Those wicked commies were back in Jet Pilot, a movie that even John Wayne would have been ashamed of. “Never to be released on television” the banner insisted, but they lied, of course. In fact the whole commie business itself soon proved equally to be a lie.
    Here Janet Leigh is debeautified to play a defecting Russian pilot whom Wayne is put in charge of. The most notable thing about the film is that the two jet fighters whizzing about each other playfully have more romance, chemistry and affection for each other than either of the human pilots managed. But naturally, it was a Howard Hughes movie and therefore more about aeroplanes rather than people. Then we have to believe that Wayne somehow gets away with pretending to sell out to the Ruskies. The big man just wasn’t able to do what was required to be convincing—you can plainly see his entire being straining against the script. But the most amazing thing about it is the blatant sexism—if anyone tried to show the movie these days, feminists would bomb the theatre.

Marketing people can be strange. At the time one of the more interesting TV shows was The Third Man, based on the Graham Greene character Harry Lime brought back to life and with the conceit that he has decided to go straight and deploy his ill-gotten fortune to do good. The elegant Michael Rennie played Lime and Jonathan Harris his eternally befuddled accountant. It was intrigue mostly—I like best the one where Lime and various enemies are waiting at the foot of the glacier for the body with its secrets that fell into a crevaisse 19 years earlier, to pop out.
    Anyhow, around this time, Disney released a movie about the first men to climb the Matterhorn called Third Man on the Mountain, the third man being the village youngster played by James MacArthur. But, because Michael Rennie bore a remarkable resemblence to the actual man who led the first climb, so he was cast in the role. The co-incidence was just too much for the people who designed the promotional posters, who cross-promoted the Third Man notion shamelessly. Harry Lime scales the Matterhorn, they declared. You had to wonder who they thought they were fooling. Probably themselves most of all.