Flying High (1931)
Directed by Charles Reisner
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Flying High was a nonsensical Broadway musical hit of 1930 starring Bert Lahr. The film version, made one year later by MGM, made a few efforts to "cinematize" the stage original, but the focus was on Lahr, re-creating his Broadway performance virtually verbatim -- except for his famous (and notorious) gag sequence involving a urinalysis! Lahr plays the goofy inventor of an "aerocopter" flying machine, who is compelled to prove the efficiency of his invention in a slapstick cross-country airmail delivery race. While Lahr's original Broadway co-star Kate Smith does not appear in the film, he was more than amply matched comedically by Charlotte Greenwood. The musical numbers for Flying High were choreographed by Busby Berkeley; one of his more engaging routines was later excerpted for the 1934 Ted Healy/Three Stooges two-reeler Plane Nuts.
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Keywords
flying, inventor, air-race, journey, aircraft, competition, machine, cross-country, flight, world-record