The Sheila Variations

"Calling Barranca!"

"Movie prop" plane found - and featured on Antiques Roadshow. The guest on the show, who had found the plane, describes coming across it at a swap meet - and the guy selling it said it was from a movie with a name like "The Wings of an Angel." The guest decided not to purchase (having never heard of such a movie). And then:

So as I was walking away he just said, "Oh, the only other thing I know about it is is that Cary Grant starred in the movie." And as soon as he said that, I knew exactly what movie it was. I knew it was "Only Angels Have Wings." And I knew that it was a Howard Hawks film. I knew that Jean Arthur and Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth were in it. But what I couldn't remember was, in the story line, the name of the airline. I ultimately bargained with him, got the price down to $195, and I loaded it in my car and I drove about as fast as I could around the corner to a local bookseller and I ran up the stairs and I found the first biography I could of Cary Grant and I flipped it open to "Only Angels Have Wings," and there it was, Barranca Airlines.

Turns out it was one of the model planes used in Only Angels Have Wings. Jim Emerson blogs about it (and also provides a clip of one of the action sequences in the film which still has the power, even to my modern-day eyes, to take my breath away). I love it. "Movie prop"!!

Here's a post I wrote about the first 10 minutes of Only Angels Have Wings - a long pantomime through a crazy third-world street ... no dialogue really ... but man, what atmosphere. What a world is created - immediately.

Here's one of my many posts about Howard Hawks.

"Who's Joe?"
"Never heard of him."