Airplane!: Ten Things To Know About The Movie

09.25.10 | Jerry Frebowitz | Talkin' the OldiesPrint this Post

Tags: movie trivia

Here are 10 trivia facts about Airplane! from 1980, which originally appeared as our Mystery Movie Quiz on our Facebook page. There are hundreds of pieces of behind-the-scenes information about this movie. Please feel free to comment and add more trivia we might have missed.

1. The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Picture in its category.

Airplane! was nominated for The Hollywood Press Association's Golden Globe award for Best Picture in the category of "Musical/Comedy." The other nominees in 1981 were Fame, Melvin and Howard, The Idolmaker and the winner, Coal Miner's Daughter.

2. Flashbacks are part of the plot.

Flashbacks are used by Robert Hays' character Ted Stryker as he remembers the past with parodies like the beach scene From Here to Eternity and the disco scene from Saturday Night Fever.

3. This was the first role for the female lead of the film.

Julie Hagerty appeared before the cameras 69 times and Airplane! was her very first. She sandwiched in two other movies before she appeared again in Airplane II: The Sequel in 1982.

4. A mechanical object has a small role in the film.

Otto, the automatic pilot, was a large rubber blowup toy. After the film's popularity, Paramount Pictures lent Otto out to selected video retailers to display in their stores as a public relations event.

Movies Unlimited had Otto in store to promote the video release of Airplane! Fans came from all over to have their pictures taken with him.

5. The entire movie took a little over a month to produce.

Jim Abrahams and the Zuckers were well prepared in advance for Airplane! due to their previous experiences with The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). The story goes that with the intent of videotaping commercials they intended to spoof, they used to leave the VCR on all night long to catch as many advertisements as possible. One night they discovered they taped an old movie, Zero Hour! from 1957. Far from being a comedy, there were humorous possibilities they found in it and decided to parody that movie. It didn't take long for them, as a seasoned team, to put the whole thing together by using the plot line from Zero Hour! into their idea of spoofing Universal's Airport series from the 1970s.

6. The movie was a musical star’s last film.

Ethel Merman, (bio, videography) cast in Airplane! as the delirious Lieutenant Hurwitz, appeared in more than 70 movies and TV shows throughout her illustrious career. She passed away in 1984, but even without her physical presence, her voice and images have been used numerous times since.

7. A sports figure appears in the film.

It's been said that basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (bio) was cast as a flight crew member because in the film being spoofed, Zero Hour!, football player Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch had a role as one of the pilots.

8. Many of the actors in the film were better known for their TV roles.

Lloyd Bridges was a success in Sea Hunt from the earliest days of TV and continued to be popular in many subsequent series: The Loner, Joe Forrester and many more. Robert Stack, best known as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables TV series from 1959 also appeared in The Name of the Game, Most Wanted, Strike Force and Unsolved Mysteries. Peter Graves appeared in Fury in the 1950s, Whiplash, Court Martial, Mission: Impossible and for many years, he was the spokesman on A & E's Biography. Even Robert Hays was no stranger to TV - during the filming of Airplane!, he continued to appear in the Angie TV series.

9. The movie was written and directed by three people.

The team of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker worked together and apart numerous times on some of the biggest hits of the 1980s including Airplane II, Top Secret!, Police Squad!, The Naked Gun films, Baseketball and many more.

10. The movie spoofed a successful film genre.

With the popularity of airplane disaster films in the 1970s, the Zuckers and Jim Abrahams were planning the airplane segment as part of a sequel to their earlier hit The Kentucky Fried Movie. The script kept getting better and better, though, and with their purchase of Zero Hour!, Airplane! took off as a full-fledged movie of its own.

And now, sit back and relax and enjoy some of funniest scenes from Airplane! in this theatrical trailer from 1980: