''Sky Bride'' (also known as ''Sky Brides'') is a 78-minute 1932

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

, produced by

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

and directed by Stephen Roberts. The film stars

Richard Arlen Richard Arlen (born Sylvanus Richard Mattimore, September 1, 1899 – March 28, 1976) was an American actor of film and television. Biography Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Arlen attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served in Canada as a ...

Jack Oakie Jack Oakie (born Lewis Delaney Offield; November 12, 1903 – January 23, 1978) was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He portrayed Napaloni in Chaplin's ''The Great Dictator'' (194 ...

and

Virginia Bruce Virginia Bruce (born Helen Virginia Briggs; September 29, 1910 – February 24, 1982) was an American actress and singer. Early life Bruce was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As an infant she moved with her parents, Earil and Margaret Briggs, ...

. ''Sky Bride'' depicts the life of barnstorming pilots flying in the years following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

.Wynne 1987, p. 122. All over North America, skilled pilots, many of them veterans of the aerial combat of World War I, plied their trade on the barnstorming circuit of the 1920s in small towns where impromptu air shows were staged.

Plot

Bert "Speed" Condon is the star of the "Speed Condon Flying Circus". The troupe of

barnstorming Barnstorming was a form of entertainment in which stunt pilots performed tricks individually or in groups that were called flying circuses. Devised to "impress people with the skill of pilots and the sturdiness of planes," it became popular in ...

pilots includes "Wild Bill" Adams, Eddie Smith and their manager, Alec "Ma" Dugan. Performing in small towns across the country, Speed and his friends are known for their stunt flying as much as giving "joy rides" for paying customers. Speed and Eddie try a dangerous mock " dog fight" that ends with Eddie's death. A remorseful Speed quits flying and heads to Los Angeles on foot, finding work as a mechanic at the Beck Aircraft Company. The company secretary, Ruth Dunning, is convinced that the new mechanic is hiding a secret. A budding romance is stymied by her suitor, pilot Jim Carmichael. His former manager, determined to find Speed, wants him to rejoin the barnstorming group. When he locates Speed, Alec finds that he is still working in aviation and is living at the local boardinghouse run by Eddie's mother, who is unaware that Speed caused her son's death. Eddie's nephew Willie is crazy about flying and wants to become a parachute jumper like others who perform at air shows. When Willie becomes accidentally trapped in the landing gear of an aircraft flown by Jim Carmichael, Speed realizes that he has to go up in another aircraft and free the young boy. After completing the daring aerial rescue, Speed finally is able to deal with his grief and guilt, and reveals to Mrs. Smith what happened to her son. Speed then asks Ruth out on a date for the dance that night, while Alec has to come to Willie's rescue when the young daredevil parachutes from the boardinghouse roof.

Cast

as Bert "Speed" Condon *

as Alec Dugan *

as Ruth Dunning *

Robert Coogan Robert Coogan (December 13, 1924 – May 12, 1978) was an American film and television actor. Biography Robert Coogan was born in Glendale, California, to parents Jack Coogan Sr. and Lillian Coogan. His older brother was Jackie Coogan, perha ...

as Willie Smith * Tom Douglas as Eddie Smith * Louise Closser Hale as Mrs. (Ma) Smith * Harold Goodwin as "Wild Bill" Adams *

Charles Starrett Charles Robert Starrett (March 28, 1903 – March 22, 1986) was an American actor, best known for his starring role in the ''Durango Kid'' westerns. Starrett still holds the record for starring in the longest series of theatrical features: ...

as Jim Carmichael *

Randolph Scott George Randolph Scott (January 23, 1898 – March 2, 1987) was an American film actor whose career spanned the years from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of ...

as Captain Frank Robertson

Production

Principal photography for ''Sky Bride'' began February 1932 at the Metropolitan Airport and

Chatsworth, Los Angeles Chatsworth is a suburban neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, California, in the San Fernando Valley. The area was home to Native Americans, some of whom left caves containing rock art. Chatsworth was explored and colonized by the Spanish be ...

studios in the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

of California. Essential to filming the story was a seven-pilot team of

Associated Motion Picture Pilots Associated Motion Picture Pilots (AMPP) was a union of aviators who worked as stunt pilots in the Hollywood film industry. The group, one of the first unions in film work, was organized by Pancho Barnes in 1931Kelly, 2008, p. 8 and formally establ ...

led by Leo Nomis, and later Frank Clarke. On February 5, 1932, the production was halted when lead pilot Nomis was killed while performing a stunt. He had been seriously injured weeks earlier in a race track accident while driving as a stunt double in '' The Crowd Roars'' (1932). Although not fully recovered from his injuries, Nomis tried to perform a difficult spin and landing over railway tracks. Although he completed the stunt twice, a fiery exchange with the director, who demanded a perfect stunt, with the aircraft rolling to a stop directly in front of the cameras, forced the normally imperturbable Nomis to try the stunt a third time. The fatal crash was most probably caused by his inability to fly in complete control, partly because of his injuries and partly because he was upset at his treatment by the director.

Reception

''Sky Bride'' was primarily a

B film A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...

, and although aerial scenes were notable, fell short in other aspects. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' review said the film, "... falls short of being good entertainment. It is too argumentative, and several of the flying scenes are unnecessarily lengthy."Hall, Mourdant
"Moview review: 'Sky Bride' (1932); Skylarking."
''The New York Times'', April 23, 1932. Retrieved: October 21, 2014.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* Pendo, Stephen. ''Aviation in the Cinema''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1985. . * Wynne, H. Hugh. ''The Motion Picture Stunt Pilots and Hollywood's Classic Aviation Movies.'' Missoula, Montana: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1987. .

External links

* * {{IMDb title, id=0023484 1932 films 1932 drama films American aviation films Films directed by Stephen Roberts Films with screenplays by Joseph L. Mankiewicz American black-and-white films American drama films 1930s English-language films 1930s American films English-language drama films