Jean Arthur August: Flying Luck (1927)

There are some actors who seem to be great in everything they do without exception. This month we explore some of Jean Arthur’s lesser-known films to find out if she really was great in everything.

RODNEY BOWCOCK: Monty Banks stars in Flying Luck as a character simply known as “The Boy.” He’s a Lindberg obsessed bumpkin whose attempts at building and flying his own plane via a set of mail-order instructions fails, and is inspired to enlist in the Army so he can have the opportunity to fly for his country. There are a series of Military-Comedy style gags and incidents, but as these things typically turn out, “The Boy” becomes a hero at the end, winning the admiration and love of the colonel’s pretty daughter, Jean Arthur.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: Most of the comedy in this film comes from miscommunication, one which gets him kicked off a bus taking him to his Army base, one which lands him at a dinner with high-ranking officials, and one which gets him in the air in an Army plane.

RB: These situations are reminiscent to me of many early 40’s Army comedies; there seems to be an endless supply of them, including the Monty Banks directed Great Guns with Laurel and Hardy. While I’m not knowledgeable enough to say if this was a popular setting for comedies at the time that Flying Luck was released, I think it’s safe to say that they seemed a lot fresher at this time than when similar gags would be trotted out 15 years later.

SG: One of the best scenes is when his bunkmates mistake the colonel’s daughter’s luggage for Monty’s and they all dress up in lingerie to spook him, to his complete confusion.

RB: There is definitely a pre-code aspect to many of these gags, as Monty is ribbed by his peers for a perceived femininity and gayness. While some may find these sorts of gags uncomfortable now, in several years, the Hays code would essentially wipe away the concept that gay people existed in any way shape or form from the screens.

SG: Monty Banks movies don’t have the complete authenticity of other thrill comedies of the time, like those done by Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, but the use of models sometimes makes them more fun because we know the danger isn’t real, so we can give in fully to the comedy. That isn’t to say he never did stunts; he did many, and had the scars to prove it. He also employed stunt men at a rate of $10 per day, which brought complaints against him to the labor commissioner in 1925.

RB: Monty also didn’t have the strong screen personalities of Lloyd and Keaton. He has a lot more in common with Charley Chase or maybe even Raymond Griffith, and while I am as fond of those folks as anyone else reading this piece (especially Charley), in a sense it works against him here. He’s a pleasant character to be sure, but because you feel so little connection to him, sometimes the gags can fall a little flatter than they should.

SG: Walter Kerr wrote, “It is almost impossible now to describe a once-popular comedian like Monty Banks by speaking of his mannerisms; he doesn’t seem to have any.” Two years after immigrating to the US from Italy, Banks made his first comedy short for L-KO and his career took off in the comedy arena. When sound married film, he went back to Europe and a career as a director for British International Pictures.

RB: Banks was married to popular screen star Gracie Fields, whose films were being distributed by 20th Century Fox. To appease her, Daryl Zanuck forced producer Sol Wurtzel to hire Banks to direct Laurel and Hardy in their first Fox film, Great Guns. It didn’t go well. In fact, according to Scott MacGillivray’s (highly recommended) book Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward, they HATED working with Banks. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy includes an interview with Paul Wurtzel, the son of Sol: “My father had to use Monty Banks. He didn’t want to se Monty Banks, but Zanuck was making a deal with Monty Banks’s wife…so Zanuck would say ‘I want you to have Monty Banks as the director'.” Stan Laurel had also been close friends with Gracie Fields, and Lois Laurel suspects that Banks had been having difficulties getting work and Stan had lobbied for him. Either way, he was a vicious and temperamental director and wouldn’t work again.

SG: Jean Arthur had previously worked with Banks in Horse Shoes released the same year, for which she was paid $700. He had spotted her in a western and liked her. Moving Picture World called her “altogether pleasing” in the film. It must’ve been a good working experience as well because following her two months shooting The Masked Menace serial in New York, she returned to California to make Flying Luck. The film doesn’t give her the chance to do much besides look cute, but her popularity was increasing with each project.

RB: She IS cute here for sure, but I agree that she doesn’t really offer much more than that. Like so many other characters in this, or any number of other silent comedies, there is little character development. The gags are the thing.

SG: Photoplay said, “His experiences are one hardship after another, which are supposed to be funny but appear for the most part ridiculous. Jean Arthur makes a fascinating colonel's daughter.”

Harrison’s Reports called it, “Not a bad burlesque,” and, “A pretty good program picture.”

Raymond Ganly of Motion Picture News felt Horse Shoes was a better film. He said, “The story does not unravel nicely and build concretely towards its climax — an air meet — rather it appears as if while journeying towards this highlight they sprinkle humor too liberally throughout the plot development so that the middle portion is more worthwhile as comedy than its climax where the ‘grand finales’ are generally staged.”

RB: The film serves as an interesting time-capsule of a time when we still had national heroes, like when we all seemed to idolize astronauts. In this case, the object is the late 20’s adulation of Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight. The early Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy, in which Mickey mimics Lindbergh’s shaggy hair also comes to mind. He was an instant hero, even inspiring a dance-craze, the Lindy Hop, and in a few years, the scandalous kidnapping of his son (I regret having passed up on the purchase of a vintage scrapbook of newspaper clippings regarding the Lindbergh baby kidnapping that I found at a rural antique shop in Alabama). For fun gags and as a time capsule of a country and a time that has long gone by, I found this a fun and pleasant three star watch.

SG: I watched this after seeing Play Safe and Atta Boy and it was a wonderful continuation of my understanding of this appealing and funny comedian. I hope more of his features get released in the near future. Three stars.