Julie is a 1956 film noir written and directed by Andrew L. Stone and starring Doris Day, Louis Jourdan and Barry Sullivan. The film is also notable as potentially the first film to feature the subplot of a stewardess piloting an aircraft to safety, later used in Airport 1975 and parodied in Airplane!. Julie is further notable for being technically accurate in regard to contemporary aviation technology.
Plot
A former stewardess, widow Julie Benton, flying for "Amalgamated Airlines" is terrorized by her insanely jealous second husband, Lyle. It becomes a life-or-death matter after friend Cliff Henderson relays his suspicions to Julie that her first husband's death may not have been a suicide. She pretends that she would have fallen for Lyle even if her first husband had still been alive, and Lyle confesses the murder to her. Julie flees with Cliff's help, but police are unable to arrest Lyle without proof. Julie and Cliff hire a car and drive north to San Francisco where Julie changes her identity, and returns to her former job with the airline. Lyle has a confrontation with Cliff, Lyle shoots him and learns where Julie can be found. With police in pursuit, Julie is warned that Lyle may be on her flight. She spots him, but Lyle pulls a gun on her, then kills the pilot before being shot himself. Julie is "talked down" receiving instructions on how to fly the aircraft. She does so successfully, and her nightmare comes to an end.
According to MGM records, Julie earned $1,415,000 in the US and Canada and $1,185,000 elsewhere resulting in a profit of $604,000.
Critical response
Aviation film historian Stephen Pendo in Aviation in the Cinema described Julie as a "minor film." Film critic Dennis Schwartz, likewise, gave Julie a mixed review, writing, "Improbable crime thriller about a woman-in-peril, that is too uneven to be effective; the banal dialogue is the final killer.... Doris Day, to her credit, gives it her best shot and tries to take it seriously even when the melodrama moves way past the point of just being ridiculous. Later disaster movies stole some of those airplane landing scenes." Julie is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of the "100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made".
