25. Hollywood Came Knocking to Snag the World’s Most Famous Daredevil Pilot
Ormer Locklear had become the most famous daredevil pilot in the world by 1919, and it did not take long before his fame attracted the attention of Hollywood – and set the stage for his tragicomic demise. To get him to sign on to a two-movie series, Universal Studios inked a contract to buy all his future air show dates. The first film, The Great Air Robbery, was a 1919 drama about airmail pilots, which showcased Locklear’s aerobatic antics. It received favorable reviews and was 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 meeting the Grim Reaper during the filming of a scene in which he was to jump from an airplane onto a moving train.