It certainly looks as if the whimsical, Byronic airline captain Rod Taylor is responsible for this accident, which left 52 people dead, himself included, sparing only Susanne Pleshette, the flight attendant. The airline traffic safety board convenes and, despite the strong reservations of executive Glenn Ford, an old friend of Taylor's, is headed towards the dreaded explanation of "pilot error." You see, Taylor was observed patronizing several bars the night before the flight, in the company of someone named Mickey who can't be located. Taylor had a history of cheerful abandon even during the war and he's a kind of convenient scapegoat alright.
Glenn Ford, however, is convinced that some other force was at work. He tracks down some old friends of Taylor's and they all vouch for his probity. At the last minute, the mysterious and alcoholic Mickey shows up and reveals that although Taylor bought a dozen drinks the night before the accident, they were all for him, Mickey, not for Taylor Not good enough for the Board of Inquisitors. If it wasn't booze, what was it? Taylor apparently lost one engine after another shortly after take off then, perhaps in a panic, plowed into a pier that no one knew was there.
Taking his cue from the gorgeous Nancy Kwan, an oceanographer who had a perfectly innocent meeting with Taylor, Ford advances the novel proposition before the board that if it wasn't mechanical failure and it wasn't pilot error, then it must have been -- "the supernatural." Yes, girls and boys, FATE is the hunter. What else could have brought all these conditions together -- the flight of birds, the engine failure, the unknown pier, the radio failure -- at exactly the right time and place to cause the accident except -- fate.
Actually, you don't have to dig into the supernatural (or reach skyward) for that. It can be explained by a simple and drab deterministic universe. Everything that happens at a given place and time is determined by a multitude of previous events. One thing causes another and every once in a while they come together in a wildly improbable manner to cause something more important than all of them put together. You will sometimes have a perfect accident just as you will sometimes have a "perfect storm." Ford may call it Fate but I'd call it statistical probability.
That's a little egg-headed, I know, but the explanation is never explored anyway. It all turns out to have to do with a paper cup of coffee that spilled on Taylor's pedestal when the first engine quit and the airplane jarred momentarily. The coffee dripped into an electrical unit and shorted out some other circuits and caused all sorts of false alarms, to which Taylor unwittingly responded. That was fate in a cup of coffee. Maxwell House, I hope.
Harold Medford wrote the screenplay which has practically nothing to do with Ernet K. Gann's superb memoirs with the same title. I imagine Medford being handed the assignment with directions something like this. "We've got the rights to Gann's book. Now make up a story that will fit the title. And we've got Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan, Dorothy Malone, Susanne Pleshette, Mark Stevens, and some reliable supporting players, so squeeze all of them in. Try to make the story about airplanes." Not much from the book appears in the movie. Sometimes events show up but in altered form. It was Gann who played the concertina, not a friend. And it was Gann who got the garter of the famous lady on the USO tour during the war, only the famous lady wasn't Jane Russell but Marlene Dietrich.
Oh, hell. You want a bewitching story about fate and flying? Read the book.
Glenn Ford, however, is convinced that some other force was at work. He tracks down some old friends of Taylor's and they all vouch for his probity. At the last minute, the mysterious and alcoholic Mickey shows up and reveals that although Taylor bought a dozen drinks the night before the accident, they were all for him, Mickey, not for Taylor Not good enough for the Board of Inquisitors. If it wasn't booze, what was it? Taylor apparently lost one engine after another shortly after take off then, perhaps in a panic, plowed into a pier that no one knew was there.
Taking his cue from the gorgeous Nancy Kwan, an oceanographer who had a perfectly innocent meeting with Taylor, Ford advances the novel proposition before the board that if it wasn't mechanical failure and it wasn't pilot error, then it must have been -- "the supernatural." Yes, girls and boys, FATE is the hunter. What else could have brought all these conditions together -- the flight of birds, the engine failure, the unknown pier, the radio failure -- at exactly the right time and place to cause the accident except -- fate.
Actually, you don't have to dig into the supernatural (or reach skyward) for that. It can be explained by a simple and drab deterministic universe. Everything that happens at a given place and time is determined by a multitude of previous events. One thing causes another and every once in a while they come together in a wildly improbable manner to cause something more important than all of them put together. You will sometimes have a perfect accident just as you will sometimes have a "perfect storm." Ford may call it Fate but I'd call it statistical probability.
That's a little egg-headed, I know, but the explanation is never explored anyway. It all turns out to have to do with a paper cup of coffee that spilled on Taylor's pedestal when the first engine quit and the airplane jarred momentarily. The coffee dripped into an electrical unit and shorted out some other circuits and caused all sorts of false alarms, to which Taylor unwittingly responded. That was fate in a cup of coffee. Maxwell House, I hope.
Harold Medford wrote the screenplay which has practically nothing to do with Ernet K. Gann's superb memoirs with the same title. I imagine Medford being handed the assignment with directions something like this. "We've got the rights to Gann's book. Now make up a story that will fit the title. And we've got Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan, Dorothy Malone, Susanne Pleshette, Mark Stevens, and some reliable supporting players, so squeeze all of them in. Try to make the story about airplanes." Not much from the book appears in the movie. Sometimes events show up but in altered form. It was Gann who played the concertina, not a friend. And it was Gann who got the garter of the famous lady on the USO tour during the war, only the famous lady wasn't Jane Russell but Marlene Dietrich.
Oh, hell. You want a bewitching story about fate and flying? Read the book.