Airport had enough plot and enough star power in its cast for three feature films, and it only encompassed about half of the complexity or characters found in Arthur Hailey's best-selling potboiler. Essentially built around 12 harrowing hours at a major Midwestern airport, the film had everything an audience of the period could have wanted -- suspense, romance, drama, and comedy -- all spread across a vast canvas. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is the manager of Lincoln Airport, facing a night
beset by the worst blizzard in a decade, a wife (Dana Wynter) who announces she wants a divorce, a primary runway blocked by an airliner stuck in a snowdrift, and a governing board ready to fire him. Bakersfeld's cynical, smooth-talking brother-in-law, Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), won't let up on his criticism of the management at Lincoln, but he has his own problems as well, mostly in the form of a young stewardess, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who is pregnant by him and whom he finds he genuinely loves. Add to that the presence of an old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) and a mentally disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) carrying a bomb, and there's more than enough plot to keep viewers engrossed for two hours plus. Airport became one of the top-grossing movies of its era, racking up seven-digit box-office numbers and spawning an entire film genre -- the disaster movie. With Jean Seberg, George Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Barry Nelson, and Maureen Stapleton filling out the rest of the leading roles, there was something for almost everyone in this film. The movie still has a lot to offer if only as a prime example of Hollywood at its most successfully glitzy, but, if possible, viewers should try and see the letterboxed version of Airport on DVD (released May 2001). ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
One of the most embarrassing films to be nominated for Best Picture and other Oscars, Airport is a trashy flick that began the cycle of disaster movies; the spoof Airport is better and more enjoyable.
The first of the Airport disaster films. I remember seeing most of them on Sunday afternoons on TV as a young kid. Big budget blockbusters for the time with an all star cast! I think there were three sequels in the end Airport '75, '77 and '79 concorde! Check them out, still pretty good films and few disaster films
about planes have been made since to this standard.Not too mention it inspired two of the funniest spoof films (Airplane) as well!
A good cast, but the story is predictable and the movie is very long. This is the first of the 70s disaster movie fad, I think, so it's interesting to watch anyway.
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