Come Fly With Me ( 1963 )

"A Romantic Round the World Manhunt!" 

Three airline hostesses jet-set across Europe searching for handsome rich men to marry in the engaging 1963 MGM romantic comedy Come Fly With Me. Like How to Marry a Millionaire, all three women find themselves attached to men who are very much different than what they had in mind but they nevertheless have fun hunting and the audience has fun watching them on the prowl. 

Dolores Hart stars as pretty Donna Stuart, a cynical girl who has her heart set on wearing sable. She meets the dashing Baron Franz von Elzingen ( Karl Boehm ) and believes she found her Prince Charming....until she realizes that he is using her to smuggle stolen diamonds between Paris and Vienna. 

Carol Brewster ( Pamela Tiffin ) is more sensible and sets her eyes on the pilot ( Hugh O'Brian ). She thinks he is her knight in shining armor until she discovers he is having an affair with a married woman ( Dawn Addams ). 

It's the lovely Hilda Bergstrom ( Lois Nettleton ) who ends up with the cream of the crop: Texas millionaire Walter Lucas ( Karl Malden ). She's a thrifty girl who wants her man to be saving his pennies as well, little does she know that he has $40 million dollars to spare. Like most good comedies of the 1960s, the film ends with each of the girls happy with their romantic choices. 

Come Fly With Me is light-hearted entertainment that will take you back to an era when jet travel was oh-so-glamorous ( and when airlines gave you room to stretch your legs ). The script seems like it was penned directly for the film but it was actually based on a chick-lit novel called "Girl on a Wing" by Bernard Glemser. The working title was The Friendliest Girls in the World but was later changed to Come Fly With Me to capitalize on the popularity of the Frank Sinatra hit. In the opening of the film, the song is swingingly rendered by Frankie Avalon.

Director Henry Levin keeps the pace of the film moving swiftly and the location scenery throughout Paris and Vienna is beautifully filmed by cinematographer Oswald Morris ( Moby Dick, Scrooge ). Interiors were shot at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Boreham Wood, England. 

The movie is notable for being Dolores Hart's final picture before she retired from acting and entered the Abbey of Regina Laudis. She looks particularly beautiful in this film and gives a wonderful farewell performance. Lois Nettleton also gives a good performance as the level-headed "Bergie" and Karl Malden is excellent as usual. Richard Wattis, James Dobson and Lois Maxwell, who was filming Dr. No in England that same year, are also in the cast. 

The Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation

Back in 1958, Hugh O'Brian, the handsome star of the popular western television series Wyatt Earp received a cable from Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a renowned humanitarian who was currently working in a hospital he built on the banks of the Ogooue River in French Equatorial Africa. The message simply read that Schweitzer would welcome O'Brian at any time for a visit. So Hugh packed his bags and was off to Africa, by bush plane and then canoe, where he spent nine days observing first hand volunteer doctors and nurses caring for patients and working without electricity or running water. 

Dr. Schweitzer was impressed that the young television star took the trouble to visit him and Hugh was impressed with the doctor's work. Every evening he shared stories and life lessons with him, stirring within him the importance of having young people think for themselves. Schweitzer believed that the United States should take a leadership role in achieving peace and that there was an urgency for change. "Hugh, what are you going to do with this?" he asked the cowboy star as he departed. Well, Hugh was a man of action and within two weeks he had outlined a prototype seminar for young leaders and formed the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership ( HOBY ), a non-profit organization. 

HOBY's format for acheiving this mission was relatively simple : bring a select group of high school sophomores with demonstrated leadership abilities together along with a group of distinguished leaders in business, education, government, and other professions, and let the two interact. It gave these students a realistic look at what it takes to be a true leader, thus better enabling them “to think for themselves.”

"I believe every person is created as the steward of his or her own destiny with great power for a specific purpose: to share with others, through service, a reverence for life in a spirit of love." - Hugh O'Brian

The organization is still active today and has even spread to Canada, Asia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and the Philippines. Had Hugh O'Brian not taken the initiative to fly to Africa and meet with Dr. Schweitzer in 1958 he may never have begun HOBY, and yet, because he did take action, his organization has helped more than 400,000 students find the confidence they needed to become leaders.  

To learn more about HOBY, check out their website : www.hoby.org

This post is a part of our latest series entitled "Did You Know?".....sometimes we just feel like sharing interesting fragments of television and movie history and now we have a place to do just that. If you have a hot tip that you would like us to share on Silver Scenes, drop us a line!