Alfred E. Green directed six films for Warner Bros. in 1933 and the cinematographer on Parachute Jumper, James Von Trees, photographed seven films in that year. The speed with which these films were made is relflected in the plot of Parachute Jumper: the film is a Depression comedy, a romance, and a violent gangster film, with plenty of sex suggested, as well as a flipping of the bird and the sound of a toilet flushing (this is a pre-Code film). Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Frank McHugh and Bette Davis make a charming and hungry (they even steal a fish from a cat) menage a trois, with Fairbanks supporting them first by wing-walking and jumping from planes, then chauffeuring for man-hungry Claire Dodd and finally smuggling in drugs from Canada for gangster Leo Carrillo. Bette Davis is blonde and vulerable, and called Alabama because of her Southern accent. This seventy-two minute film shows us much about the struggle for jobs and the risks people will take, as well as the indifference of the wealthy and the crooked, in 1933.
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