8. The World’s Greatest Stunt Pilot Goes to Hollywood
By 1919, Ormer Locklear had established himself as the most famous daredevil pilot in the world. 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 drama about airmail 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’s return home from The Great War. Filming began in 1920, and from early on, there were numerous close brushes with the Grim Reaper. On numerous occasions, disaster was only avoided by the narrowest of margins. In one stunt, Locklear was supposed to knock over a church steeple with his airplane, only for it to almost end in a plane crash. Soon thereafter, he narrowly avoided death as the cameras filmed a scene in which he was to jump from an airplane onto a moving train. Locklear was extraordinarily lucky, but as seen below, that luck eventually ran out.