I'm a sucker for airline disaster flicks, having worked in an earlier life for a legacy carrier. Caught this for this first time on TCM today, had a good time laughing at the silly and campy dialogue. The actual air disaster doesn't take up that much screen time, maybe .15 at the end. The rest of this is soap opera, filled with flashbacks and voiceovers of each character's thoughts. Good cast and if you're of a certain age you'll remember most of them. WB had a very successful stable of tv shows in 1960, various detective sagas and westerns and a number of those actors are featured. Efrem Zimbalist and Troy Donohue are in the USN fighter jet and Dana Andrews is the Captain of the airliner headed into its path. Sexy Anne Francis is one of the stewardesses, who is also, as she reminds us several times, a "tramp." Keenan Wynn is along, trying to seduce his traveling companion Jean Willes, who was the femme fatale in a handful of Shemp era Three Stooges shorts. For good measure sexy Rhonda Fleming plays Zimalist's wife looking lovely after sharing a a final sexual encounter with him before he leaves. Another movie that had to be an inspiration for the Zucker Brothers and "Airplane."
Review of The Crowded Sky
