The blizzard looks real and the big stars are flashy, but Ross Hunter’s 70mm ode to supermarket best sellers still plays like a TV movie. Both airport manager Burt Lancaster and pilot Dean Martin are straying from their marriages, with Jean Seberg (sigh!) and Jacqueline Bisset (wow!). But the direction dotes on cute geriatric stowaway Helen Hayes, mad bomber Van Heflin and crusty facilities troubleshooter George Kennedy. The screenplay sings the praises of American know-how and Boeing aircraft in particular. The biggest trauma for today’s audience is looking back at 1970’s wholesome in-flight meals and the spacious seating in coach!

Airport
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 137 min. / Street Date September 30, 2025 / Available from / 44.95
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, George Kennedy, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Dana Wynter, Barry Nelson, Lloyd Nolan, Barbara Hale, Gary Collins, Larry Gates, Whit Bissell, Virginia Grey, Jessie Royce Landis, Paul Picerni, Merry Anders, Thomas Browne Henry, William Hudson, Gordon Jump, Celia Lovsky, Pat Priest, Marion Ross.
Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo
Art Directors: Alexander Golitzen, E. Preston Ames
Costume Design: Edith Head
Film Editor: Stuart Gilmore
Composer: Alfred Newman
Written for the screen by George Seaton from the novel by Arthur Hailey
Produced by Ross Hunter
Directed by George Seaton (with an assist from Henry Hathaway)

Only the phrase ‘you had to be there’ can explain the big success of 1970’s Airport. Was it a defensive reaction to the changes inflicted by the abandonment of the Production Code?  Easy Rider turned the system upside down and ‘The Kids’ were in charge of the big studios.  20th Fox responded by flipping out with X-rated films by  Russ Meyer and  Michael Sarne.

As if reassuring Nixon’s Silent Majority that it was again safe to go back to the movies, veteran Universal producer Ross Hunter shoehorned a bright cast of old pros into a supermarket best seller by Arthur Hailey, and fashioned what is essentially a 2-hour-plus TV movie writ large. It used the superb 65mm format Todd-AO 65mm, but more than half of it was filmed on sound stages at Universal City.

Hailey’s soap-in-the-sky tells the story of a snowy airport enduring one crisis after another. A blocked runway introduces us to Operations Manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) and his personal feud with the opinionated pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin). Workaholic Mel is estranged from his nagging wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) and attracted to his assistant Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg). Vernon has an ‘arrangement’ with his patient wife Sarah (Barbara Hale) but needs to think seriously about his affair with stewardess Gwen Meighan (Jacqueline Bisset)… who needs to tell Vernon that she’s pregnant.

Vernon and Tanya’s Rome plane takes off with a manifest of stereotypes — businessman, nuns, kids, a priest, a doctor (Paul Picerni) and a stowaway. 73-year-old naughty pixie Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes) is a practiced con-woman, using her ‘cutes’ to hitch free rides. She’s caught by Mel and Tanya but uses her wiles to slip onto the Rome flight at the last minute.

Oh, and there’s one more notable passenger: unemployed and desperate, D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) intends to blow up the entire plane so his wife Inez (Maureen Stapleton) can collect his insurance. Inez runs to the airport to try to stop him; her information plus a hunch by customs inspector Harry Standish (Lloyd Nolan) confirm the bad news — Captain Vernon Demerest is told over the radio that he has a madman with a bomb on board … sitting next to little old Ada Quonsett.

Meanwhile, back in the snow, the dauntless facilities troubleshooter Joe Patroni takes charge of the ‘getting a stalled airliner off the main runway’ problem, chomping on his cigar and making snappy remarks.

Airport isn’t quite long enough to be a full-on Road Show presentation. It has to be the cheapest-looking 70mm film ever. The airport crowd scenes could be filmed in one day. The balance of the movie takes place in windowless rooms decorated as if for an episode of Columbo. Writer-director George Seaton films everything head-on square, and almost all of Ernest Laszlo’s lighting is flat. That Todd-AO lens system is wonderful though — all of the straight lines in the cheap sets stay perfectly straight, as opposed to Panavision’s soft curves or old CinemaScope’s Warp-O-vision distortions.

The cast of pros plays everything strong and solid, giving the screenplay a better reading than it deserves. The dialogues are okay, but the dramatic conflicts are so predictable that we can guess everything about these people before they open their mouths. Burt Lancaster’s manager never loses his temper despite his mounting problems. He’s sick of his wife, but adores his children and doesn’t want to see them hurt. Cranky pilot Dean Martin must finally take responsibility for his love life. Jacqueline Bisset’s ‘liberated’ flight attendant discovers that she has morals after all — she wants to have her baby.

Most everybody else is filling a guest star slot, as if showing up for an episode of Bracken’s World. Fine talent Dana Wynter does her bit and move on; she might not even rate a close-up. Amiable known quantities Barry Nelson, Lloyd Nolan, Barbara Hale, Jessie Royce Landis, Whit Bissell and Virginia Grey are just there to ‘be somebody’ and stand apart from the completely anonymous players in even lesser bit roles. Rich ladies are selfish, middle aged men unreasonable and argumentative, and a priest prays.

The top stars pitch their roles without so much as breaking a sweat. Lancaster and Martin play it straight. They mind their manners, and don’t hog the spotlight. Jacqueline Bisset’s poised Gwen Meighan  ↖  charmed Middle America, contrasting with her caustic showgirl in the much racier star vehicle  The Grasshopper. The legendary Jean Seberg  ↗  was scoring choice mainstream roles after a decade of artsy European work … like Romain Gary’s now-obscure  Birds in Peru.  Seberg is a main reason to consider seeing  Paint Your Wagon a second time; here she brings dignity and grace to a fairly ‘nothing’ role, accompanying Burt around the airport in a station wagon.

Airport was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Pictures. Our semi-cynical take on that is that the Academy considered Ross Hunter’s show ‘good for the industry.’ Several actors in this not-really-an-ensemble were positioned for ‘Academy Consideration,’ in showy parts that reek of Red Buttons Fever.  ^*  The great Maureen Stapleton keeps it classy when her character throws an emotional fit; she can’t be accused of grandstanding. She was nominated, just the same; more power, Ms. Stapleton. George Kennedy’s Herculean task of moving a stubborn airplane is built up as a big tension device, and of course he chomps on his cigar, grits his teeth and saves the day. Kennedy had already won a better-earned Supporting Actor Oscar for  Cool Hand Luke.

The wholly shameless supporting role here belongs to the grand lady Helen Hayes, who won back in 1932 for the then-racy pre-Code drama The Sin of Madelon Claudet.  ↖  Seaton stops Airport in its tracks for Hayes’ character sidebar. Tiny Ada Quonsett astonishes Mel and Tanya with her brazen gall as a cutesy stowaway, a geriatric felon. It’s all played for high comedy, as 1970 is a time when passengers pulling airport scams were less common. The staff at this snowbound airport can barely believe that anyone would be rude, unreasonable, or in Ada Quonsett’s case, sweetly larcenous. And isn’t it swell that Ada’s nerve and skill is just what’s needed later on?  When it comes time to confront the mad bomber, the flight crew puts her on the front line.

Helen Hayes is fine — she doesn’t overplay or milk scenes. And she nailed another Support Oscar, winning over Karen Black, Lee Grant, Sally Kellerman, and Airport’s Maureen Stapleton. Out of the film’s ten nominations, she was the sole winner.

We forgot our Mad Bomber. Van Heflin’s sad case is so beneath the great actor’s dignity — a would-be suicide who rolls out a broad selection of ‘disturbed’ stares and facial tics.  ↗  He drums his fingers and clutches his briefcase as if it might explode at any second. We’re grateful that Heflin contributes some tension to the non-story, even if we know he’s not going to bring down the jet plane.

Gee, 1970 was an earlier age of social civility. Airport security was nothing like today; we didn’t feel as if violence could break out in any public place. Skyjackings were not really ‘a thing’ yet, either.

In 1970 we also weren’t very conscious of product placement in movies . . . but Airport is one giant valentine for the airline industry. Airport seizes every opportunity to stress how safe flying is, how professional are its pilots, and how infallible are its planes. George Kennedy’s Joe Patroni clears away ice, but he also knows Boeing’s jets inside and out and is qualified to taxi them on the ground. He squabbles with pilots over what they can and cannot do, and dispenses a steady diet of ‘expert’ bon mots:

•  “That’s one nice thing about the 707. She can do everything but read.”
•  “I know every inch of the 707!  Take the wings off this and you could use it as a tank!”
•  “I’ll be back in time if I have to pull that plane out with my teeth!”

The pilots take a minute to stare at the plane that made a miraculous landing, praising Boeing by name. Not even a BOMB could wreck it. With all those hosannas pointed directly at the aviation company, producer Ross Hunter could have negotiated free use of airport facilities for shooting, or even a nice contribution to the budget. It’s the old Hollywood but new, an inside job where the film itself can be a corporate infomercial, and nobody will call foul.

Airport played very well with 1970 audiences. I think the word got around that it was ‘safe’ for the Reader’s Digest public seeking relief from the Nixon bashing and accusations of war crimes in Vietnam. It had no rape scene, nobody is scalped on camera, and no dirty hippies spout obscenities and tell us that America Is Evil. Qualified white males are what make the country go, dammit — Joe Petroni is there to solve any problem.

Airport made everything all nice again. Flying by air looks like a pleasure cruise, with broad aisles and impossibly roomy seats. The food tray we see in the aisle looks like something for a beach resort, with a single goblet with a tower of giant shrimp … now how would they serve that?

The film gave a definite boost to the Disaster Film genre. Producer Irwin Allen added cheap Sci-fi, cheap visual effects and even more star-heavy cast rosters. He gave us a capsized boat, a preposterous high-rise fire, and some  stupid bees before flaming out with a  volcanic catastrophe. As these were family films with ‘moral lessons,’ the Puritanical backlash against sex only became more acute. Jacqueline Bisset suffers for her sins in this show, but that wouldn’t suffice for Irwin Allen’s Towering Inferno. His illicit lovers are punished as human torches.

Watching Airport now, we see a LOT of direct inspiration for producers Zucker, Zucker, Abrahams, Koch and Davison’s 1980 spoof  Airplane!, right down to a major star taking a work call from a phone on a blank wall. The Airport sequels got way out of hand with ridiculous story elements, retaining just one recurring character, George Kennedy’s Joe Petroni. His name always reminds me of the big machine that preps the ice for hockey games … Say, maybe Mel Bakersfeld’s runways could borrow one from a hockey team!

A much earlier sky calamity potboiler was an even bigger influence on Airplane!  Its makers didn’t invent their own storyline, but instead did an almost straight remake of 1957’s already laughable  Zero Hour!, barely changing the story and retaining big chunks of dialogue. And whattaya know, the primary screenwriter and source author for Zero Hour! was none other than that man with the golden typewriter, Arthur Hailey.

An amusing — and true! — note from correspondent Alan Dezzani, 09.13.25:

Hi Glenn … I recently saw Airport for the first time in many years on one of the streaming services. Something I never noticed before was that all the problems on that flight may have been caused by one person … not Van Heflin’s mad bomber, Guerrero. I would refer to this person as ‘Annoying Passenger.’ He was a balding guy with glasses. As I recall he is introduced complaining to the stewardess that it is too cold and demands a blanket. In the tense showdown, when Dean Martin’s Captain Demerest grabs the briefcase from Guerrero, the Annoying Passenger grabs it from him!  He yells something like “that’s private property!” and then returns it to Guerrero.

A short time later, when Captain Demerest is trying to reason with Guerrero at the back of the plane (and appears to be making good progress) a man exits the lavatory. At that point the Annoying Passenger yells “Grab him he’s got a bomb!” and Guerrero locks himself in the lavatory and detonates the bomb.

The Annoying Passenger makes a final appearance, going into panic as landing approaches, and getting slapped in the face by a priest doing the sign of cross.

My previous viewings of Airport were on relatively small CRT screens. I’m sure this detail was now noticed because I have a large 75″ HD monitor. A good argument for going to the theater to see films. — Alan

Helping out in this crucial bit of film detective work is CineSavant correspondent ‘Woggly’ … who identifies the ‘annoying passenger’ as character Marcus Rathbone, played by actor Peter Turgeon and given 17th billing. Our good work here is done.

KL Studio Classics’ 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Airport is a terrific-looking encoding of George Seaton and Ross Hunter’s big 1970 moneymaker. We praise that Kino notes that the 4K scan isn’t from a 65mm element. It still looks excellent. Color values are stable at all times. The bombastic score was the last from the famed composer Alfred Newman; it’s present in a 5.1 audio track.

Ross Hunter probably considered himself a pioneer for using split screens back in his  Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies. As creative split screens were in vogue in the late 1960s they get used here, but in a very prosaic way. The film’s opticals were created by Linwood Dunn’s company, which I visited with Hoyt Yeatman a couple of years later. Dunn had a 65mm optical rig, with which the veteran optical cameraman Don Weed created split screens for  Woodstock and blew up 16mm way beyond sane limits for  The Concert for Bangladesh. We presume that Dunn’s printer also added the snowfall effect seen in many shots. The larger format hides any degradation in the image.

The only outright fake images are model shots of the airliner in flight, rising through clouds that remain static. Airplane! copied them for big laughs.

Was Ross Hunter a genius, or was he just lucky that his short-cut movie performed like an epic at the box office?  If it was luck, it didn’t last through his next budget epic, a musical remake of  Lost Horizon. That conspicuous bomb sent him to finish his otherwise notable career with three TV movies. I relate my embarrassing personal Ross Hunter story in that Blu-ray review. Mr. Hunter was certainly nice enough to me, not causing a scene.

Kino is releasing all of the Airport movies in 4K. This one gets a new commentary from Julie Kirgo paired with C. Courtney Joyner.

Something surprising happened while watching Airport. Somewhere in chapter 7, the 4K disc froze up and we had to abort the show. Having the second Blu-ray allowed us to finish, though. This has happened only on one other disc with my LG machine. The individual disc may be defective but it’s possible that my player is becoming finicky. On changing to Blu-ray the quality difference really stood out — the HD encoding couldn’t match the image-defining better contrast in the UHD.

This  Hennepin History Museum page remembers the Airport shoot in Minnesota, with some fun details. The lady who sells flight insurance to Van Heflin was an actress recruited locally.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Airport
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: a mystery: only Fair but Entertaining Anyway
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0
Supplements:
Audio commentary by Julie Kirgo and C. Courtney Joyner
Remastered Trailer (Blu-ray only).
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September, 2025
(7391airp)

^*    TV comedian Red Buttons was considered show business poison when he lucked into a role in the Marlon Brando movie  Sayonara. His part won him an Oscar and booted him full-time into the movies. Ever since then, supporting actors’ agents have fought for ‘billing in a box’ and more attention for their clients, regardless of what might be good for the movie itself.

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