By Erin Free
When it comes to the now somewhat maligned “disaster movie” genre popularised in the 1970s, one figure stands above all others in the form of producer, writer and director Irwin Allen, whose extraordinary double-shot of The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure remains the high point of the genre. There is another man, however, whose role in the popularity of the disaster is almost of equal importance. Though now rarely discussed, the Airport “disaster movie” series of the 1970s was hugely popular, and the driving force behind it was producer Jennings Lang. And while the Airport series actually kicked off before The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure were released, Jennings Lang never receives the credit he really deserves for ushering in the “disaster movie” genre.
There are, perhaps, a couple of reasons for this, the first being the enormous success of the Flying High films (named, of course, Airplane in the US), which uproariously parodied the Airport series to such an extent as to almost make it redundant in the eyes of modern audiences. The second reason for the lack of credit paid to Jennings Lang is the fact that his professional career has over the years been so overshadowed by his personal life. Lang’s affair with actress Joan Bennett is not only alleged to have inspired the plot for Billy Wilder’s classic 1960 comedy The Apartment, it also ended up getting him shot by Bennett’s irate and desperate husband, Hollywood producer Walter Wanger. The scandal was made even more prurient by the fact that Wanger shot Lang in the groin, though he missed his vitals, despite rampant rumour that he’d actually hit the target. “I’m living proof,” quipped Jennings Lang’s son many years later. But let’s move on from Jennings Lang’s controversial personal life (check out this Vanity Fair podcast if you’d like all the details), and onto his film career.
Born in 1915 in New York City, Jennings Lang originally practiced as a lawyer before moving into the film industry as a highly successful talent agent. From there, he eventually moved upwards into the position of vice president at MCA TV, where he was involved in the creation of television classics like McHale’s Navy and Wagon Train. Lang made his big screen producing in 1969 with Abraham Polonsky’s superb (despite the very dubious casting of Native American roles that would today make audiences’ mouths hang agape) western Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, starring Robert Redford and Robert Blake. As an eventual MCA/Universal production executive, Lang sensed and supported the burgeoning talents of actor and director Clint Eastwood, and drove a number of pictures for him (High Plains Drifter, Breezy, Play Misty For Me). He also supported Eastwood’s mentor and directing great Don Siegel as an executive producer on The Beguiled and Charley Varrick, and guided some other great titles (The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, They Might Be Giants, Slaughterhouse-Five), before moving onto the films that would ultimately form the bedrock of his career.
Though not on board for 1970’s Airport (a near soap opera style adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s novel in which a mid-flight catastrophe serves as the connective tissue for the varied stories of those who work at the airport), Lang served as producer on its three sequels, which were tied together only via their theme, and the character of airline fix-it man Joe Patroni, played by the late, great George Kennedy. While Lang maintained the star-studded approach of Airport (which starred the likes of Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg and many, many more) for the sequels, he amped up the disaster elements, making for a trio of exciting, absorbing major studio thrill-flicks.
Directed by Jack Smight, Airport 1975 features Charlton Heston making a mid-air plane-to-plane jump in order to help distressed flight attendant Karen Black land a commercial airliner filled with major names like Linda Blair, Efram Zimbalist Jr., Sid Caesar, Jerry Stiller and, yes, Helen Reddy as a singing nun. Thrilling and edge-of-the-seat in a wonderfully “old school” way (there’s no CGI here), the excellent Airport 1975 was arguably topped by Airport ’77, in which Jack Lemmon’s harried but heroic captain must keep a disparate collection of airline staff (Brenda Vaccaro, Darren McGavin) and passengers (Joseph Cotton, Olivia De Havilland, Lee Grant, Christopher Lee, Kathleeen Quinlan, Gil Gerard) together when billionaire Jimmy Stewart’s private plane ends up underwater. An absolute mail-biter (with Jack Lemmon surprisingly effective and hugely affecting in action man guise) from start to finish, the ambitious Airport ’77 is a truly underrated gem. Though things had begun to get a little ropey by The Concorde…Airport ’79 (with a slightly Love Boat-style cast that includes the likes of Charo, Sybil Danning, Robert Wagner, John Davidson, Susan Blakley, and Eddie Albert alongside major players Alain Delon, David Warner and George Kennedy, who has his biggest role here, and, um, softcore superstar Sylvia Kristel from Emmanuelle), the film is still a heart-charging winner.
Though Jennings Lang produced other films during the 1970s and 1980s (the excellent 1978 comedy House Calls with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson; the Get Smart big screen outing The Nude Bomb; Swashbuckler with Robert Shaw; Little Miss Marker with Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews), it was as a disaster master that he really soared. As well as the Airport films, Lang also notably produced 1974’s seminal Earthquake, in which LA dramatically and terrifyingly crumbles, and stars like Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Ava Gardner, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree and Marjoe Gortner fight to survive. Lang’s other major disaster flick was 1977’s Rollercoaster, in which a psycho threatens to blow up rollercoasters at America’s various fun parks. It’s up to George Segal (!) to save the day, while the likes of Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Susan Strasberg and Harry Guardino either helping or hindering him. A forgotten 1970s delight, Rollercoaster is well worthy of reappraisal. Both Earthquake and Rollercoaster were turned into cinematic events by Jennings Lang via his devised creation of Sensurround, a low-frequency sound process which made the audience experience a “rumbling” type effect during the films.
After suffering a stroke in 1983, Jennings Lang retired from the film industry, and passed away in 1996 from pneumonia. As well as pioneering the concept of the feature film for television, or “telemovie” (perhaps the most sadly under-celebrated and cruelly maligned of all cinematic or televisual endeavours), while positioned as a high-ranking executive at Universal, Lang’s status as a “disaster master” is unquestioned. The late Jennings Lang drove some of the most exciting films of the 1970s, and he’s deserving of much, much more praise for it.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
