Three Guys Named Mike
About Three Guys Named Mike
Marcy Lewis (Jane Wyman), from Indiana, finishes American Airlines stewardess training. On her first flight she offends pilot Mike Jamison (Howard Keel) and forgets the meals. He gets her a second chance. In Los Angeles she meets passenger Mike Lawrence (Van Johnson), a biology graduate student, and is suspended a week for letting a dog stay in the cabin. Advertising man Mike Tracy (Barry Sullivan) starts her dead car and uses her idea that stewardesses endorse soap. She nicknames them Mike, Mickey, and Michael. A drunken photographer and a fight among the three men make the papers, and each man's job is on the line. As she boards a plane, all three propose. She takes Lawrence's plain "I love you."
Cast & crew
More about Three Guys Named Mike
Charles Walters directed. Armand Deutsch produced. Sidney Sheldon wrote the screenplay from a story by Ruth Brooks Flippen, with suggestions from Ethel "Pug" Wells, an American Airlines stewardess. Wells is technical advisor and appears as herself. Paul Vogel photographed. Bronisław Kaper wrote the music. MGM released it in New York on 1 March 1951. 90 minutes. Lewis Martin plays C. R. Smith, the airline's president. A further estimated $523,000 came from outside the U.S. and Canada. MGM recorded a profit of $577,000.
Themes
Making
American Airlines put its training, planes, and its president, played by Lewis Martin, into an MGM comedy built on a working stewardess's notes.
Reviews
Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, called it "an oppressively bird-brained little romance" and a "contrived cloudland confection."
Audiences
MGM's estimate was $1,707,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $523,000 elsewhere, for a profit of $577,000.
Look
Paul Vogel shot the airline training, the cabins, and the Los Angeles bungalow.
Music
Bronisław Kaper composed the score.
Preservation
Prints circulate, including a copy on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Wells met director William Wellman on a flight and told him stewardess stories. Those suggestions fed Flippen's story. The airline in the film is American, not a fictional line.
- Phyllis Kirk, Anne Sargent, and Jeff Donnell play the stewardesses who share the bungalow. Barbara Billingsley is Ann White.
- Marcy assigns the names: Mike for Lawrence, Mickey for Tracy, Michael for Jamison.
Scenes
- Jamison covers for Marcy after she forgets the passengers' food.
- A dog in the cabin costs her a week's suspension.
- All three propose as she boards, and she chooses Lawrence.
Also available
- Internet Archive (ThreeGuysNamedMike1951)
- Wikimedia Commons (Three Guys Named Mike (1951).webm)
Quotes
I love you.