Saturday, January 8, 2011

Saturday Matinee: Three Guys Named Mike


A stewardess becomes romantically involved with an airline pilot, a college professor, and a successful businessman, all of whom are named Mike. When the three find out about each other, she has to decide which one she loves the most.

Small-town girl Marcy Lewis is accepted by American Airlines into their flight-attendant's school to become a air-hostess/stewardess, followed by her training events leading up to her first flight, which has to return to the airport because the stewardess forgot to check if there was any food aboard. She jumps from training to romancing, and soon has three suitors, all named Mike; Michael Lawrence, a poor, struggling scientist; Mike Jamison, an airline pilot; and Mike Tracy, an advertising executive.

The synopsis is from The Internet Movie Database.



I enjoyed this movie.  Jane Wyman was cute as a button and funny, too.  The costumes were adorable.  IN one scene, while the trainee of the stewardess program were waiting for their assigned planes to take off, each of the ladies had on the most darling suits.  You just do not see such variety these days.  I sure wish I could find a photo to share, but after searching the web, I came up empty.  But I did find some cute examples of "Airline Hostess" uniforms....



I like the next photo.  In the movie, Ms. Wyman was featured in ads for soap.  The took photos of her in her uniform showing that she used the soap (in a roundabout way).


And for those who are interested in a little Air Hostess History....hop on over to Wikipedia


One thing I found interesting in the movie was when "Mike" the AA Captain said something about he could not be grounded, that was for Kiwis.  Kiwis was a group for the stewardess who got married.  Married ladies, like Kiwis, no longer flied, "Turner Classic Movies stated that the film "remains a quaintly entertaining time capsule of an era when "stewardesses" became "kiwis" (i.e., non-flying birds) when they got married."  Oh how times have changed, eh? 

Boy oh  boy was there some product placement in this movie.  American Airlines was everywhere.  Since air travel was still expensive, so was using the industry in the movies. "Airplanes can be very expensive props, however, so the producers made a deal with American Airlines to use their planes at no charge. American Airlines also provided advertising to support the release of the film. Not only were American planes used, but some of the early scenes show the type of training that stewardesses received at the American Airlines school."  I found this bit of trivia at Turner Classic Movies website.  Sounds like a fair trade to me.

 
I do not care what "high brow" critics of the time thought, I agreed with Variety Magazine and thought it was a "pleasant-witted comedy" and enjoyed the movie.
 
 

Tiffany
 
 

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