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Friday, February 25, 2022

PARACHUTE JUMPER (1933)

Pre-Code programmer captures Douglas Fairbanks Jr on his way out at Warners and Bette Davis on her way up, both in pretty good form.  He’s a cashiered military pilot scrounging for a job when he meets-cute with unemployed secretary/stenographer Bette Davis at the park.  Mistaking her ‘profession,’ there’s mutual pick-up, a plate of ham & eggs, and an available bed at the flat he shares with fellow starving pilot Frank McHugh.  (Racy stuff even by Pre-Code standards, though it’s the boys who share a bed.)  Risking his neck on a dangerous fairgrounds parachute jump, Fairbanks raises a stake on the chauffeur’s uniform needed for steady employment by rich Claire Dodd after she gives him the once-over.  The lady all but undressing him with her eyes in their first interview, but soon losing him to boyfriend/bootlegger Leo Carillo.  (He seems to give Doug the once-over, too!)  Soon, bodyguard Doug is flying in and out of Canada with a cargo of booze, unaware he’s also carrying dope when he shoots down a couple of border patrolmen under the impression they’re hijackers.  A lot of plot in 72 minutes, especially when you factor in four or five perilous stunt flying sequences.  Some of those plane crashes ain’t model work.  Yikes!  Good fun from the normally draggy Alfred E. Green, and unexpected chemistry between platinum blonde Bette and dashing Doug Jr.   Starry too; look fast to spot Walter Brennan & Leon Ames in bit parts.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Inevitably, Carillo hires Davis as his office secretary, unaware she’s living with Doug who again thinks the worst of Bette.  The film entirely motivated by sex, booze, drugs, money and heavy fondling of guns.

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