|
Pancho Gets a Gold Record ... Almost! |
 |
 |
 |
|
Written by Nick Spark
|
|
Sunday, 17 January 2010 21:46 |
|
One aspect of Pancho Barnes' life that we didn't get to cover adequately in our film, was her career as  a songwriter. That's right, in addition to being a movie stunt pilot, adventurer, animal wrangler, barkeep and hotelier, Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a prolific composer of music and lyrics for popular song. The Pancho Barnes Trust Estate has a huge stack of her sheet music like the one at right, penned in Pancho's inimitable bold penmanship.
It's not that surprising that Pancho developed a career in writing music because music and entertainment were a big part of the Rancho Oro Verde. All sorts of bands and musical personalities would find their way up to Pancho's hotel including the Sons of the Pioneers, Stan Worth and Jerry Wallace. Relentlessly creative in all pursuits be they business or pleasure, Pancho found an outlet at the piano.
But this wasn't just fun and games — Pancho wanted to be a big name in the music business and she almost succeeded thanks to her musician friends. At least eight of her songs were recorded and released including "Christmas, Christmas", "Hello Heaven", "Moon Crazy", "Turn That Page" (seen at right), "You Can't Get Me Down, Down, Down", by Stan Worth. (Bandleader and musician Worth is perhaps best known for writing the theme to TV's "Hollywood Squares".) The Sons of the Pioneers recorded "Ghost of the Badmen" and the Kings Four put "Yippee It's Rodeo Day" out on vinyl. (This last song is currently the only one available on the internet. Click here to take a listen.) As you can guess from the titles, many of the songs had a definite country-western flavor, perfect for the dude ranch life Pancho was living and the Western-obsessed era. Other songs were in different genres including romantic ballads and sentimental love letters of the type commonly heard on the radio in the late 40's and 50's.
 When the U.S. Air Force came into being as its own separate branch of service in 1947, Pancho imagined that it would need a service song to rival the Navy's "Anchor's Aweigh" and the Marine hymn. She boldly wrote music and lyrics for a new "Song of the Air Force" and had sheet music printed up (seen at left) featuring the supersonic Bell X-1 rocket plane on the front. She then sent the music to highly-placed people in the military in an attempt to convince them that her song should be adopted as THE song. (I forgot to take a picture of the rear of the sheet music, but if memory serves it has a nice picture of Chuck Yeager and a couple of Pancho's other USAF friends on the back giving endorsements to this concept!)
Lauren Kessler describes Pancho's Song of the Air Force in her book The Happy Bottom Riding Club this way: "...the lyrics celebrated the accomplishments of the high-flying, faster-than-sound, circling-the-earth pilots whom Pancho knew and loved. It was a rousing, singable military march, simple and catchy, with a node to Stephen Foster. The pilots sang it loudly and happily at the Club."
It seemed absolutely fitting to Pancho that as the granddaughter of Thaddeus Lowe, the real founder of the U.S. Air Force, that she should be the author of the service's pep song. Unfortunately, she had reckoned without a little ditty that had been in circulation since the mid-1930s. Adopted and sung frequently by the U.S. Army Air Corps, it began with a line in it you may find familiar: off we go into the wild blue yonder. That particular song, written by Capt. Robert M. Crawford, had actually won a competition in 1938 against over 750 rivals to be selected as the official USAAC song. Pancho's good friend Hap Arnold actually was involved in the selection of Crawford's "U.S. Army Air Corps Song" as the winner, and he or his successor rubber stamped a revised version (substituting "Air Force" for "Air Corps") as the official service song.
While Pancho's attempt to dethrone the AIr Force Song with the Song of the Air Force failed, her musical career knew better days,  including the time "Moon Crazy" was performed on TV. According to Barbara Schultz's biography Pancho, one of Pancho's biggest musical successes was as a result of a challenge made by Bob Roubian, the owner of the popular Crab Cooker Restaurant in Newport Beach. Roubian had apparently written a popular song entitled "Too Pooped to Pop" (probably not the song made famous by Chuck Berry, but I'm not sure!) Anyway Pancho felt the "popcorn" song was ridiculous, and set out to top it. The result was "By Your Side" which her friend Jerry Wallace promptly recorded for the Challenge label. Can you believe it, the song ended up as a B-side on an A-side single entitled "Primrose Lane" that by happenstance ended up becoming Wallace's top hit ever and the song that defined his career. (You can see a cheesy video of "Primrose Lane" here ; "By Your Side" I could not find on-line at present). As sales of the single went through the roof, Pancho began receiving fat royalty checks in the mail. It was an enormous success, although with qualifications of course.
Photo at right: the million-selling single of By Your Side. You can make out the Barnes name on the far left, underneath the title of the song. She apparently shared writing credit with three other people. The most commonly-available piece of Pancho Barnes memorabilia sold on eBay, you can usually get a copy of this single for $3-$10 if you're interested. Just search for "Primrose Lane".
By Your Side was something of a fluke and Pancho knew it. Although she was elected into the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in the 1960s and collected royalty checks on her catalog, she never did have another big chart success. While she had talent, she lacked focus and follow-through. As Lauren Kessler notes, "Although Pancho was good at everything she tried ... she was a starter, not a finisher...(so) despite the success of seeing a number of her songs recorded, she tired of composing and moved on." That wasn't the only reason, of course. Most of Pancho's interest in songwriting and her inspiration for it probably derived from the Rancho Oro Verde and the talented musicians and composers who visited. Once she lost the ranch, she no longer saw these people and the music biz simply lost its appeal.
The Panc ho Barnes Trust Estate keeps Pancho's songs under copyright, and has plans to make the back catalog available again. Who knows, maybe they will release some of Pancho's recorded music on iTunes or elsewhere. Stay tuned for that.
One Pancho-related bit of music is available on iTunes. In 1996 the heavy metal band Hyper inexplicably named their album The Happy Bottom Riding Club. I've auditioned a few tracks on iTunes, and I can tell you honestly that although one suggestive song on the album is entitled "Ride the Pony", I have no real idea what the connection is between Hyper and Pancho's guest ranch! And no, "By Your Side" is NOT on this album.
A fairly complete list of Pancho's copyrighted music is available here.
|
|
Last Updated on Monday, 18 January 2010 11:02 |
|
Catching Up with Our Talented Crew! |
|
|
|
|
Written by Nick Spark
|
|
Friday, 08 January 2010 09:28 |
 One of the wonderful things about making a film is that you get to work with wonderful and talented people. In the case of "Pancho" we were truly blessed with an amazing crew. Most of them are friends of ours from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where I graduated from, and where Amanda Pope is a professor. U.S.C. graduates or not, our crew's been extra busy with their own projects this past year. A great example is our director of photography Clay Westervelt. He just directed and produced a documentary film about legendary B-picture director Jim Wynorski entitled Popatopolis. (The title, in case you were wondering, derives from the fact that Wynorski's pictures often involve gratuitous toplessness on the part of shapely actresses!) Wynorski, who has literally directed hundreds of campy films that appear on a regular basis on cable television and in the video store, is the type of incredible character that only a business like Hollywood could produce. In an era of shrinking budgets, Wynorski is forced to shoot a full-length feature film ... not in three months ... not in three weeks... but in three days' time. The chronicle of how this film is made is alternatively hilarious, ridiculous and poignant, showing how one person's passion for bad filmmaking can endure against all odds. An altogether different type of story is related in Circus Rosaire, a film produced by our cameraman Chad Wilson and his wife  Robyn Bliley and cut by "Pancho" editor Monique Zavistovski. This documentary follows several generations of the Rosaire family as they struggle to keep their traditional "small top" circus in business. A truly memorable tale full of trained chimps, horses and tigers and the people who love working with them, this is one doc you won't want to miss. Another poignant film that involves animals is War Dogs of the Pacific, directed by our other cameraman Harris Done. I haven't seen this one yet, but I understand that this chronicle of Marine Corps. dog platoons and the bonds made between young  infantrymen and their canine servants is absolutely compelling. Some of the other members of our crew have also been working hard at creative pursuits. Sound man Stu Sperling recently had a series of photographs chronicling the decay of man-made objects on exhibit at the Santa Fe Center for Photography. Our composers Nathan Wang and Knox Summerour have both been busy with new projects, and Monique Z. has been cutting a documentary about Japanese-American child custody battles. Last but certainly not least, Amanda Pope has been finishing up a new documentary film that she co-directed with Tchavdar Georgiev. Entitled The Desert of Forbidden Art, it documents a fabulous collection of modern Soviet art that was assembled in secret by a dissident museum director. The film was just recently completed and will make its film festival debut in the near future. Stay tuned! |
|
Pancho, Jawbone and E Clampus Vitus |
|
|
|
|
Written by Nick Spark
|
|
Thursday, 07 January 2010 23:03 |
There's a funny, wonderful California organization you may have heard of (or then again maybe not!) by the name of E Clampus Vitus. This ancient and honorable order of pranksters is somewhat akin to the Moose or the Elks or Lions Clubs, only a bit goofier. As they say on their website, "The early meetings of E Clampus Vitus in the California gold fields were devoted so completely to drinking and carousing that none of the Clampers was ever in any condition to keep minutes, let alone remember what had happened the next day!" ECV was founded in the 1950s, and over the years ECV has had many famous members, including two California governors — Edmond G. Brown and a friend of Pancho's named Ronald Reagan.
 Well, Pancho Barnes wasn't a member of E Clampus Vitus, but her own sense of vitality, humor and playfulness attracted the attention of this esteemed group. So, the day after April Fools' day in the year 2000, the Peter Lebeck Chapter (named, incidentally, after some poor sucker who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear) of the group decided to honor Pancho by commissioning a plaque in her honor. The beautiful, red sandstone marker was placed at the Jawbone Canyon General Store. This business, which is still operating in the present day, was originally owned by Pancho and Mac McKendry. That's a story we didn't cover in any detail in the film, because it's not too great of a tale! Pancho and Mac bought it after the Happy Bottom Riding Club went out of business, with hopes of starting a new fly-in guest ranch. They even talked about building a desert marina complete with an artificial lake. Unfortunately things did not work out as Pancho had hoped. She couldn't attract her old friends at the new location, and her big schemes failed to take off as her bank account emptied. Then she discovered that Mac was cheating on her with a former Riding Club hostess. . . an affair that would lead to their eventual divorce, and Pancho's surrender of the store to McKendry.
Well, that's an awful sad story! But what I really wanted to write about, was the plaque which, if you will remember what I said a few paragraphs ago, was placed by this wonderfully fun-loving group ECV. If you visit the store, you'll see it right out front in a place of honor. It says many positive, wonderful things including that Pancho's "sense of adventure, integrity and independence is an example for all." Amen they got that right! But what I find funny is that the plaque also says that Pancho "toured the world as a lecturer honored by the Air Force and aviation organizations" like some sort of Lowell Thomas or Al Gore of the air. Well truth be told, I don't think Pancho ventured outside the United States after 1930 (except for a few trips to Mexico), and probably never went farther than the state of Nevada after 1965. As for "lectures", that's a nice thought but Pancho wasn't a university professor or one to mince words! Perhaps better wording would have been something like, "she was honored by the Air Force and aviation organizations, and told them some wonderful stories and some jokes that were so dirty that mud looked clean."
Then again, "toured the world as a lecturer" has a nice ring to it. I am sure it made Pancho smile, the day that plaque was dedicated, wherever she was . . . knowing that the joke was on the pranksters of ECV! |
|
Putting 2009 Into Perspective & Events in 2010 |
|
|
|
|
Written by Nick Spark
|
|
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 22:10 |
2009 has been a wonderful year for The Legend of Pancho Barnes. Well, six months of it anyway!  We premiered the film at the NewFest Film Festival in Manhattan in June, and since that time we've done over a dozen events including the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and screenings at NASA, the Arlington Air Show, the Planes of Fame Air Museum, the Celebration of Women in Aviation, the Flying M Ranch and of course, our special Los Angeles premiere screening at the Aero Theater. Those of you who made it to that event definitely had a night to remember.
2010 looks like it will also be about as exciting as Pancho in her flying boots! We'll kick off the year with a screening to benefit the KOCE-TV Foundation on January 9th in Mission Viejo, Ca (you can buy tickets on this website by clicking on the "Screenings" button). We'll follow that with a Pasadena event on February 25th to benefit KOCE-TV and two wonderful local history organizations, Heritage Square and the Pasadena Museum of History (click on "Screenings" button). There are several other events in California and beyond that we'll announce as the details fall into place. And if you know of a venue that wants to have a screening — an air show, a museum, or another organization — contact us. Want to help sponsor one of our screenings? We're always looking for help!
All of this barnstorming should (knock on wood) lead up to a television broadcast sometime in mid-2010. We do not yet have the details, but our show has been submitted into the public television review process and we hope to have an air date announcement in the very near future. In fact, we're sort of hoping Santa puts it under our tree!
|
|
Last Updated on Thursday, 07 January 2010 17:10 |
|
Hello NASA, Pancho has landed! |
|
|
|
|
Written by Nick Spark
|
|
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 21:59 |
Director Amanda Pope and cinematographer Clay Westervelt and I spent the better part of a day at NASA's Dryden facility, where we showed the film and got the grand tour of this famed flight test and research laboratory. (See our facebook page for all the photos).  We learned a lot of things, some of which we can't talk about or they'd have to kill us. But seriously, one thing we did learn is that members of the public-at-large can tour the facility at Dryden. That's something you will want to seriously consider if you live in Los Angeles vicinity. Click here for details of how to do it!
One of the highlights of our visit was a trip out to the edge of the Rodgers Dry Lake, where twin 747s are stored. These special aircraft have been rigged to carry the Space Shuttle from Edwards, where it lands on occasion, back to Florida. In typical NASA-speak they call them SCAs, or 'Shuttle Carrying Aircraft.' "We always tell the pilots before they take off," said our tour guide Cam Martin with a wry wink, "'No pressure but you have the future of the entire agency riding with you.'" With only a handful of shuttle flights left on the schedule (as the shuttle is to be retired) these airplanes' fate is undetermined.
Cam also showed us the sister ship to the Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager flew when he first broke the sound barrier, which is displayed on a pole in front of the facility's main building (that's it at right, with Amanda, myself and Clay posing in front). It being NASA, someone there realized that the aircraft cockpit could still be pressurized, and so the aircraft was re-purposed as a time capsule for Dryden's anniversary. That's gotta be a first!
From my perspective, the real highlight of the day was a tour of the main hangar, where a number of NASA research and chase aircraft are stored. This was the same hangar where Scott Crossfield rather famously put an F-100 through the wall. That rather famous incident occured, as Cam Martin explained, when Crossfield's aircraft had a flame out. He managed to dead-stick land it, and thought he'd let it roll to a stop in front of the  NASA hangar. Unfortunately, he forgot that the plane's brakes relied on the engine for pressurization. The aircraft rolled inside and Crossfield managed to steer it away from the various X-planes parked there, wedging it into and through a wall. "If it had been another foot, he would have been killed," Cam Martin explained, pointing to the area (now obscured by an air conditioner) where the welded repair of the hangar wall was once visible. Instead he lived and the story went out, how Yeager might have broken the sonic wall but it took Crossfield to go through the hangar wall!
Our screening at NASA was a terrific success. Director David McBride (shown in the photo at left) introduced us, and we had many good friends in attendance including Joni Schaper, Mike Salazar of the Pancho Barnes Trust Estate, and Alan Brown. |
|
|
Winner of the 2010 
