The Crowded Sky ** (1960, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, John Kerr, Anne Francis, Keenan Wynn, Troy Donahue) – Classic Movie Review 10,574

‘The most fascinating people the gods of chance ever swept up into high adventure!’

Director Joseph Pevney’s efficient 1960 melodrama The Crowded Sky is a busy all-star disaster movie, which is quite fun as hokum. It stars Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, John Kerr, Anne Francis, Keenan Wynn, and Troy Donahue. Even if all the stars are relatively minor, they are pleasant and welcome company, and it is a good ensemble.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr plays Captain Dale Heath, whose US Navy jet with a defective radio system is on collision course with veteran Dick Barnett (Dana Andrews)’s packed passenger plane in severe weather, as flashbacks show the passengers’ love and home lives. Zimbalist Jr’s unfaithful wife Cheryl ‘Charro’ Heath (Rhonda Fleming) is bored and longs to stray. Andrews’s kid is a tearaway. Andrews is also troubled by a long-time conflict with his co-pilot, Mike Rule (John Kerr), who is having an affair with head stewardess Kitty Foster (Anne Francis).

The Crowded Sky is a busy, if fairly low-flying, familiar and very predictable air thriller outing, with a bunch of rather gloomy actors unable to raise its spirits over-much, though one or two give engagingly bad performances (including Keenan Wynn and Troy Donahue as passengers).

But the glossy handling in Technicolor gives it a veneer of freshness, and the schlocky pulp yarn, based on a 1960 novel by former US Navy flyer Hank Searls, proves fairly irresistible. Charles Schnee writes the generally capable screenplay, though some of his dialogue lets the actors down.

It is produced by Michael Garrison and distributed by Warner Bros.

When Troy Donahue is in the El Paso airport coffee shop, the theme to A Summer Place (1959) in which he starred, is heard on the juke box in the background.

After this Rhonda Fleming described herself as semi-retired, rich through films and real estate investments. But in 1960 she toured her nightclub act in Las Vegas and Palm Springs. She appeared on TV regularly, and even in the occasional film, including cameos in The Patsy and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, up to her last feature The Nude Bomb (1980).

Miniatures are used extensively to show the aircraft in flight.

RIP Anne Francis who died on January 2, 2011, aged 80.

RIP John Kerr who died on February 2, 2013, aged 81.

RIP Efrem Zimbalist Jr who died on May 2, 2014, aged 95.

RIP Rhonda Fleming, who died on 14 October 2020, age 97. She was in both Out of the Past and Spellbound.

Also in the cast are Patsy Kelly, Joe Mantell, Donald May, Louis Quinn, Edward Kemmer, Tom Gilson, Hollis Irving, Paul Genge, Jean Willis, Frieda Inescort and Nan Leslie.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,574

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