Reeling Backward: "Five Came Back" (1939)

"Five Came Back" is not to be confused with the 2017 Netflix documentary series about five noted Hollywood filmmakers who made propaganda movies for the U.S. government during World War II. It's a 1939 harrowing adventure story about a dozen people whose plane crashes in the Amazon and they have to struggle to survive while hashing out various interpersonal relationships and clashes.

The premise reminded me a lot of "Flight of the Phoenix," one of my dad's favorites, so I was eager to check it out.

It's a prototypical B-picture with some solid talent behind it. One of the screenwriters (along with Jerry Cady and Nathanael West) was legendary script man Dalton Trumbo. Director John Farrow helmed some notable pictures, including the film noir classic "The Big Clock," which was later remade into "No Way Out."

Farrow also won an Oscar for his screenplay of "Around the World in 80 Days" -- which is actually better than it's given credit for, though still a solid contender for the title of "Worst Best Picture."

The cast of "Five" included iconic "that guy" character actor John Carradine, with his signature scarecrow frame and scowl, who went on to sire an entire dynasty of thespians.

And it was one of the biggest early screen roles for Lucille Ball, before she switched to comedy and conquered television. She plays Peggy, a classic screen type: hard-bitten moll who's had all sorts of troubles with men, and finds herself judged by the high-class types.

Carradine is Crimp -- great name, that -- a "detective" who's really a glorified bounty hunter. He's got a $5,000 claim on Vasquez (Joseph Calleia), an anarchist who's being extradited back to Panama to be executed for his role in the assassination of a government official. That's about 90,000 smackers in today's dollars, so he's very keen on making the plane to Panama City.

Vasquez turns out to be very cagey, managing to swipe Crimp's gun away from him while being processed at the police station. In many ways he's the central character of the story, a man who's committed despicable acts yet winds up as the figure with the largest accrual of moral authority.

Chester Morris plays Bill, the thick-necked and, initially, thick-headed captain who continues to lead the party after the crash due to engine failure. Peggy takes a shine to him, though his hard heart takes some convincing. Rakish copilot Joe (Kent Brooks) has eyes for one of the passengers, Alice (Wendy Barrie), who's the secretary to wealthy heir Judson Ellis (Patric Knowles).

It's eventually revealed they're eloping together to escape the media glare and disapproval of their parents. Judson turns out to be, along with Crimp, the least adaptable of the survivors, quickly taking to drink -- he's got an entire suitcase packed with booze -- and despair.

Dick Hogan is Larry, the steward who's sucked out the door during the crash. (Blond guys always bite it early in adventure movies.) Casey Johnson plays Tommy, a little boy of about 3 who is the son of a mob leader on the run. Allen Jenkins plays Pete, the gun tough charged with protecting the tyke.

When the passengers (prior to the crash) hear a news account that Tommy's dad has been gunned down, the group takes on a sort of collective parenting of the boy. At first Pete won't let Peggy play mother to him, but eventually she proves her mettle.

The flight scenes are certainly a relic of their times, both for the crudity of the not-so-special effects -- their plane, The Silver Queen, looks like a child's model (and not an expensive one) -- and the depiction of air travel in the 1930s. People move about the cabin freely, the booze flows just the same, and there's no lock on the door to the cockpit, which is invaded several times by passengers.

The by-today's-standards huge chairs include a fold-down bed for each person. Joe has a pervy scene where he responds to Alice's buzzer about a stuck ventilator by flirting and invading her personal space.

The scenes on the ground are also a bit funny in their near-total avoidance of verisimilitude. Other than Bill's sleeves becoming ripped to reveal his thick arms, nobody's attire changes considerably despite weeks on the ground in stifling jungle heat. I lol'd several times at the women clip-clopping around the underbrush in their high heels. The men don't even take off their suit jackets the first few days.

Despite crash-landing in the trees (without the landing gear down), Bill and Joe commence with making repairs, this being the day when the sky jockeys who drove the planes apparently were all expert mechanics, too. They somehow manage to clear hundreds of yards of jungle for a runway with improvised tools.

But it all comes down to the proverbial "too much weight," so in the end they have to decide who goes and who stays -- after their numbers have been sufficiently thinned by the heard-but-never-seen cannibals, of course.

Some of the story plays out with predictable precision. Like the evolution by which Alice realizes Judson is no good and gloms onto the creepy-but-noble Joe. And the way Crimp and Judson both seem determined to have run-ins with the other men, so it's only a matter of time before they square off with each other.

In a hoot-worthy example of inept stunt choreography, during their fight Carradine actually starts falling backward before Knowles' mimed punch comes anywhere near him.

But I appreciated the unexpected cerebral and emotional portions of the story. The Spenglers find themselves coming to appreciate Vasquez, who points out that while the others are desperate to escape back to their lives, his destination lies with a hangman's noose. Without the headhunter subplot, my guess is he would have chosen to stay behind, assuming he escapes Crimp's greedy clutches.

In the end it's Vasquez who is allowed to decide which five people will get to ride away on the plane. Though his choices are pretty unoriginal -- two pairs of lovebirds and a kid -- the way he arrives at them hold genuine tension and intrigue.

"Five Came Back" is the sort of largely forgotten picture that strives beyond the shortcomings of its B-picture entertainment value and delivers a memorable experience.

Reeling Backward: "Golden Boy" (1939)

"Golden Boy" was William Holden's very first feature film, and nearly his last. The studio didn't like his looks or his acting style, and was determined to fire him in the middle of production. But star Barbara Stanwyck fought for her young colleague, he was retained, the picture was a big success and Holden became a sensation overnight.

Nearly 40 years later, while presenting an award together at the Oscars, Holden momentarily interrupted the ceremony to publicly thank her for saving his career, which was long and illustrious. So should we all.



The movie itself is a rather mushy romance about a young boxer who must choose between the ring and his love for the violin, with his manager, the manager's moll (Stanwyck) and the fighter's family acting as proxies in the tussle over his devotion. The plot isn't terribly interesting, though the dialogue and characterizations, based on the play by Clifford Odets, are quite vivid.

"Golden Boy" probably has the least amount of pugilism of any boxing movie. Director Rouben Mamoulian ("Queen Christina") doesn't bother with even cursory highlights of the matches, simply showing quick montages of Holden throwing punches that last but a few seconds each. Up until the final bout, we don't even get so much as a wink at his opponents.

When the big fight does finally arrive, I have to say Holden's not a terribly convincing boxer. He tends to do that side-to-side punching thing, almost slapping, that is the hallmark of someone who doesn't know how to fight.

The young thespian had to learn how to play the violin for the role, or at least look like he could, and I guess also learning to box would've been a bridge too far.

I'm not sure if the film was shot in chronological order -- which was more common with studio pictures of this era -- but Holden's line deliveries and expressions are indeed rather stiff in the early scenes. As kid boxer Joe Bonaparte, he calls his father "Papa" as if he's trying to caress each syllable like a delicate, newly-laid egg. But he gets a lot better as time goes on, and by midway it's vintage Holden, all fiery drive and passion.

I should also mention the score by Victor Young is quite beautiful, filled with lush strings as you might expect given the title character's musical proclivities. It earned the film's only Academy Award nomination.

The cinematography, by Nicholas Musuraca and Karl Freund, is also quite nice, with a lot of depth and shades of gray in the black-and-white. The film has been well preserved, with virtually pristine prints transferred to DVD and Blu-ray.

As the story opens, Joe is about to turn 21 and is living with his family in the apartment behind his father's grocery. He's been studying violin for the past decade but hasn't been able to turn it into a playing career. He's been spending the last year or so hanging out at local boxing gyms, practicing and studying the techniques.

When a fighter breaks his hand right before a bout, he begs the manger, Tom Moody (Adolphe Menjou), to give him a shot in his stead. Moody is at the bottom of his barrel, wistfully recalling the money days of 1928. His estranged wife is demanding $5,000 for a divorce so he can marry his much-younger girlfriend, Lorna Moon (Stanwyck), a hard-bitten type whose gold heart will eventually be unearthed.

"Oh, leave it to me, Tom. I'm a dame from Newark and I know a dozen ways," she says, in just one of the twinkly lines of dialogue.

You can pretty much guess where things go from there. Joe turns out to be a wunderkind in the ring, quickly moving up the ladder into big money, which of course goes to his head. He and Lorna fall for each other, but she feels loyalty to Tom and manipulates Joe to further his ends, which Joe eventually finds out about.

He accepts a bid from Eddie Fuseli (Joseph Calleia), the local mafia don, to take over his contract so he can get a prime match at the Garden. Soon all the stakes are riding on the fight against big-name contender Chocolate Drop (real life boxer-turned-actor James "Cannonball" Green). I appreciated that this is the rare boxing movie that doesn't end with a crack at the championship.

It was also interesting to me that the movie treats African-Americans in way that's pretty respectful for 1939. White and black boxers are shown training side-by-side, without fuss. Chocolate Drop is heavily favored in their bout, to the point the assembled reporters dismiss Joe as Fuseli's inept upstart. The black and white audience sections, though segregated, cheer lustily with equal fervor for their gladiator.

When Joe accidentally kills Chocolate Drop, there's a very touching scene where Joe goes into his opponent's room to apologize to his family. Clinton Rosemond (uncredited), as the father, gives a terrific little speech when Joe alludes to committing suicide, telling him that everyone has their burden to bear, and this killing will be his.

The father character is a small counterpoint to the other huge figure in the movie, Joe's dad, played by Lee J. Cobb in a masterful performance. Cobb is best known for playing middle-aged anger and strife, most notably as the bigoted jurist in "Twelve Angry Men." But he gives a completely ravishing turn as a simple-minded but big-hearted Italian immigrant who abhors Joe's fighting and only wants him to play the violin.

Outfitted with big curly gray hair and ethnic mustache, Cobb is pitch-perfect in showing the man's utter broken-heartedness when Joe turns away from music, refusing to touch the magnificent Ruggieri violin he saved $1,500 to buy. (That's $26,000 in today's money.) This big, beaming man seems to slowly fade into himself, his shoulders stooped and his eyes hollowing out.

It astonished me to learn that Cobb was barely six years older than Holden at the time -- he had not yet turned 28 when "Golden Boy" debuted. I completely believed him as a broken-down old man.

Like a modern-day Wilford Brimley, Cobb played old early, and often.

Beatrice Blinn plays Joe's sister, Anna, who lives with her husband, Siggie (Sam Levene), at her father's. Siggie is a character unto himself, perpetually schlepping around, wearing a wifebeater shirt and chomping on a stogie butt, complaining about not having enough money to buy his own taxicab. Despite his carping, Joe's father (he's never given a name) treats Siggie with respect, even when his son-in-law playfully slaps Anna on the rear.

Edward Brophy is the resident comic relief as Roxy Lewis, Tom's perpetually flustered partner, who owns 10% of Joe's contract. William H. Strauss has some nice moments as Mr. Carp, the elderly neighbor who comes around to kvetch with Joe's papa. I also liked Don Beddoe as Borneo, the trainer who knows his place is in the corner of the ring, but is still willing to stand up for the kid and offer him advice.

It took a foursome of screenwriters to adapt Odets' play into a movie -- Lewis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman. There's always a challenge in stage-to-screen translations, but the strength of the distinctive characters, the emotive cast and the smart dialogue carry the day.

Reeling Backward: "Five Came Back" (1939)

When it came out in 1939, "Five Came Back" was seen as a low-budget adventure flick about a group whose plane crash-lands in the Amazonian jungle. It was just another B movie from RKO, a studio famous for churning them out.

But in many ways, the film can be seen as a precursor to the modern disaster flicks that had their heyday in the 1970s, and then another one in the '90s.

The main hallmark of the genre is there: A large, disparate cast of people from different walks of life who are brought together by their dire fate. Some of them grow closer, some ennoble themselves through their struggle, while others are tested and found wanting.

There's no big-budget spectacle, but director John Farrow does what he can with a lot of model airplanes and shaking sets. One scene that is fairly horrifying is when the plane steward is sucked out the door.

I was fairly amused by the accommodations on the plane. Despite being a tiny craft, each passenger has their own mini-compartment complete with a fold-out bed and privacy curtain. Lately some high-end airlines have introduced private cubicles, at an extraordinary premium, to lure elite travelers. Back in 1939, this was considered standard seating arrangements.

One has to wonder about the expectations audiences had for a movie titled "Five Came Back." Since a dozen people were on the plane when it took off, we can figure out on our own that more than half the passengers and crew will buy it.

The big dilemma, and the movie's hook -- Dalton Trumbo was among a quartet of writers -- comes when they repair the plane and make to take off before the tribe of local cannibals arrive. The pilot informs them that the plane can only take the weight of five people. (Some math whiz, that pilot.)

Still, it'd be interesting to see other films try to get away with the same trick for their titles. Imagine if "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was instead called "The Bridge is Blown Up, the Train Crashes and Most Everybody Dies."

"Five Came Back" features a few recognizable actors. There's a young Lucille Ball as Peggy, a woman of ill repute. John Carradine, the beanpole character actor, plays Mr. Crimp, a detective hired to transport an anarchist back to Panama City for trial and hanging. Mr. Crimp's not a particularly attentive guard: The prisoner, Vasquez (Joseph Calleia), steals his gun and nearly escapes before he's even turned over to his charge.

There's a rich young man eloping with his secretary, who catches the eye of Joe, the co-pilot. We also have an elderly professor (C. Aubrey Smith) and his fussbudget wife, a mob tough guarding the son of his boss, and Bill (Chester Morris), the stiff-necked but no-nonsense captain.

Most of the gang holds it together pretty well as the weeks go by. It's notable that the lawman, Crimp, is depicted as the most selfish character, while the two criminals, Vasquez and the mafia triggerman, sacrifice themselves for the common good. The old professor rediscovers romance with his wife, and the secretary learns her rich fiance isn't such a catch after all.

A couple of the men are seen with five o'clock shadow now and then, but it's almost laughable how everyone's hair and clothes remain neat as a button despite living in the jungle -- they must've had a large stash of Brylcreem onboard. And I got quite a chuckle out of the women traipsing around the bush in their high heels.

"Five Came Back" was remade a couple of times in the 1950s, but the film it most reminded me of was 1965's "Flight of the Phoenix," about a group of soldiers who crash in the desert and have to scavenge together a makeshift plane out of the wreckage of their old one.

Again, the mark of the disaster flick is not the particular circumstances, but the motley collection of characters each affected by the disaster in their own way. "Five Came Back" may have been a low-budget quickie, but it set the pattern for decades of movies to come.

3 stars out of four