people like Billingsley showed up. We hadn't heard from her in years and at first it was just great to see her. Then she just flattened us with her jive bit. I mean, really, prim and proper, I-vacuum-in-pearls-and-heels-Mrs. Cleaver speaking jive? Brilliant!

- A hospital? What is it?

- A big building with patients. But that's not important right now.

I was 16 when I saw this in the theater with my mother.

At the "shit hits the fan" line my mother laughed so hard she spilled her Coke.

Part of the problem is that so much has changed with air travel that a lot of the jokes no longer seem natural. Parking in front of the terminal? No security? Walking to the gate without a ticket? Kids in the cockpit during the flight? I watched it wth some kids once, and I spent half the movie explaining how air travel used to be. When you have to explain the joke it's no longer funny..

I think the reason why today's young people might not like it, is because they don't know the references that the movie is spoofing. Having June Cleaver speaking jive is funny. If you don't know who June Cleaver is, you're not going to get the joke.

"Oh stewardess, I speak Jive."

This scene is a classic.

I remember seeing Airplane when it first came out, I was on a road trip with my brother driving from Columbus Ohio to the West Coast and back and we saw the movie at a drive in theater in Petaluma California in the summer of 1980, I was 19 years old.

Love this movie. By the way, the stewardess who can't speak jive was played by Lorna Patterson. She's perhaps best known for playing Judy Benjamin, the Goldie Hawn role in the TV adaptation of Private Benjamin. I liked her as a kid, but seem to recall some DL stories of her being a nightmare in real life.

I remember seeing this in the movie theater with my mother. When the scene came on with all of the chaos on the plane and a topless woman comes running towards the screen, jugs a-bouncin', my mother quickly put her hand over my eyes, LOL. I must have been 11 at the time.

The film-makers had written the scene featuring the sad plight of Lieutenant Hurwitz with Ethel Merman in mind but totally unaware if she would agree to do it. She was unsure about doing it but a family member convinced her to saying yes. After Airplane! was released, Merman said she was thrilled when younger people would approach her in public, recognizing her from the movie.

[quote]Love this movie. By the way, the stewardess who can't speak jive was played by Lorna Patterson. She's perhaps best known for playing Judy Benjamin, the Goldie Hawn role in the TV adaptation of Private Benjamin. I liked her as a kid, but seem to recall some DL stories of her being a nightmare in real life.

She's better known for being the Lorna who wasn't molested.

[quote]we saw the movie at a drive in theater in Petaluma California in the summer of 1980

Awesome! I’ll bet kids today have no idea what you’re talking about.

“Aren’t all theatres drive-ins? Don’t you drive-in to the parking lot?”

Sad, really.

"I haven't felt this ill since we saw that Ronald Reagan film."

That must've gotten a huge laugh in 1980!

[quote]Having June Cleaver speaking jive is funny. If you don't know who June Cleaver is, you're not going to get the joke.

I was a child in the 1980s and I'm sure by now more people younger than me are familiar with this than with [italic]Leave it to Beaver[/italic]. They might also recognize her voice as that of Nanny from [italic]Muppet Babies[/italic], but that's a long shot.

My brother and I discovered this movie as teenagers in the '90s on comedy central. We laughed our asses off and thought it was the best thing ever. I still love un-PC humor that mocks everyone equally. Generation Z would probably hate me.

Remind me to invite you to my next party R99, you seem like lots of fun.

[quote]Having June Cleaver speaking jive is funny. If you don't know who June Cleaver is, you're not going to get the joke.

June Cleaver is just an extra layer. The essential joke is that a prim-looking older white lady speaks black slang. ISTR an entry in the Scary Movie franchise did a variation on this joke.

If it doesn't play today I think it's more likely because slang has changed so much since then. Who even says "jive talk" anymore, for starters.

Stephen Stucker seems like he'd be fun guy to hang out with. I love his "fuck you" attitude in that Donahue clip.

I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

That's impossible! They're on instruments!

Politics aside, Jerry Zucker's career isn't doing much better. He's barely made anything since [italic]Rat Race[/italic], the supposed modern-day answer to [italic]It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World[/italic] that was shorter but still fell short.