The two biggest stars are Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin. Lancaster is a workaholic airport director platonically involved with his Girl Friday Jean Seberg. Lancaster is unhappily married to shrewish socialite Dana Wynter. They have two young daughters, Lisa Gerritsen and brunette beauty Ilana Dowding.
Dean Martin is an airline pilot wed to Barbara Hale, but his true love is the considerably more sexy Jacqueline Bisset. The latter reveals she is pregnant. Martin offers to pay for an abortion in Sweden, then suggests adoption, but Bisset has other plans.
Van Heflin is an unemployed construction worker with munitions experience. He is married to diner waitress Maureen Stapleton. They are poor, and Heflin decides to blow up an airplane over the Atlantic for his wife to collect flight insurance. Stapleton suspects something is wrong, and informs Seberg, who learns Heflin is on a flight to France.
Because it is a movie, he is seated next to Helen Hayes, a cagey elderly stowaway and the comic relief for the film. She also won the film's only Oscar, but didn't bother to show up to accept it in person. Perhaps she was in a play somewhere.
The pilot for the flight is Barry Nelson, who is happily married and thus of little interest. Martin is co-pilot and Bisset works as a stewardess, along with black beauty Ena Hartman. Inevitably, Heflin is cornered and ignites his bomb, critically injuring Bisset and crippling the plane, which has a hope of landing safely only a particular runway at Chicago.
Naturally, this runway is blocked by a plane that went off the runway and sunk its landing gear in mud. It is the job of tough guy George Kennedy to free the stuck plane, just in time for Nelson to attempt an emergency landing.
Lesser cast members include Lloyd Nolan as a customs agent, Eileen Wesson as his comely niece, James Nolan as a priest, and, my favorite supporting character, Marcus Rathbone as the jerk in seat 21D. Kids, don't grow up to be like him.
How others will see it. Airport has three things in its favor: an A-list cast, box office success, and a slew of Oscar nominations. However, Patton ensured that it would lose in most categories, and its status as Universal's biggest money-maker was surpassed a few years later by Jaws. Airport had three sequels, none of which rivalled the success of the original, and at least one parody, Airplane!, which satirized the genre so well that it effectively killed it.
Today, message board chatter concentrates on the moral foibles of the romantic leads, and how hot Bisset looks in her wig. The movie seems campy today, but the 9K user ratings at imdb.com confirms continued interest. The ratings average 6.5 and are fairly consistent across age groups and genres. No one takes it seriously, but consensus regards it as an amusing way to pass an idle afternoon.
How I felt about it. It certainly is a busy day for Burt Lancaster. In the course of a few hours, his wife demands he return home, his daughter leaves home, his wife demands a divorce, his Girl Friday announces her intention of taking a distant job, yet he nonetheless begins an affair with Seberg. He also manages to keep the airport open despite the strident demands of his boss and helps resolve the dramas of saboteur Heflin and the blocked runway.
We do wonder about the motives of Dana Wynter. First she wants her husband home so that he can play the role of Husband at one of her myriad social endeavors. Then she wants him gone so that she can move in her lover. This latter decision is to the benefit of all concerned except perhaps the two daughters, who are likely to greet their would-be stepfather with trepidation.
Dean Martin initially comes off badly, cheating on his pleasant wife with hottie Bisset. When she announces her pregnancy, he is all for getting the unexpected dividend out of the way. But to his credit, he retains his charm as she decides to keep it, particularly since she shows no inclination to inform Martin's wife.