Julie Hagerty

It’s not that Julie Hagerty has only been in Airplane! It’s not even that the only movie of hers that I’ve seen is Airplane! It’s that every time I see her in literally anything, I think of Airplane! She’s fantastic in it, goodness knows, but it’s hard not to feel bad for her. Even Leslie Nielsen could do other things. Julie Hagerty made a movie that’s on my “get around to watching it” list in 2019, and I still picture her as she was in 1980, at the age of 25. Which is a kind of eternal youth, I suppose.

Before that movie, Hagerty had acted in an off-Broadway role at her brother’s theatre, The Production Company. (Her brother was one of at least three actors named Michael Hagerty; this one died of AIDS in 1991. Even his New York Times obituary confuses him with one of the others.) She’d been acting since 1972, and she auditioned for the play for the practice at auditioning. She was cast immediately. She was at the time involved with Bob Fosse, which got her a small role in All That Jazz. Her role was cut. But she was seen off-Broadway and cast in Airplane!

In the years since then, she has worked pretty steadily. The other place I think of her is another place where it’s almost impossible to say any one person steals the show because everyone steals the show; she’s Poppy the stage manager in Noises Off . . . . (Hagerty has appeared in several punctuated films; she’s also in What About Bob?) It’s interesting, because her character has to be quiet and soft-spoken compared to the wild array of divas onstage, but she’s still got to be powerful enough to keep the character from being completely missing. It’s a delicate balance and Hagerty sells it.

A lot of her career is not great stuff. With all the love in my heart. It’s not even just that I really hated What About Bob? It’s that she’s been in a lot of five-episode sitcoms and so forth. Movies I’ve never heard of with three or four stars on IMDb, and remember they rate out of ten. She’s been steadily working, at least, and you have to admire that, but not all of the work has been anything anyone particularly wants to watch. Okay, one episode of Sesame Street, but still.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing about what I have to say about her career matters, because you’re picturing her inflating Otto or trying to sell Africans Tupperware or similar, and that’s okay, because so am I. I suspect not even she can really blame you for that. She’s a joy in that movie, and it’s not difficult to see why someone would fall in love with her. And why her leaving him would contribute to his drinking problem.