Setting the Trivia Straight

In my humorous post about my plane ride home, I mentioned the movie "Airport" and Karen Black. I turned this over in my mind and I decided that maybe Karen Black wasn't in Airport. Then Bobby Valentine said he had never heard of Airport - which was really the first 'diaster movie'. So I did a little research ... and it turns out ... Karen Black was not in Airport. Airport was a 1970 release of a movie based upon a novel by Authur Hailey in which there's a bunch of personal drama, and toward the end of the movie some nut blows up a bomb in the plane. The movie was full of stars, including Burt Lancaster, Dean martin, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton, Barbara Hale, Gary Collins and others. BUT ... Karen Black was in Airport '75, one of the sequals to this movie. In this disaster something hits the plane and kills the crew. She teamed up with Charlton Heston, George Kennedy, Gloria Swanson, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Helen reddy, Linda Blair, Sid Caesar, Myrna loy, Nancy Olson, and Larry Storch. What a cast! This was probably the pinnacle of her career, although she still has roles in movies (even in 2006) and television (from The Big Valley and Adam-12, to Law and Order). And while we're at it, Airport '77 has the plane landing under water in the bermuda triangle. Jack Lemmon, Brenda Vacarro, Lee Grant, Olivia de Havilland, James Stewart, George Kennedy (who is in all of them), Darren McGavin (Nightstalker!), Christopher Lee, Kathleen Quinlan, and Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers!). The last movie in the series was The Concorde: Airport '79 in which George Kennedy (again) has to contend with nuclear missiles, the French Air Force and the threat of the plane splitting in two over the Alps! Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner, Sylvia Kristel, Eddie Albert, Charo, John Davidson, Martha Raye, and Jimmie Walker (JJ, Good Times) join the cast. The cast this time around is straight off of a Love Boat episode. Thankfully this series was over and George Kennedy would not have to solve another air disaster. A year later the Airplane! movie franchise would begin, making fun of the whole Airport series - which is justified in my opinion! I feel like going to Blockbuster, don't you? Anyway...this mindless and useless trivia brought to you free of charge ... a diversion from the task at hand ... and without apology!