It’s hard to pick a favorite Howard Hawks films given the diverse amount of genres he worked in and always at such a high level. “To Have and Have Not’, ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Rio Bravo’, ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘Red River’–Jesus, what an absurd list of genres to have conquered. Yet near the top of the list for me is one of his lesser-known works, ‘Only Angels Have Wings’, a 1939 aviation story starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Click here to read what it’s about–who has time to summarize plots for Goddsakes? Okay, basically it’s about a flying service based in a fictional South American port called Baranca which operates as a fledgling delivery service in the early days of Air Mail. The film is essentially a stage-bound group study of personalities, conflicts, love affairs etc. but is so skillfully drawn and emotionally pointed that one forgets it was mostly shot on a stage at Columbia Studios (what exteriors there are were shot on the Columbia Ranch in–get this–North Hollywood). Above I’ve shared the film’s trailer and a flight sequence with you in the hopes of piquing your interest in watching it for the first time or rewatching it as I plan to do this weekend between football games. The aerial scene is terrific–it’s the real thing, shot with a camera on one plane flying slightly ahead of the picture plane. (By the way, the plane being photographed is a Hamilton H-47, an early passenger plane that was also used for mail delivery. There is precisely one of these still in existence and apparently it was displayed recently at the famous summer Air Show in Oshkosh, hosted by the Experimental Aircraft Association of which I’m a proud member). The only shot that I’m not convinced is practical is that long-ish view which starts at 1:30. It appears to me to be a very nicely construced model with a very nicely operated toy plane on it.