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Wallace Beery (1885-1949) was a well-known movie actor as
well as a pilot. He landed at Tucson on December 18, 1928
and on March 14, 1929. Both times he flew Travel Air NC9015.
His westbound passenger on December 12th was George Maves,
a 22 year old pilot who managed the airplane for Beery. They
had just taken delivery of the airplane at the Travel Air
factory in Wichita and were headed back to Los Angeles, CA.
Follow the airplane link to see what happened to Maves and
the airplane. Beery carried five unidentified passengers
on his second, eastbound visit of March 14th.
During his career, Beery starred in several films that featured
aviation. Among them is West Point of the Air from 1935,
which features Beery as a future Navy Pilot in a training
epic. The film was shot on location at Randolph Field, March
Field, and Los
Angeles Metro Airport. For our interest, the film starred a Curtiss Pusher
and Lockheed Vega.
This Man's Navy from 1945, featured Beery
in blimp action during the WWII. It was shot at NAS's Lakehurst,
Del Mar, Moffet Field, and Santa Ana. Beery actually was
in real life a Naval Commander on blimps, and costar Robert
Taylor became a USN flight instructor during the war. This news article from the Syracuse Herald (668KB PDF download) of Sunday, April 16, 1933 documents Beery's assigment as Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserve Aviation Corps at Long Beach, CA.. Note, too, the coincidental coverage of the USS Akron crash.
Between 1927 and 1939 Beery owned nine airplanes. He first
purchased a
Laird Aircraft Corporation, "Whippoorwill",
November 1, 1927. About a year later he bought Travel Air NC9015,
which he brought to Tucson. This second purchase was surrounded
by press coverage.
The New York Times of 12/9/28 reported that his
purchase was, "...a monoplane type, built to carry five passengers,
two pilots and 'breakfast-room equipment'". The airplane
was further described by the Newark Star-Eagle of 12/24/28
as, "A two-ton limousine of the air, luxuriously appointed....It
has a small wash room and many other conveniences found in
a railroad coach."
Beery had his trials, too. The NY Morning Telegraph of 10/29/29
reported that he suffered a stroke while spinning an airplane.
A student pilot flying with him (fellow actor and costar
in Hell Divers, Al Roscoe) was able to land
the plane safely. Although doctors feared the stroke might
be fatal, Beery lived another 20 years.
From an undated article, which must be from the mid to late
1930s, Beery is cited as becoming, "...the owner of a new
six-passenger Bellanca with a cruising speed of 180 miles
an hour. It is his fifth plane in seven years of steady flying.
Mr. Beery estimates he has at least 500,000 flying miles
behind him....His fastest flight was from Hollywood to New
York in 19 hours and 23 minutes."
As the Depression deepened, Hollywood actors did not reduce
their flying like many other pilots. To members of the Aviation
Country Club in Los Angeles, which counted among its members
several of the day's movie stars (including Beery, Douglas
Fairbanks, Reginald Denny), flying your own airplane was
a masterful public relations move.
Finally, Beery was an author of at least one magazine article
that appeared in the November 1939 issue of Popular Aviation.
Titled, "I Learned About Flying From That! -- No. 7", he
described how he got himself into and out of a flight that
coupled bad weather with fuel starvation.
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Dossier 2.1.45
UPLOADED: 03/06/06 REVISED: 07/18/07, 07/15/08
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