Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
“Come on, Teddy . . . The plane is already in the air. We’re gonna miss the stunts!”
Richie hollered over his shoulder at his younger brother. Ahead of him, a roar announced the arrival of the plane.
Richie raced toward the field where a film crew was set up. At ten years of age, he was in awe of the camera and the plane. He couldn’t decide where to look first.
“Will it be a talkie?” Teddy stretched up onto his toes to stick his button nose over the edge of the fence. In 1929, the world was full of amazing new things, like movies with sound.
Richie didn’t answer his brother because the plane roared over their heads on its way toward the camera. It cut through the air like the ones in comic books, only much, much better because it was real.
Gosh, they were awfully lucky to get to see it without having to wait for a flying circus to come to town. California sure was the best place to live!
“Roll . . . Keep rolling . . . Don’t stop!” film director Tay Garnett hollered from beside the bulky motion-picture camera. The camera’s lens pointed skyward, following the white bi-wing plane passing overhead. “Don’t lose the shot, boys!”
The four dolly grips, men clustered around the camera to push it back and forth on its wheeled dolly, looked skyward.
They leaned into the platform that held the camera and its operator, rolling it forward a few feet.
“Wheel left and forward!” one of them yelled.
Two grabbed the edge of the platform and rotated the top part while the other two pushed the chassis down the dolly track.
The open-cockpit Travel Air 4000 roared past the camera at just the right speed for the cameraman to keep up with it as it passed by.
“Perfect!” Tay yelled at the plane. Of course, there was no way for the pilot to hear him. The plane wasn’t equipped with a radio. He urged the pilot, “Go for the loop! Go for the double loop!”
As if the stunt pilot could hear him, the plane dived briefly to pick up speed, then swooped up into a loop, nosing straight up and over onto its back. As it came down the backside of the maneuver, it gained speed rapidly, plummeting vertically toward the earth.
The plane started to scoop out of the loop as the pilot pulled the nose up by main force and loaded the fragile airframe with g-forces.
The movie’s stunt pilots had told Tay this was the most dangerous moment of a double loop.
Apparently, if the pilot didn’t pull hard enough, the plane wouldn’t make it out of the first loop before crashing into the ground.
But if the pilot pulled too hard, he could black out .
. . or the wings might rip right off the plane.
Problem was this movie needed a double loop for its big climax.
The stunt pilots had also told him the second loop was impossible to complete if the plane didn’t come out of the first loop with enough speed.
This meant it had to be held in a vertical dive for as long as possible to gain as much speed as possible.
People would flock to the theater if there was a double loop. Nothing sold tickets like the possibility of disaster.
But as the plane screamed toward the ground in the first loop, so fast it seemed there was no way it could recover safely, he fought off an urge to make the sign of the cross over himself. “Pull up. pull!” he shouted urgently at the pilot.
Finally, the nose came up. But not soon enough. Not soon enough!
The plane’s belly skimmed over the tree line at the far edge of the big field, so close he thought it might have hit the very tips of the branches. The whole crew gasped along with him, and some of the spectators who’d gathered to watch the impromptu air show screamed.
Good grief. That had been way too close to a fiery disaster.
He did wish pilots didn’t push the limits quite so hard, quite so often.
But this one was a daredevil, all right.
The other stunt pilots had insisted Pancho be the one to fly the double loop.
And speaking of which . . . the plane’s nose angled up sharply once more, starting into the second loop.
This time the plane carried more speed into the maneuver, and the loop was bigger, tracing an arc outside the smoke trail of the first one. This was going to look amazing on camera.
“You’re catching all this, right?” he called out to the cameraman.
The guy stuck his thumb up without taking his eye off the viewfinder.
Tay’s gaze went back to the sky and reacquired the plane.
Up, up, up, it went, bleeding off speed quickly.
In slow motion, the plane nosed over onto its back, belly to the sun.
Pancho delayed pulling into the backside of the loop, so the plane traced a perfect circle around the first one.
This was supposedly the second most dangerous part of the maneuver.
If the plane stayed upside down too long, air could get into the fuel and oil lines and make the engine conk out.
“Forty-five degrees left and ten feet forward!” the head dolly grip cried out. The grips strained beneath the hot sun, pivoting the camera as they rolled it down its long track, keeping the plane centered in the camera lens.
The plane’s nose dropped, starting into the backside of the second loop, falling toward the ground, and accelerating with breathtaking speed.
“now!” Tay yelled at the plane. “pop the smoke, pancho!”
On cue a thick stream of smoke erupted from the plane—Dang, this pilot’s timing is good—in perfect sync with the best camera shot to catch the smoke.
The spectators groaned en masse as the thick plume of white smoke billowed from the engine compartment and streamed back under the plane’s belly.
Tay grinned from ear to ear. Just the reaction he was going for.
It had been his idea to make it look as if the engine had failed.
The film’s effects coordinator had designed a contraption that injected oil into the plane’s hot exhaust manifold, which then vaporized into a thick plume of white smoke.
The pilot had gone along with the scheme eagerly.
After all, these stunt pilots had come out of the barnstorming circuit and had a knack for drama, which included giving their audience a good scare.
Except Pancho, who had plenty of money, barrels full of it, apparently flew purely for the love of it.
Of course, crazy flying ran in the family.
Pancho’s granddaddy, Thaddeus Lowe, had flown a balloon over the First Battle of Bull Run, proving to Lincoln himself how valuable air flight was to winning wars.
He’d followed that up by inventing the first ice-making machine and getting incredibly rich from his invention.
Tay’s attention snapped back to the plane, whose engine strained as it completed the second loop, this time a little higher above the tree line. Praise the Lord. The plane banked into a steep turn and raced back toward the camera, crew, and spectators.
The plan was for the plane to buzz the camera two more times, once passing just in front of the camera at high speed for a stationary camera shot, which would give moviegoers a sense of how fast it was streaking by.
The second pass would be directly overhead and slower so the camera could track it all the way through.
The plane completed the high-speed pass and, just beyond the tree line, banked into a tight turn to come back for the slow pass.
The spectators chattered excitedly, thrilled to see things as modern as a plane and a movie camera.
He’d already sent several crew members over to tell the crowd the name of the movie and when it was coming out in theaters.
He had a gut feeling this film was going to be a big success.
Wait till they find out this movie is going to be a talkie!
The studio wanted to keep that a secret until right before the movie’s release, then make a big splash just in time for everyone to rush to theaters to see this breakthrough innovation in filmmaking.
As the plane approached, the pilot waggled its wings back and forth. The children in the crowd whooped and waved back eagerly. He glanced over at the camera anxiously. Please let the camera catch the crowd’s spontaneous reaction. He needed that money shot.
The camera was angled down far enough to capture the approaching plane, its wing waggle, and the audience’s excited response.
Oh, yeah. The Flying Fool was going to be a box-office smash.
The dolly grips strained with the effort of spinning the platform fast enough to track the plane as it passed overhead the second time.
“Did you get the shot?” he called to the cameraman.
The guy gave him another thumbs-up, and he breathed a sigh of relief. That was a wrap on stunt filming for today. He opened his mouth to tell the cameraman to cut. But as he did so, he heard a loud pop and then a choking sound from the airplane’s engine.
The whole plane shuddered briefly, as if it had lost power for a second. The crowd gasped.
“keep rolling!” he shouted.
Pancho was supposed to fly back to nearby Clover Field and land, now that the stunt flying was done for the day.
After a break for lunch, the crew would also head over to the airport to get some shots of the movie’s star climbing in and out of the plane and pretending to inspect it before flying.
But instead, the plane was turning back toward them.
What was Pancho doing? Why wasn’t the plane heading over to the airport to land if it had engine trouble?
Tay sucked in a tense breath. Aviation was dangerous.
Really dangerous. Harriet Quimby, known as the “Dresden Doll,” had been the very first licensed female pilot in 1911, and she hadn’t lived out a full year.
There were still fewer than seventy-five licensed female pilots worldwide.
Which was why it made for exciting movie content.
But his film did not need a real-life crash in it.