The Skywayman
In the early 20th century, airplanes fascinated the public in a manner and to an extent that is difficult for us today, accustomed as we are to flight as just another routine aspect of modern life, to grasp. Most people had never seen an airplane before, and paying crowds gathered in the hundreds and thousands to watch the era’s pioneering pilots put on aerial displays for them.
Ormer Locklear (1891 – 1920) was a daredevil aerial pioneer who learned flying with the US Army Air Service, then went on tour as a barnstormer pilot, putting on aerobatic displays for crowds across the country. He is credited with developing the stunt of wing walking, which was particularly popular with air show audiences in the 1920s, as a means of enabling pilots to make repairs in flight. He also came up with the trick of jumping from one airplane to another mid flight, and of clambering aboard a low flying plane from a moving car.
By 1919, Locklear was the most famous daredevil pilot in the world, and it did not take long before his fame attracted the attention of Hollywood. Universal Studios inked a contract to buy all his future air show dates, in order to get him to sign on to a two movie series. The first film, The Great Air Robbery, was a 1919 drama about air mail pilots, which showcased Locklear’s aerobatic antics. It received favorable reviews, and went on to become a commercial success at the box office.
Locklear followed up that success with The Skywayman, about an amnesiac shell shocked veteran returning from The Great War. Filming began in 1920, and from early on, disaster came calling and was narrowly avoided on more than one occasion. A stunt involving Locklear knocking over a church steeple with his airplane almost ended in a plane crash. Soon thereafter, Locklear narrowly avoided death during the filming of a scene in which he was to jump from an airplane on to a moving train.
A final stunt called for a tailspin, known as a “suicide dive”, to be performed for a nighttime scene. It was initially supposed to be performed during the daytime, with special camera filters to simulate nighttime, but Locklear insisted that he be allowed to perform the stunt at night. The studio agreed, and as news leaked out of what Locklear planned, a crowd gathered on the night of August 2nd, 1920, to watch the filming of the stunt.
Searchlights were to be focused on Locklear’s airplane to render it visible for filming in the dark as it entered its tailspin. In the searchlights’ glare, Locklear would be flying blind, so after the airplane descended to a specific height, the searchlights were to be turned off, to enable Locklear to see, and to let him know that it was time to pull out of the tailspin. Something went wrong, however, and the searchlights were not turned off. Before the gaze of horrified onlookers, Locklear’s floodlit airplane began its “suicide dive” – and remained brightly let within the searchlights’ glare, as it continued its dive straight into the ground. Locklear and a fellow pilot were instantly killed in the crash.