Serial of the Month: Tailspin Tommy
First is first, even if it is not the polished product of what follows, credit should be given it’s due, like John Carroll Daly creating the first hard boiled private detective, “Three Gun” Terry Mack before Dashiell Hammett came out with the better written and conceived Continental Op, so too must we look at Universal’s “Tailspin Tommy” (1934), the first live action adaptation of a comic strip, that would eventually lead to “Flash Gordon” (1936), “The Phantom” (1943) and “Superman” (1948). While at first glance Tommy’s more leisurely paced adventures pale in comparison to later more dynamic action cliffhangers, the old fashion story and character based plotting have a unique charm all their own.
In the idyllic town of Littleville, auto mechanic Tommy Tompkins (Maurice Murphy) dreams of becoming a pilot. He studies flying techniques from a book and with the help of his best friend and fellow auto mechanic Skeeter (Noah Berry, Jr.) builds a mock up of a bi-plane out of an old car, which he drives around town practicing his flying skills while scaring the crap out of his neighbors. After a chance meeting with Betty Lou Barnes (Patricia Farr) when her car gets a flat tire while passing through town, Tommy is immediately smitten and not just because she works at the Three Point Airport.
Three Point is owned by Paul Smith (Charles A Browne), who is trying to land a lucrative mail contract with the government. He assigns his best pilot Milt Howe (Grant Withers) to make the first run up to Los Angeles with the mail. Unknown to everyone, fellow pilot Bruce Hoyt (Walter Miller) is secretly in the employ of a rival air delivery service owned by Tiger Taggart (John Davidson), who wants to steal the mail contract, and drive Three Point out of business in the bargain. Bruce tries to sabotage Milt’s plane but is unable to get close without being spotted so is able to Milt take off on schedule.
While flying over Littleville, Milt discovers that he is having engine trouble and puts down in a vacant field. The whole town shows up to see the unusual sight of a plane landing in their community. Milt has a bad landing and breaks his arm. He radios Three Point to send out a relief plane to get the mail through. Bruce is dispatched. Once out of sight of the airport, Bruce sets his plane down in a clear spot and sits back smoking, ignoring all radio calls to him, ensuring that Three Point will fail to win the mail contract.
Back in Littleville, Bruce has his arm set by the local doctor while Skeeter and Tommy get the plane running, it was just a clogged fuel line. When Bruce fails to show up, and can’t be raised on the radio, Milt decides the only course is to fly back to Three Point and get someone else to fly the mail through. Unable to handle the controls with one arm, he asks for a volunteer to work the plane’s controls at his direction. Tommy immediately volunteers.
It is a dream come true for the small town mechanic as he guides the plane into the sky. But things don’t stay that way when they fly right into the path of a thunderstorm. The turbulance thows Milt against the side of the plane, knocking him unconscious. On his own, the inexperienced Tommy fights to maintain control of the bucking plane but not knowing how to compensate for the turbulance, Tommy can’t keep the plane from going into a tailspin and plummeting toward the mountains….
As can be seen from just the first chapter, this is not going to be an action extravaganza like serials being made at rival studio Mascot. Less concerned about action than a good story the early chapters detail how Tommy and Skeeter get jobs at Three Point and Tommy’s eventual rise in the company as their top pilot, taking the derisive nickname Tailspin that Bruce mockingly gives him and turning it into a badge of honor, while shyly romancing Betty Lou who works at the airport coffee shop while learning to be a pilot herself. The cliffhangers invovled here include Tommy saving a group of children at an airshow from a runaway plane and almost cracking up in a landing when Bruce, as a joke, tells him he is ready to solo when he obviously isn’t.
After becoming a full fledged pilot Tommy spends several chapters avoiding Taggart’s air pirates who are after a mine payroll Tommy is transporting, chapters which contain some of the best aerial dog fight footage ever put on film (it was only ever topped by the following year’s Tailspin Tommy sequel, “Tailspin Tommy and the Great Air Mystery” (1935)). After the fun and funny early chapters these faster paced action chapters almost feel like an intrusion.
Things return to the more sedate plot at the half way point, with only an occasional foray into battling gangsters when Tommy rescues fellow Three Points pilot Speed Walton, played by usual bad guy Edmund Cobb, when he’s attacked by Taggart’s gang after a diamond shipment. Most of the second half details Tommy’s attempts to win an air competition (which contains one of the greatest cliffhangers in history as Bruce abandons Tommy in midair and leaves him dangling from a fuel hose during a mid air refueling race) and Tommy becoming a movie star for a surprisingly benevolent Howard Hughes style mogul played by Bryant Washburn.
The movie making segment contains an interesting break from other serials as the romance between Tommy and Betty blossoms. In a funny sequence, Tommy is filming a love scene and expresses all the emotion of a dead fish. Suddenly seeing Betty arrive back stage, he literally drops his co-star and races over to her while the camera is running, and they engage in some of the hottest liplocking ever put on film. The result is that the movie mogul fires the leading actress on the spot and hires Betty while a camera man cracks, “And you said he couldn’t play love scenes.”
The actual ending of the serial is also different from others as the villains are defeated in the first five minutes of the final chapter and the rest of the time is filled with Tommy abandoning his big Hollywood debut to instead attend his town’s Founder’s Day Festival. In a twist that can only happen in the movies, Paul Smith, who helped back the movie, has a second copy of the film run off and shows up with it at Littleville so that Tommy’s mother and all of his friends can see his movie. The last scene is Tommy hugging his mother and Betty, while saying he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Hokey? Sure, but the actors all play it so straight and with such sincerity that you buy into it. In these more cynical times I found the serial refreshingly heartwarming in it’s innocent promotion of a bygone era’s small town values of honesty, loyalty and hard work garnering great rewards from others. Maybe this is a time that never really existed but the fantasy is awfully appealing, especially when packaged as beautifully as this serial is.
The acting is all top notch. Maurice Murphy makes an excellent Tailspin Tommy, saddled with a part that could become irritating, Murphy easily conveys the character’s naivete and endless enthusiasm without ever seeming to be stupid. Towards the end of the serial when Bruce apologizes to Tommy for abandoning him during the refueling race, saying he lost his nerve, Tommy accepts it at face value and says it could happen to anyone. Murphy makes you believe that Tommy would do such a thing instead of beating the man to a pulp for almost getting him killed.
Murphy is matched perfectly by Patricia Farr’s street smart and sarcastic Betty Lou. Though amused by him at first, she quickly warms to him, and they bond permanently when she hides aboard his plane during the payroll flight and sees him risk his life to protect her and save the payroll from being robbed. Though not a glamor girl, Farr’s energetic and smart performance make me wish the studio had decided to reteam her with Murphy for the sequel instead of replacing them with Clark Williams and Jean Rogers (not to say Willaims and Rogers didn’t do a bang up job themselves but that’s for another review).
Noah Berry, Jr. is the perfect comedy relief sidekick. Always good to have at your side in a pinch, at one point he cold cocks a hospital orderly to get some clothes for Tommy so they can get to the air meet when Taggart bribes the staff to keep him there after his men run him off the road in the previous cliffhanger. He is also genuinely funny, his laid back aw shucks/ gee whiz delivery meshing well with Murphy’s more enthusiastic line readings. A few stand out bits are the running gag of referring to everything he doesn’t understand as having to do with “The unwritten law”, his being relentlessly being chased for a dance by an overly agressive woman at a nightclub, and his inabilty to either drive a motorcycle or keep his mustache glued on during the filming of an important scene for Tommy’s movie. Berry was always a joy to watch on screen and never more so than here.
John Davidson does a good job of conveying his character’s cold blooded avarice desires with little screen time. Mostly seen at his office when an underling reports another failure. He only steps forward during the nightclub and race meet sequences, appearing in public as a “friendly” rival to Three Point, before moving back into the shadows for the rest of the serial. He does get to indulge in some good old fashion scenery chewing occasonally as he contemplates what he is going to do to his enemies for their latest insult of succeeding when he wants them to fail miserably.
Most of the upfront villainy is done by Walter Miller in a spectacular performance as the smarmy Bruce Hoyt. He is all swagger and snide backhanded comments, a braggert who’s bubble is constantly popped by Betty’s sarcasm. Her stings hurt more than anything else as he shows on more than one occasion that he is secretly in love with her (as is apparently half the airport), making her attachment to Tommy a more reason for his skullduggery, it’s not just about the money. He also plays comedy well, especially his scenes with Berry, where he tells him everytime he gets a call from LA that it must be Greta Garbo which Skeeter always believes, when in reality it is new instructions from Taggart (Yes, the main villain actually calls his henchman openly at the airport coffee shop pay phone and nobody notices, only in the movies!).
Grant Williams garners even less screen time than Davidson, only popping up occasionally after Chapter One, most notably helping Tommy rescue Speed from highjackers and rescueing Tommy when Bruce abandons him during the afore mentioned refueling sequence. But what time he does get he effectively portrays Milt as a gruff, experienced pilot with a soft interior, taking a real delight in the company of Tommy and Skeeter when in the hanger with them.
Charles A. Browne gives an equally effective performance as the stern boss, who takes a liking to his two new employees. He’s scene in Chapter Two when he hires Skeeter so that the young mechanic can pay the freight charges he incurred while stowing away on Tommy’s first flight is hilarious both for Berry’s reactions and Browne initial dead pan delivery that cracks into an amused smile when Skeeter leaves the office. Edmond Cobb is also good as the fast talking and brash Speed Walton (yes perpetually dour face henchman Edmond Cobb), I especially like the early scenes where he and Farr playfully flirt with each other, neither one taking it seriously.
So while it may not be every serial fan’s cup of tea, those looking for lots of fast paced thrills with fist fights, shootouts and explosions every five minutes will be greatly disappointed with this production. But for the fan looking for something different, you might enjoy the unique blend of teen drama/comedy combined with cliffhanger thrills of “Tailspin Tommy”, the first comic strip based serial.
