Julie (1956)

Talk about having a bad day! Air hostess Julie has just discovered her homicidal second husband sneaked aboard the plane. First he tried to crash their car on the winding California highway, then he admitted he murdered her first husband! When she tried to get away he shot her best friend. Now he’s killed the pilot and wounded the co-pilot, and with some encouragement from the tower Julie’s the only one who can land the plane!

This is why Pan-Am made their stewardesses stay single.

Doris Day and Louis Jordan both stand out for their tense performances, but the film careens wildly like Julie’s car on that twisting road from a dry ’50s crime drama to the grandmother of high camp, inspiring classic hootfests like Airport ‘75 and wife-in-jeopardy popcorn thrillers like Sleeping with the Enemy and the Lifetime Channel Movie of the Week.

Don’t blame Day. She didn’t want to do the film and felt ill throughout, but 1st-time producer and 3rd-time hubby Martin Melcher insisted she carry on smiling. Day also hesitated to do the film because of her two previous abusive marriages…, make that three abusive marriages….

After his death in 1968, Day discovered her husband had secretly signed her to do a CBS TV series without her knowledge, turned down the role of the decade: Mrs Robinson, that might have re-reinvented her sex-symbol career, and had gambled away the millions she had earned.

Maybe actresses and stewardesses have something in common.