99¢ per month. Save 90%.
99¢ per month. Save 90%.

5 things you surely might not know about 'Airplane!', the 1980 comedy classic made by 3 Milwaukeeans

Chris Foran
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Leslie Nielsen plays Dr. Rumack in the 1980 comedy "Airplane!", written and directed by Shorewood natives David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker.

Forty years ago this month, three guys from Shorewood released a movie that helped reshape funny in America. 

When "Airplane!" debuted in July 1980, it put Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker on the comedy map, and it began a flood of spoof movies that has never really crested. 

Inspired by bad airplane-disaster movies — and one in particular (see below) — the movie is, nominally, about a former fighter pilot (Robert Hays) who, still struggling with his past, boards a plane to win back his flight-attendant sweetheart (Julie Hagerty), only to have to face his own demons when the plane's pilots come down with food poisoning mid-flight. 

Part of the genius of "Airplane!" was in casting actors not known for doing comedy and having them play the absurdities straight, making Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves and even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar unlikely comic stars.

Lloyd Bridges, from left, Robert Stack and Lee Terri brace for impact in the 1980 spoof "Airplane!" Shorewood filmmakers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker cast actors not known for playing comedy roles and had them play it straight to get the over-the-top bad-movie vibe they wanted for the film.

The movie also added a slew of punchlines to the pop-culture catalog: "Surely, you can't be serious … I am serious, and don't call me Shirley"; "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue"; "Oh, stewardess … I speak jive."  

A new 40th anniversary Blu-ray reissue of "Airplane!" includes, in addition to the newly remastered movie and filmmakers' commentary, new interviews with Abrahams and the Zuckers, and a Q&A with the trio after a screening at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre in early January of this year. 

The filmmakers have said plenty about the making of "Airplane!" over the years, but the new material in the 40th anniversary Blu-ray set does boast a few pieces of inside info fans might not know about. Here are five of them. 

1. 'Airplane!' not only spoofed a bad disaster movie; it stole from it. 

When they were at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker and future ComedySportz founder Dick Chudnow launched the Kentucky Fried Theater comedy troupe. One of their favorite shticks was to take old, bad movies and dub in jokes over the original dialogue.  

One of their favorite bad movies was the 1957 disaster "Zero Hour," in which a former Air Force pilot with issues (Dana Andrews) has to take the controls of a plane after its pilot falls ill. And the more the Zuckers and Abrahams watched it, the more they thought they could make a movie spoofing it by following its plot step by step, and layering absurdities on top of it. (The producers ended up buying the rights to "Zero Hour" to make it easier to adapt.)  

In one of the new extras in the 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition, Abrahams admitted they didn't just borrow the movie's plot and structure — they stole some of its worst dialogue. Among the "Zero Hour" lines that made it into "Airplane!" whole: "We have to find somebody who not only can fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner." 

"Airplane!" only won one award — for best adapted screenplay from the Writers Guild of America, which deemed it an adaptation of "Zero Hour." 

2. The studio didn't object to the jokes, but another group did. 

At the Q&A at the Egyptian Theatre, the Zuckers and Abrahams agreed that executives at Paramount didn't tell them to take anything out of their script. But one joke was taken out of the movie — because of objections from the Polish Anti-Defamation League.

Jerry Zucker explained that they had included a reference to Air Poland, a Polish airline, showing their plane's pilot as Jose Feliciano, the blind pop singer. The league, which for years had been battling the use of the comic trope calling people of Polish descent ignorant or inept, asked that the bit be taken out, and the writers agreed.

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (left, with Peter Graves at far right) has some of the funniest scenes in the 1980 comedy classic "Airplane!"

3. The movie had 'a lot' of previews, after the first one nearly bombed.  

The filmmakers said they showed "Airplane!" to "a lot" of test audiences, even after Paramount executives told them they didn't need to. Maybe it's because the first screening went so poorly: At the theater, the projectionist started showing the reels out of order, breaking continuity with a reel showing the now-classic sight gag in which excrement actually hits a fan. Jerry Zucker ran to the projection booth to stop the movie and get the order corrected; the audience didn't seem to mind, although one moviegoer told them the movie would have been better if they didn't show the hitting-the-fan joke twice. 

4. The Zuckers and Abrahams didn't write the 'jive' scene — the actors did. 

The scene in which a pair of Black passengers speak in street slang, with very white subtitles "translating" for them, was first written by the Zuckers and Abrahams, but it was just a collection of nonsense syllables. They apologized to Norman Gibbs and Al White, the Black actors cast as the passengers; David Zucker recalled that they told them "that was the best that three Jewish white guys from Milwaukee could do." Instead, Zucker said, Gibbs and White offered to write their own dialogue. And they did. 

White — who was in the audience at the Q&A at the Egyptian Theatre — confirmed the story. He said he worked for two hours with Barbara Billingsley, the "Leave It to Beaver" actress who in "Airplane!" offers that she "speaks jive," to make sure she got it right. 

5. The filmmakers weren't the only Milwaukeeans on the set of "Airplane!" Their moms were, too. 

Jim Abrahams (from left); his mother, Louise Abrahams Yaffe; Jerry Zucker; Zucker's mother, Charlotte Zucker; and David Zucker pose in front of the concession stand at the Fox-Bay Theatre
during a preview for "Airplane!" in July 1980. The filmmakers' mothers had cameos in the comedy, and appeared in several of their subsequent films.

Jim Abrahams' mother, Louise Abrahams Yaffe, plays a passenger who tells the flight attendant that her seatmate might be a doctor (it's Leslie Nielsen, wearing a stethoscope). And Charlotte Zucker, the Zucker brothers' mother, is a passenger trying to put on lipstick during some heavy turbulence, with Picasso-esque results. 

Yaffe and Charlotte Zucker appeared in a number of their sons' later movies, too, including "Ruthless People" and "Top Secret!" 

RELATED:Drive-ins and movie theaters are slowly opening up in the Milwaukee area. Here's what they're showing.

Contact Chris Foran at Follow him on Twitter at @cforan12.