Keep 'Em Flying
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Keep 'Em Flying is a 1941 American comedy film directed by Arthur Lubin starring the team of Abbott and Costello alongside Martha Raye and Carol Bruce. The film was their third service comedy based on the peacetime draft of 1940. The comedy team had appeared in two previous service comedies in 1941, before the United States entered the war: Buck Privates, released in January, and In the Navy, released in May. Flying Cadets, along with Keep 'Em Flying were both produced by Universal Pictures in 1941.
The film's title is taken from the official motto of the U.S. Army Air Corps, some five months after it had been reformed into the USAAF. Keep 'Em Flying reflected the "spirit of the times" and encouraged many young men to volunteer for flight training."
Jinx Roberts, an arrogant but talented stunt pilot, and his assistants Blackie and Heathcliff, are fired from a carnival air show after a disagreement with the owner. Jinx decides to join the Army Air Corps, and he, Blackie and Heathcliff go to a nightclub to party one last time. Jinx falls for the club's singer, Linda Joyce. Coincidentally, she leaves her job to become a USO hostess at the same Academy where Jinx and her brother, Jimmy, are enrolled.
Jinx's instructor at the Academy turns out to be Craig Morrison, his co-pilot on a commercial aircraft years earlier, and the two still hold animosity for each other. Meanwhile, Blackie and Heathcliff persuade a colonel to allow them to join the Air Corps as ground crewman. They fall in love with twin USO hostesses.
Once romance takes hold, Blackie and Heathcliff take their girls back to the same carnival they were fired from. The owner is not pleased to see Heathcliff and chases him through the fun house. Heathcliff somehow ends up telling his troubles to a gorilla.
Jinx hatches a plan to help Jimmy solo by abandoning him in mid-air. Jimmy is nearly killed landing the plane. Linda deplores Jinx for his ill-conceived actions and he, along with Blackie and Heathcliff, who have had several mishaps of their own, are discharged from the air corps. In an aerial display during graduation, Craig parachutes out of a plane but gets his chute caught on the tail end of the aircraft. Jinx, watching from the ground, confiscates an aircraft and flies to his rescue. For his heroic actions, Jinx is reinstated and wins back Linda's affections.
Keep 'Em Flying was filmed at the Cal-Aero Academy in Ontario, California from September 5-October 29, 1941 under the working title Up in the Air. Costello's brother Pat Costello was used as Lou's stunt double. Cinematographer Elmer Dyer filmed the aerial sequences with Paul Mantz looking after the aerial "stunts". Although Keep 'Em Flying was filmed after Ride 'Em Cowboy, the film was released first to coincide with the War Department's Keep 'Em Flying Week
Cast
Bud Abbott as Blackie Benson
Lou Costello as Heathcliff
Martha Raye as Gloria Phelps / Barbara Phelps
Carol Bruce as Linda Joyce
William Gargan as Craig Morrison
Dick Foran as Jinx Roberts
Charles Lang as Jim Joyce
William Davidson as Gonigle
Truman Bradley as Butch
Loring Smith as Maj. Barstow
William Forrest as Colonel
Freddie Slack as Pianist
