Come Fly with Me is a 1963 British Jet Ageromantic comedy film directed by Henry Levin and released by MGM. Featuring an ensemble cast of Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karlheinz Böhm, Pamela Tiffin, Karl Malden, and Lois Nettleton, it is based on Bernard Glemser's 1960 chick-lit novel Girl on a Wing,[1] which was published again in 1969 under the title The Fly Girls. It follows three young international air hostesses looking for romance and excitement, weaving abundant soap opera elements into its tale of opportunity for glamorous travel and adventures with men that came with being an airline hostess.
Plot
On her first day on the New York-Paris route with Polar-Atlantic international airlines, stewardess Carol locks herself in a bathroom and delays departure. Once airborne, flight engineer Teddy plays a practical joke on her.
Meanwhile, hostess Donna wants to achieve affluence and social prestige. When she learns that a young Baron, Franz Von Elzingen, can provide both, she sets her cap for him.
Copilot Ray invites Carol to "dinner" but leaves her cold when his still-not-ex girlfriend, the married Katie, waylays him.
Texan Walter sends a drunk packing when he goes too far with hostess Hilda Bergstrom; taken, she accepts his invitation for a night on the town. Donna and Carol trick the economy class-flying Walter into picking a chic eatery, appalling Hilda. They later take in a movie and go to an amusement park, where Walter reveals that his wife died four months earlier. He is traveling at his sister's advice to get over it, and Hilda reminds him of her. Fearful of getting hurt, she cuts the date short.
Katie's husband comes to the hotel looking for her; Carol warns the trysters, then curls on the bed in Katie's place, pretending that she is Ray's plaything. Ray still gets socked in the jaw, on principle. Carol then lectures him on his shabby “values”.
Next stop, Vienna. Aware he might be intercepted by police, the Baron leaves his gold cigarette case – which earlier caught Donna's eye – on his seat with a note for her in it to meet him at a cafe. The cash-poor aristocrat prefers being a diamond smuggling “mule” over a job and left his cache with the clueless stewardess, who cannot race to deliver it back to him at their rendezvous.
The pair are off in his Jaguar E-type to waterski and frolic overnight. Before they part, he convinces Donna to bring him back a carton of custom cigarettes he made for him in New York, duping her into being another mule. Meanwhile, Hilda freezes Walter out, and Carol plays patty-cake with Ray, who gets demoted to flying backwater air charters for the airline because of his misadventures with love.
At the hotel in Paris, the three stewardesses are led to a luxury suite, which Donna lords over the others as the Baron's lavishing on her. Walter admits he sprung for it and is chastised by Hilda for wasting money that he does not have. Flummoxed, he admits that he has $40 million.[a] Now fearing that he is looking for a "joyride" instead of a wife, Hilda chases him out.
Reinstated in his old job, Ray consoles a crying child traveling alone by taking him to the cockpit to “fly the airplane.” Carol is so taken by this tender side of Ray that she encourages the passengers to fill out cards to praise him to the airline's president.
In a change of heart, the Baron insists to his overlord, an upper-class Brit, that he is through using Donna as his mule. Donna is apprehended at airport customs and charged with smuggling stolen diamonds.
Temporarily released by the police as a cat's paw, she meets the Baron at an out-of-the-way cafe. He tries to placate her with money for a good attorney, but she refuses it, then returns the heirloom necklace he stole her heart with. Leaving in disgust, she sees a police car staking them out and believes the Baron is giving himself up. She kisses him goodbye using his preferred farewell, “Auf Wiedersehen”.[b] Before her flight can leave Vienna, an emissary of the Baron returns the necklace with the message “Auf Wiedersehen.”
On board, the girls discover that the plane is empty – but for one Texan in economy class. The destination is wherever Hilda wants to go, as long as she would like. Carol goes to the cockpit, but before she can deliver another lecture to Ray on "values" he straps her into a jump seat, gags her, and sets about framing a marriage proposal.
Henry Levin was signed to direct in April 1962.[3]
The film was known in production as Champagne Flight,[4]The Friendliest Girls in the World[5] and Girl on a Wing.[6]
The film was shot in Panavision and Metrocolor during 1962 in New York City, Paris, Versailles, Vienna, and the Woerthersee with studio interiors shot at MGM British Studios in Borehamwood, England. The shoot took 12 weeks.[7]
It premiered in the United States on 27 March 1963.
Glemsser wrote a follow-up novel in 1972, titled The Super-Jet Girls. It was not made into a film.
Critical reception
Variety gave the film a mixed review, writing, "Sometimes one performance can save a picture and in Come Fly with Me it's an engaging and infectious one by Pamela Tiffin. The production has other things going for it like an attractive cast, slick pictorial values and smart, stylish direction by Henry Levin, but at the base of all this sheer sheen lies a frail, frivolous and featherweight storyline that, in trying to take itself too seriously, flies into dramatic air pockets and crosscurrents that threaten to send the entire aircraft into a tailspin."[1]
Notes
^$40 million then is worth ten times that in the 2020s.[2]
^In English, it can be translated as “until we see each other again”.
^Scheuer, Philip K. (3 April 1962). "'Pawnbroker' Will Be Steiger Vehicle: McGiver Back at Funmaking; Curious Case of Lotte Lenya". Los Angeles Times. p. C9.
^Scott, J. L. (13 July 1962). "Teaming of schell MacLaine projected". Los Angeles Times. ProQuest168140911.
^ abScheuer, Philip K. (12 August 1962). "The Tea Break Notwithstanding, London Studios Humming". Los Angeles Times. p. A7.
^Scheuer, P. K. (3 April 1962). "'Pawnbroker' will be steiger vehicle". Los Angeles Times. ProQuest168113663.
^"'Rome Adventure' Begins Multiple Engagement Soon". Los Angeles Times. 27 April 1962. p. C13.
