Only Angels Have Wings

Showgirl Jean Arthur makes a night-long layover in a small South American port where she meets Cary Grant and his crew of cargo pilots who risk life and limb flying mail through a tiny mountain pass.

Grant looks ridiculous early in an enormous hat, Arthur’s wrong in every way that Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not) and Angie Dickenson (Rio Bravo) were right, and Rita Hayworth looks utterly lost, but the crackerjack script, Grant’s performance, and Hawks’s idealized male bonding more than compensate.

And Grant’s final scene with Thomas Mitchell ranks as one of the best ever scripted.