Saturday, August 30, 2014

Saturday Man Movie

In Murphy's War(1971), Peter O'Toole is the last survivor of a German U-boat attack on his ship. Lusting for revenge, he finds a Grumman Duck and teaches himself to fly it as he hunts for the U-boat. The result? Some fantastic Grumman Duck aerobatics.

But the real "man" behind this "man movie" was stunt pilot Frank Tallman, who flew the Duck for real and nearly died during the filming when a rough landing went wrong. Tallman will always be remembered as one of Hollywood's great stunt pilots back before CGI existed and real aircraft and pilots had to be risked for great movies.

Oh, and did I mention that Frank Tallman only had one leg? Can't be too many one-legged pilots around now, can there?

9 comments:

  1. And he died filming the Phoenix sequence... Sad loss...

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    1. Actually that was his partner, Paul Mantz. Tallman died later, in 1978, when he flew a small Piper VFR into IMC and hit a mountain. After all of those Hollywood stunts and thousands of flight hours in so many different aircraft types, to be killed doing something like that is almost beyond belief.

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  2. I was stationed at MCAS Yuma when the Flight of the Phoenix was being filmed. They use the combined civilian/military runway for the homemade plane used in the film. I watched the plane take off the day the pilot was killed just shortly after takeoff. At the time it was the 2nd longest runway in the free world (hey, that's what we were told) because of the extreme heat which required a high ground speed before lift could be achieved in that thin air. The story was that the plane was nose heavy so they added weight in the tail section and upon lift off the jury rigged plane broke in half.

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  3. Cool film and a cool aircraft.

    I like the externally water-cooled engine demonstration at the start.

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  4. CFIT is always a bummer.

    "TallMantz" Aviation was quite a company, supplying planes and pilots for may purposes.

    I had the pleasure of seeing one of the last of these guys, Clay Lacey, fly his Lear in an aerobatic demonstration at the Planes of Fame airshow a couple of year ago.

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  5. Can't be too many one-legged pilots around now, can there?

    ML, are you kidding? One-legged pilots historically have been a small, but distinguished group. Why, there's the leader of the Grey Goats Squadron - 'Hoppy' Boyington; early female aviator Eileen Earhart (Amelia's cousin); plus a number of Reno Air Race competitors.

    Of course, I could be making all of that up.

    What's not made up is that you're more active with your store-bought leg (hiking, biking, scuba, flying) than most people are with the ones God gave them. Which reminds me that I need to go bike riding with my Daughter this weekend...

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    1. Douglas Bader comes to mind, both for Battle of Britain and Great Escape heroics. The mind is the only limiting factor.

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  6. Had the great privilege of meeting him. 1968 had delivered an airplane to Orange County Airport. While waiting for a ride, I wandered over to Tallmanz and was looking around. He came up to me to find out my business. After a few minutes conversation, he told me to go ahead and look around. What a fascinating place, and what a gracious gentlemen he was to me.

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  7. Color me jealous. That's too cool.

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