The "7" is strictly for the amazing aerial scenes involving airships or dirigibles (like the Hindenberg that crashed at Lakehurst, N.J.). In fact, all of the aviation moments are skillfully photographed for dramatic effect, especially the fierce electrical storm that destroys one of the dirigibles by pulling it apart in mid-flight.The romance on the ground is far less convincing than the action sequences involving pilots flying to the South Pole. FAY WRAY is the femme lead, hopelessly in love with hubby RALPH GRAVES and begging his best friend JACK HOLT not to use him on his expedition to the South Pole. She's sick of staying behind and worrying about him and his grandstanding exploits. Unfortunately, none of the domestic scenes between Graves and Wray bear any semblance to reality--her weeping gets pretty tiresome before the plot is resolved.But FAY WRAY was unquestionably a beautiful woman and director Frank Capra gives her plenty of close-ups. Her role is not particularly well written and she has trouble being anything more than a decorative ploy. RALPH GRAVES is not totally convincing as a reckless pilot. There's an awkwardness about his acting that is somewhat disconcerting here. JACK HOLT handles his role with authority and good screen presence.A fascinating look at early aviation exploits using dirigibles and balloons when they were seriously considered to be the modern methods of aviation. Well worth watching.

Dirigble (1931) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Frank Capra directed this disaster flick about a hot shot pilot (Ralph Graves) who tries a daring expedition to the South Pole but ends up crashing. Back at home his wife (Fay Wray) is having an affair with his best friend (Jack Holt) but when news gets back to them about the crash the friend decides to go after him. Capra, Holt and Graves teamed up for Flight two years earlier and this film has some of the same greatness as well as some of the same weaknesses. The great stuff deals with all the action and some of it is among the best stuff I've ever seen. I'm going to guess that a lot of miniatures were used but they look terrific and come off very realistic. There's one brilliant sequence where a blimp gets caught up in a tropical storm and slowly begins to break apart. However, the love triangle thing is really, really boring and very unrealistic. Holt and Graves are good in their parts but Wray comes off pretty weak but this is due mostly to her part being poorly written. In the end the film is still worth seeing for the amazing action scenes.

Aside from featuring Fay Wray BEFORE she became famous in King Kong, the movie has value as historical record, because of the scenes of the U.S. Navy's dirigible, LOS ANGELES. The LOS ANGELES served a dual role in the film, first as the fictional PENSACOLA, destroyed in a storm at sea, and then as her real self. The loss of the PENSACOLA is prescient in a way, because her successors, the very real AKRON and MACON, which had yet to enter service when the movie was made, were subsequently both lost at sea in storms, bringing an end to rigid airships in the U.S. Navy. A predecessor, the SHENANDOAH was lost in 1928 in a storm over Ohio.When this movie was made, only the LOS ANGELES was in service. The movie shows excellent closeup film of the ship mooring at Lakehurst N.J. as well as her experimental trapeze which allowed an aircraft to moor to the ship while in flight. This feature was incorporated in AKRON and MACON, along with a hanger to stow the planes aboard. These two, the biggest in USN service at 800 feet could each carry 3-4 planes. The planes could be "captured" on the trapeze, brought inside and then launched from their trapeze. An amazing sight to see!

I have about 3 feet of shelf space in my library devoted to books about airships, and I don't think any of them use the term "dirigible", except derisively, in referring to lighter-than-air flying machines. "Dirigible" comes from the French "dirigible ballon", meaning "steerable balloon". For English speakers, the proper term, and the one used by the U.S.Navy, is "airship", but apparently the director and writers for DIRIGIBLE didn't know that. "Airship" is not used once throughout this interesting, if seriously flawed, film. There's a lot about airships the director and writers didn't know. For example, in one part of the story, USS Los Angeles, in her proper persona, is shown flying over the South Pole to rescue some downed aviators from a Ford Trimotor crash. Since the pole lies in excess of 10,000 feet above sea- level, and since none of the Navy's four rigid airships were designed to fly higher than 3,000 feet high, such a project would have been totally impossible. The Germans in WWI had some ships designed for as high as 20,000 feet, but our Navy never did.Well, despite all the wrong-headedness of the story, USS Los Angeles manages to be the star of this movie and upstages all of the human cast. In the course of the film, USS Los Angeles plays a dual role. First as the fictional USS Pensacola, which was destroyed in a hurricane while flying on a hare-brained project to the South Pole. This was no doubt inspired by the real fate of USS Shenandoah, which was destroyed over the U.S. middle-west while on an equally hare-brained project. Later in the story, as herself, USS Los Angeles is sent to the South Pole on the already mentioned impossible rescue mission. Some of the events involving the downed aviators seems to have been suggested by the real troubles of the ill- fated Scott expedition to the South Pole of 1912. There, one of the explorers who was being almost literally carried by the others, went out of the tent and died to spare his comrades. Incidentally, Ford Trimotors were used by the early U.S. polar expeditions, but there were no crashes involving them. There was one air crash, but it occurred near the shore, and was not a Ford Trimotor.There were a number of great scenes, possible and impossible, in the film, but inevitably we come back to poor Fay Wray in the thankless role of the wife who can't abide her husband's adventurous career as a Navy pilot. While her romantic entanglements are boring us silly, we are also given the impression that the U.S.Navy had a whole fleet of rigid airships. In a scene near the beginning we see what looks like a number of airships flying in formation. If this didn't involve camera trickery, those other airships were blimps, not the big rigids. In a brief scene, it might be hard to tell the difference. At no time during the roughly ten year period beginning about 1924 did the U.S.Navy have more than one rigid airship in commission. The Congress kept such tight purse strings on the Navy that they could only afford enough helium to keep but one flying!