On January 16, 1971, Pancho Barnes entertained an appreciative crowd at the EAA meeting in Lancaster, California (see previous entry). It was a bit of a free-for-all evening, as Pancho didn't write any remarks, instead relying on her friend Ted Tate and the audience to prompt her with questions. Of course, one of the inevitable topics was Pancho's love/hate friendship with Howard Hughes. Like Pancho, Hughes was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the two could relate to each other — and argue with one another without ending up bitter enemies!

"Howard was really a real great person," Pancho said in her preface. "He was young then, he hadn't gotten strange or anything." (It being the 70's, when Hughes was in the news for his eccentric behavior more than anything else, this comment was of course greeted by a few laughs from the audience!)

Pancho went on: "[Howard] thought an awful lot of his pilots. He just really worshiped them. He really looked up to them. They were his heroes. Frank Clark and those guys that flew for him. He just thought there was nothing better than those guys."

Hughes might have worshipped his pilots, but that didn't prevent him from trying to make his movie, Hells Angels, cheaply. He'd often use amateur fliers and on more than one occasion was accused of asking veterans to fly extremely dangerous stunts for very little money. That type of behavior, from a millionaire like Hughes, rubbed Pancho the wrong way.

At one point, Pancho was working as technical director on the William Boyd film The Flying Fool. "I had a chance to hire the pilots and set up all the flying," Pancho recalled. "I picked Frank Clark and Leo Noomis and Roy Wilson as the three best pilots of the bunch. Howard was only paying them about $25 a day." Pancho paid them $100 a day, on the condition that they work out storylines and stunts on the ground, something she figured would make them more efficient in the air.

In the middle of shooting, Pancho said, "Howard Hughes came down to me and he said, 'Pancho, I've got to have Frank Clark.' I said, 'I'm using Frank Clark.' He said, 'Well I've got have Frank Clark. You know, he's playing Lieutenant Von Bruen in the picture. I need him in front of the camera.'"

Pancho would have none of it, and Hughes had to pull some strings with the studio making Flying Fool. "It got to be an inner-studio brawl," Pancho told the EAA crowd," in which they decided - the great gods that be - that I had to give Frank Clark to Hughes. I said, 'Okay, on one consideration - that he pays the pilots $100 a day from now on. I want that in writing.' He gave it in writing."

That battle, between Pancho and Hughes, was a turning point. Pilots recognized that they could have some pull with Hughes and other filmmakers, and they looked to Pancho as the person who'd made it possible.

What happened next was classic Hughes, and classic Pancho. "At this time, Howard Hughes was in love with Billy Dove," Pancho explained. "He was making a star out of her. He had a man overseeing her by the name of A.B Green. Green reported to [Hughes] that he thought Billy Dove was flirting a little too much with Frank Clarke. This made Howard Hughes very unhappy."Photo: Pancho with fellow stunt pilots around the time of the shooting of Hell's Angels

To get Clarke out of the picture, Hughes assigned Clark the duty of watching over the DeHavilland V-8, which Pancho described as "practically falling apart."

"That aggravated everybody, including Billy Dove," Pancho remembered. "You know what it is when you say you can't have something. Billy Dove decided Frank Clark was pretty nice. We all moved out. We set up a regular Indian camp in the vicinity of the V-8. I got a piece of tin and made a great big sheriff star and pinned it on Frank Clark."

Howard Hughes was not happy, of course, and "raised hell." The pilots were disgusted with Hughes, and delighted with Pancho and Clarke.

Wealthy heiress Pancho might not have been your typical union organizer — although as a young lady she was friends with socialists Will and Ariel Durant — but that night, under the wing of the V-8, she persuaded the stunt pilots that they ought to form a union. Thus the Association of Motion Picture Stunt Pilots was created. It was the first stunt pilot union ever formed, and soon became a signatory of movie making contracts throughout Hollywood.

How did I end up producing a documentary film about Pancho Barnes, you might ask? Well, it's an interesting story. I had always had something of a fascination with Pancho — such a rebel and an icon in the aviation world. I persuaded my editor at "Wings" magazine that I could come up with a new angle on the old gal. What I hoped to do, in a nutshell, was track down a tape recording of a famous speech Pancho gave at an Experimental Aircraft Association event in 1971. For decades afterwards, folks talked about the "night Pancho Barnes took the mike" and let loose!

Well, I did manage to track down the speech. But in the process I met a fellow named Dr. Lou D'Elia, who has been mentioned on the blog previously. Dr. D'Elia, it so happens, had recently acquired Pancho's personal archives, including her letters, photos, tax records, pilot's license, and yes, a tape recording of that speech came with it. Seeing and reading all this marvelous stuff convinced me a documentary film was possible. But it also proved a bit distracting! Although I did write an article for "Wings", I never did incorporate Pancho's speech into it.

Here's a little background on Pancho's speech. In the late 1960's, after battling breast cancer and a serious illness linked to her thyroid, Pancho staged a comeback. She re-emerged into the public eye, thanks in part to her friend Ted Tate (see earlier in the Production Journal). She attended the Barnstormer's Reunion, joined the Aerobatics Club of America, and joined Jimmy Doolittle at a special EAA — Experimental Aircraft Association — banquet in his honor. On January 16, 1971, the Lancaster California Chapter of the EAA (link

) held a special event of their own to honor Pancho. Ted Tate introduced her to an excited crowd, who knew her by name and legend more than anything else. "She is like General Doolittle," Tate said, "she is one of my favorite people. In a more serious vein, I like him," he went on, "I am very proud of knowing him. But Pancho is someone that I love. She is one of my favorite people and I am sure she will be one of yours."

Photo: A haggard Pancho, still undergoing treatment for her thyroid problems, sits next to Ted Tate while Lyle Thomas (?) emcees the evening.

Pancho began her remarks that night talking about her new-found friendships with some of the members of the 1971-72 U.S. aerobatic team, including aviatrix Mary Gaffney. But, very shortly, she reached back into her memory and began talking frankly about the early days of motion picture stunt flying. Her audience was quickly transfixed, as Pancho recounted some of the funny personalities she encountered in this world of daredevils, and the crazy antics they pulled.

"They had a lot of good times and a lot of foolishness," Pancho remembered. "One of the greatest was Leo Loomis. He had a way of being able to spin an airplane right down to the ground and pull out. I said, 'Leo, how do you know when to pull out? You are just barely touching the ground.' He said, "Well I'll tell you what I do. I watch very, very closely and when I know it's time to pull out, I make one more turn."

That is the kind of remark that left the audience in stitches, and in the palm of Pancho's sun-spotted hand.

The evening was not all schucks and grins. Inevitably, Pancho paused to remember some of the tragedies that occurred in a time when stunt flying was virtually unregulated. Loomis, Pancho recalled, had a little difficulty during the making a movie called "File Drawers" and wound up hospitalized for six months. When he came out, flat broke, he took a job on a movie called "Sky Dive."

"I said, 'Leo is not fit to fly,'" Pancho recalled. But the technical director of the film prevailed. "One of the things he had to do was spin to the limit," Pancho noted. "I guess he didn't make that extra turn because he spun right in."

An equally tragic incident occured with Roy Wilson, who made an extremely hard, three-point landing while doing a stunt. He was taken to a hospital, where he died of internal injuries. Dick Grace, a fellow stunt pilot, took his friend's death very hard. "He called up everybody, one after another," Pancho remembered, "and he said, 'Oh, this is a terrible, terrible thing. We aren't good to our friends. We don't appreciate our friends. We aren't right to them when they are alive.'" Grace went so far as to send Frank Clarke a bouquet of flowers because as he said, "I think he is going to get it pretty soon. I want him to appreciate the bouquet."

Frank called Pancho the moment he received the flowers and said, "I don't know whether to kick or kiss the bastard! I don't know what to do with it."

In the end, Clarke sent the flowers his girlfriend Ellie, who was in the hospital for a minor procedure. "Ellie was mad as the dickens," Pancho recalled with a smile. "She called him up. She said, 'I'm not dead yet, you so-and-so.' We used to have a lot of fun with all these things."

Of course, Chuck Yeager is most famous for breaking the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. It was a feat that wasn't discussed openly at first — initially it was a military secret after all. Once the government decided to let the cat out of the bag, of course, he was universally acclaimed, given the McKay and Harmon trophies, and appeared on the front cover of Time magazine.

Military secret or no, most people who lived around the air base knew what Yeager had done. It's hard to explain away something like a sonic boom, is one thing. Pancho Barnes knew all about the attempt to break the sound barrier. "Slick" Goodlin, a civilian pilot of the Bell X-1 originally tapped to make the attempt, was a friend. So was Yeager. He and the X-1 team, which included Jackie Ridley (Engineer in Charge), Bob Hoover (Backup pilot), Bob Cardenas (Drop pilot), Ed Swindell (Flight engineer), Dick Frost (Bell), Jack Russell (Crew chief), and Al Boyd (Commanding Officer) all hung out at Pancho's place. "Pancho was pretty generous with her drinks," recalls Yeager. "Most of the guys, like myself and Hoover and the test pilots, she wouldn't even charge us. But she charged the civilian pilots triple. It was pretty amusing, 'cuz she knew they made ten times the money we did."

Pancho's ranch factors into the story of the sound barrier. The way Yeager remembers it, on Sunday night October the 12th, he asked his wife Glennis "You want to go out to Pancho's and get a steak, and dance, and have a little fun?" Yeager takes it from here: So we got a babysitter for the two boys, and drove over across Rosamond Dry Lake, to Pancho’s, and had dinner. Then after dinner Pancho said, “You wanna go riding?” Glennis loved to ride, and I did too. So we got out the horses, took out in the desert, we was out there for an hour or so, and we were racin back, and some idiot had closed the gate! And I was in the lead. By the time you see – it’s dark – by the time you see the gate and you bend the horse, hell, he’s in as much trouble as you are. And he hit the fence, and flipped and I flew off and broke two ribs on my right side. The test pilot who was suppose to break the sound barrier in two days' time, now had a couple of broken ribs.

Photo: one of many gates into Pancho's corrals, and possibly the gate?

Despite the injury, Yeager was convined he could still fly the X-1. But he didn't want to risk being grounded by a filght surgeon. So, on Monday he visited the closest thing to a doctor he could find outside of the base, a veterinarian in Rosemond. Then the test pilot consulted with his friend and Engineer-in-Charge Jackie Ridley. "I told him about breaking the ribs," Yeager remembers, "and he laughed." The only concern the two shared, was that Yeager might have a problem closing the door of the plane, which operated on a lever. "I couldn’t get enough strength from my right side. It hurt me," Yeager recalls. Ridley looked at the door, then went and got a broom stick. He sawed a piece off and fitted it between two rods on the door. Yeager was then able to shut the door with his left hand, and that's exactly how he did it the next day, when he made the Mach 1.0 attempt.

Photo: Yeager and Ridley pose in front of the X-1, strapped to the B-29 mothership.

Chuck Yeager is an intense, serious person, but he also has a famous gleam in his eye...a certain little spark that tells you he knows how to have more than just a little fun, in the air or on the ground. When he talks about Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club, he's animated and that gleam in his eye is sharp. "Pete Everest and I were taking F-86's up to China Lake for Navy Day," he begins a story, recounting one of his better moments, " and we took off at about six in the morning. It just so happened that Runway 4, well that runway went right across the lake over Pancho's house. We were up to about 500 (feet) by the time we got to the house and Pete rattled the roof. And when we got back, General Boyd's aide met us and he said, "General Boyd's in the office and he wants to talk to you and Evers. You guys buzzed Pancho's and just about raised the shingles off this morning." Realizing that the incident might cost him a bit in pay, Yeager put in a phone call to his friend Pancho, who informed him that the reason General Boyd knew about the incident, was for unexpected reasons. "Pancho told me, 'He was sort of romancing his favorite girl over here, and he was over here this morning when you buzzed the place.'"

Photo: Pancho Barnes and Chuck Yeager are reunited in the early 1970's

A solution to the situation began to form in Yeager's mind. When he arrived at General Boyd's office, Boyd said, "I understand you violated my direct orders and buzzed Pancho's this morning." Yeager takes it from here:I just sorta looked at him, and with my little grin I said, "General Boyd, how do you know we buzzed Pancho's this morning?" And he sat there for about two minutes — beady eyes, looking at us — and then all he said was, "GET OUT!"

Of course, most of the fun Chuck Yeager had at Pancho's place occured on the ground, not in the air. But he bristles at the suggestion that Pancho was running anything other than just a guest ranch. "She knows honey attracts flies," Yeager told us during his interview. "But they just sat, served drinks and talked. The only time Pancho paid a gal paid for a favor, was when a friend named Don Forker who owned a hundred thousand acre ranch was flying in. Pancho said, 'How do you want it?' and he said, 'On toast.' So she brought this hard little blonde, took a big silver tray, put toast, stripped her down naked, and when she took him up to his room she opened the door and said, 'There it is on toast!"

Photo: Chuck Yeager with Pancho (background), her fourth husband Mac (right in leather jacket) and Dallas Morely (left), head hostess at the HBRC

Bob Hoover tells a great many stories about Pancho. One of the funniest, if you're a military man, is this one... When Pancho first got her wings and became an aviatrix of renown, she developed a strong friendship with a U.S. Army Air Force Lt. Col. named Henry "Hap" Arnold. This was in the early 1930's, when Arnold had command of March Field. By the late 1930's Arnold had emerged as one of the architects of American military airpower, and by the end of WWII he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S.A.A.F. Despite his rise to the upper echelons of the air forces, Pancho remained friends with Arnold.

Hoover told the story this way to director Amanda Pope:

One night I was sitting at the bar and [Pancho] said, "How come you're only a first lieutenant?" And I explained the background...that I'd been a sargeant pilot and then a P.O.W. And then she said, "Well, I just don’t think it’s right for all you been through and the way you fly and here you are only a lieutenant." And she said, "I’m going to change that."

So she picked up the phone and called General Arnold." He was the highest level you can get. And it was midnight here and that meant it was 3 o’clock in the morning back there on East Coast! And she woke him up at 3 a.m. in the morning and read him the riot act about how I ought to be promoted. And I thought, "There goes my career, that’s the end of it right now."

And you know, apparently he didn’t think anything of it. He says,"Oh, Pancho she’s been drinking. Which she had been. But she, if she liked you boy she’d do anything for you. And she proved that a lot of times to her friends."

Top Photo: Bob Hoover, Pancho, and an unidentified friend (possibly Roscoe Turner?) at the Reno Air Races in the 1960's, courtesy Bob Hoover. At left, Hap Arnold seen in his younger days.

One footnote: Edwards Air Force Base, where Pancho set up her Happy Bottom Riding Club, was created due to Hap Arnold's foresight. Recognizing that the flat, dry Rogers lakebed made for an ideal training site, he made it a remote base for his March Field squadrons in September of 1933.