Parachute Jumper is a 1933 film directed by Alfred E. Green.
Bill Keller and "Toodles" Cooper (Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Frank McHugh) are Marine pilots exercising a little bit of American imperialism in Nicaragua. (The US actually did fight an undeclared war in Nicaragua in the late 1920s and early 1930s.). Bill and Toodles get shot down, and somehow make their way to a town where they are busy engaging in wine, women, and song when they are caught by military police. They are summarily drummed out of the Marine Corps.
Cut to New York, where Bill and Toodles are looking for work and not finding it, and going hungry. They meet Pat "Alabama" Brent (Bette Davis), a secretary who is also out of work and also hungry (it's the Great Depression) and apparently considering hooking.
Instead of hooking, Alabama moves in with Bill and Toodles. Bill starts getting jobs, although they are progressively sketchier: a parachute jumper, a chauffeur that is expected to sexually service the woman he works for, a body guard for a bootlegger named Weber, and finally, a pilot for Weber, smuggling liquor across the Canadian border.
Tropes:
- All Women Are Lustful: Mrs. Newberry, who hires Bill to be a chauffeur but is more interested in telling him to turn around while she can look at his torso, before she comes over and feels his bicep. She is giving Bill bedroom eyes non-stop in the scene where she invites him up to her room. He's clearly reluctant as he's in love with Alabama, but is apparently about to give in when Weber, Mrs. Newberry's lover, shows up.
- Axe Before Entering: A sequence towards the end has the cops chopping down the door to Weber's office. Weber and Bill make their way out via secret passage, but Weber shuts the door to the passage in the face of Steve the mook, and Steve is shot when the police finish chopping down the door and break in.
- Book Ends: The film ends with Toodles rejoining the Marines and Bill, after getting Alabama to agree to marry him, doing the same.
- Contrived Coincidence: Bill gets a job as a bodyguard for Weber, a bootlegger and, as is later revealed, a drug-runner. New York is a large city, but of all the places where Alabama could finally get work, she gets hired by Weber as a secretary.
- Double Entendre: The dialogue is thick with this as Mrs. Newberry hires Bill as a chauffeur, while making it clear that he's expected to service her sexually. She tells him to take off his coat and, while admiring his strapping physique, says "I suppose you're used to...heavy work."
- Fat and Skinny: For a given value of "fat", but Toodles is short and roly-poly and he makes a visual contrast with tall, handsome Bill.
- Flipping the Bird: Toodles, who is trying to hitchhike (and flee the police) gives the bird to a passing car that doesn't stop. Why yes, this film was made in The Pre-Code Era.
- Hypocritical Humor: A random gag in the last scene has Bill opening doors to various offices in an office building as he hunts for Alabama. He throws open one door to the "Society for the Enforcement of Prohibition", only to find a man pouring a drink from a flask.
- Job Title: Parachute Jumper, even though Bill only works as a parachute jumper for one scene.
- Not What I Signed Up For: Bill has no problem being a bodyguard for a bootlegger, and he's also OK with flying booze over the border from Canada. But when he sees Weber's mook murder an enemy in public, in a nightclub, he immediately quits. This decision is further underlined when Bill finds out that the plane he's supposed to fly isn't just carrying liquor, it's also carrying heroin, which could get him and Toodles ten years in jail.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Bill nicknames Alabama "Alabama" because that's where she's from. Davis delivers a truly awful Southern accent that's bad when she's trying and sometimes disappears, like whenever Alabama is agitated.
- Sarcasm Mode: Bill goes up to do a dangerous parachute stunt. Alabama, terrified, rushes out to stop him but she's too late. As the plane takes flight she wonders how she can tell him to come back down. The guy from the parachute operation says "Well, you might send him a postcard."
- Sexy Backless Outfit: Mrs. Newberry wears such a dress when hiring Bill and making a series of obvious sexual come-ones. Alabama is wearing one later after Weber, who obviously wants sex with her, buys her one.
- Shaking the Rump: After the opening shot of biplanes in combat, the first shot is a rather surprising close-up of a woman shaking her bottom at the camera, said bottom filling the entire scene. Bill and Toodles are in a Nicaraguan cantina enjoying the company of local ladies.
- Video Credits: Of all the principals at the start of the film, as was Warner Brothers house style in this era.
- While You Were in Diapers: Bill, trying to get a job with the parachute stunt pilots, is asked if he has any experience. He says "I was flying airplanes when you thought a joystick was a lollipop!".
