Stubs - The Last Flight

The Last Flight (1931) Starring: Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown, Helen Chandler. Directed by William Dieterle. Screenplay by John Monk Saunders. Based on the novel Single Lady by John Monk Saunders (New York, l931). No Producer Credited. Run time: 80 minutes. USA Black and White Drama, Pre-Code.

After the First World War, many American soldiers chose to stay in Europe rather than return to the States. They needed to forget the horrors they encountered during the war and with a generous exchange rate for the U.S. dollar, they could afford a more hedonistic lifestyle. Besides, Prohibition had taken a stranglehold back in the States and drinking seemed in order for these Vets.

Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises labeled these expatriates with the designation “the lost generation.” However, that book was not the only one to deal with the lost generation. So did Single Lady by John Monk Saunders. However, while the film adaptation for Hemingway’s book took 31 years, Saunders’ novel, one in a series of books featuring the character Nikki, was made into a movie the same year it was published.

Pilot Cary Lockwood (Richard Barthelmess) and his gunner,
Shep Lambert (David Manners), before they get shot down.

But the film doesn’t start with a focus of Nikki, rather a dog fight during World War I. In that fight, a pilot, Cary Lockwood (Richard Barthelmess), and his gunner, Shep Lambert (David Manners), are shot down. The plane catches fire before it crashes, but both men survive.

Shep and Cary about to get released from the hospital.

However, the recovery is slow as both men have severe injuries. They remain in the hospital until Armistice Day. But they are not fully cured. Cary has severe burns on his hands and Shep appears to have a permanent twitch under his injured eye. Even the doctor (George Irving) isn’t encouraging, telling another Military Officer (George Irving) that they’re spent.

Officer at Hospital: Why can't they go on with flying? You know, the airmails or something?

Military Doctor: I'm afraid they're unfit for further service in that direction. They fell, you know - six thousand meters. Like dropping a fine Swiss watch on the pavement. Shattered both of them. Their nervous systems are deranged, disorganized, brittle.

Officer at Hospital: Spent bullets.

Military Doctor: Spent bullets. That's it. They're like projectiles, shaped for war and hurled at the enemy. They've described a beautiful, high-arching trajectory. And now they've fallen back to earth. Spent. Cooled off. Useless.

On their way out of the hospital, Cary and Shep run into two other wounded officers from their unit, pilot Bill Talbot (John Mack Brown) and his gunner Francis (Elliot Nugent), who are on their way in suffering from shell shock. They ask if Cary and Shep are going home and the answer is no. They’re going to Paris. The four agree to meet up there.

Nikki (Helen Chandler) surrounded by Shep and Cary, as well as
 Bill Talbot (John Mack Brown) and Francis (Elliot Nugent), at a bar in Paris.

Later, in Paris, the four go on a permanent drunk, making the rounds of bars throughout the city with no real aim in life. One night, they run across Nikki (Helen Chandler), a rather bored rich girl who is also searching for meaning. At the moment, she is holding a glass with a man’s teeth in them, which gets Cary’s attention.

Thinking there is a fight in progress, the men rush off but are too late to actually see the fight, which ends in a single punch. When they return, the man has reclaimed his teeth and they invite Nikki to join them.

Nikki makes what she thinks is an innocent comment about Cary, who needs two hands to drink. Shep admonishes her since his hands were badly burned, which she wouldn’t have known. But it does make Nikki more sympathetic towards Cary.

Along the way, the four men have picked up a fifth, Frink (Walter Byron), an American foreign correspondent. Frink is the first to make a play for Nikki, but she shows no interest in him.

The drinking continues back in Nikki's apartment.

The drinking continues and the five men escort Nikki back to her apartment, where they discover she’s rich and they are impressed by nearly everything she has, including two Turtles she keeps there.

Nikki and Cary in the cemetery discussing the story of Heloise and Abelard.

The next morning, Cary leaves to go to a cemetery and Nikki insists on going with him. There, he tells her the story of Heloise and Abelard, whom he describes as great lovers. Realizing that she has interfered with his plans for the day, Nikki starts to cry. Cary is sympathetic until she announces that at least his story has provided names for her two turtles.

Angry, Cary decides to go on his own to Portugal. After learning of his plans, Nikki and the other men, including Frink, follow him on board. It is on the train that Frink forces himself on Nikki and the other men, who now hate him, defend her and knock him out. He is apologetic when he regains consciousness but he is now on the outs with the other men.

At the bullfight in Portugal.

The drinking doesn’t stop when they get to Portugal and continues even at a bullfight they attend. Bill, a former football player, thinks that bullfighting doesn’t look too hard and jumps into the ring before the others can stop him.

Cary, Nikki, and Shep try to comfort Bill, who has been fatally wounded.

But bullfighting proves deadly, as Bill is fatally gored by a bull. The others are with him at the hospital but are sent away by the doctor.

Frink (Walter Byron) with Nikki at the carnival before a fight erupts.

After leaving Bill at the hospital, the others visit an outdoor carnival. Outside a shooting gallery, which uses real bullets, Cary and Frink quarrel and Frink threatens to shoot Cary. During the tense stand-off, Francis, who is a sure shot, shoots and kills Frink. After the shooting, Francis disappears for good.

Cary tries to comfort Shep as he dies in the cab after being fatally shot.

Nikki, Cary, and Shep leave the scene in a cab and it is only when Shep gets his lighter for Nikki that they discover he was shot in the exchange. Shep is fatally wounded and dies in the cab.

Shep Lambert: You know Cary, I feel just like we're falling. A long time ago, d'you remember? Spinning, spinning, spinning, only, you brought me down safe. Oh Cary, good old Cary, best flier in the service.

Nikki: Oh Shepard, Shepard darling.

Cary Lockwood: Oh, we're going to make a safe landing again Shep.

Shep Lambert: Not this time, Cary, old Shep's gonna crash. Say, we're spinning fast. Level off. Cary, level off.

Nikki: Oh Shepard, Shepard darling.

Later, on a train, Nikki notices that Cary is writing a letter to Shep’s mother and thinks it’s touching.

Cary tells Nikki that after the war, all they had left was their comradeship. Touched, she begs to stay with him.

Richard Barthelmess, the star of the film, had been in films since 1916, having played opposite Lillian Gish in D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920). Barthelmess became one of Hollywood's higher-paid performers, starring in such classics as The Patent Leather Kid (1927) and The Noose (1928), both of which would garner him Academy Awards nominations for Best Actor.

Barthelmess had been built around his boyish leads and as the 1930s rolled around, age was starting to catch up to him. Here, he is already 36 and while he gives a good performance, he may be too old for the character he’s playing. There really isn’t much action for him after the first scenes, other than drinking, but his character does stand apart from the others in that he seems to want to do something more than drinking his life away. What that is isn’t resolved here but he is the only one that seems to break away from the pack mentality.

David Manners is perhaps best known for his work in two other films released at about the same time as The Last Flight; John Harker in Dracula (1931) and archeologist Frank Whemple in The Mummy (1932). His entry into films was through meeting director James Whales at a Hollywood party. His stint in films was rather short, as he retired from Hollywood in 1936 but continued acting for another 17 years on stage.

In this film, he gets to say a few witty/sarcastic remarks that were probably more clever in its time, but appears to play drunk throughout. His death scene is surprisingly good, however. A likable actor, he would also appear in films opposite Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Stuart, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Ann Dvorak, and Helen Chandler, with whom he was paired several times.

Helen Chandler may also be best known for her work on Dracula, in which she played the female lead Mina Seward. She made her film debut in the silent film The Music Master (1927) and made the transition to sound. She received some of her best reviews for her work in Outward Bound (1930) alongside Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Beryl Mercer in the film version of the stage success.

Her film career was also short. Alcoholism would get the better of her and by 1938 she was out of films. She makes for a very odd character in The Last Flight. Nikki comes across at times as a bit thick but also as quite caring, especially for Cary. I don’t know if this is how she is portrayed in the books but it would be hard to imagine such a character could sustain a series.

Johnny Mack Brown plays Bill Talbot, an ex-athlete who always feels he has something to prove, which appears to be drinking and tackling a horse, which he does early on trying to impress Nikki. Brown, like his character, was a former college football player, so he was cast to type. He had a career in Westerns and also played Mary Pickford's love interest in her first talkie, Coquette (1929). There isn’t much room for Brown to show range in this role.

Elliot Nugent’s Francis is lethargic to the point of narcolepsy. It doesn’t help his condition that he’s also drinking all the time as well. His sudden action at the end of the film seems like an awakening of sorts but otherwise, he is pretty much asleep. When he disappears at the end of the film, you have to wonder if he’d be missed.

At the time of its release, the film got good reviews. Our favorite critic from that time, Mordaunt Hall writing in The New York Times, called the film “a curious but often brilliant study of the post-war psychology of four injured American aviators.” He credits director Wilhelm Dieterle as having “performed his task most skillfully, sensing exactly the moods of the narrative and eliciting from the players something which tells one that the injured aviators are especially sensitive when it comes to any reference that brings to mind a dramatic happening in their fighting careers.” Hall also felt that “Most of this picture, in spite of the underlying idea, is filled with clever nonsense.”

Despite the good reviews, the film, which opened on August 29, 1931 grossed $450,000 on a budget of $491,000, which means it lost money.

I will have to disagree with Hall on this one. I don’t see the brilliance or the clever nonsense. Perhaps if I had viewed The Last Flight when the film was first released and the “lost generation” was fresher in my mind, I might have had a different reaction. However, based on my experience the film is bookended by some action but a lot of drinking and hard-to-follow dialogue in between. You are sympathetic to the condition these men find themselves in, having been "spent" by the war, but they lose you with how they try to handle it. This might be a fairly accurate depiction of what life was like for these ex-pat GIs in the years following the Great War, but it has not aged well.