The early days of American Cinema were truly a bizarre time, and few stories illustrate the Wild-West-like, no-holds-barred attitude applied in film production at the time better than the tale of "The Skywayman" and Ormer Locklear.
The early days of American Cinema were truly a bizarre time, and few stories illustrate the Wild-West-like, no-holds-barred attitude applied in film production at the time better than the tale of "The Skywayman" and Ormer Locklear.
Locklear was a stunt pilot in the commercially successful "The Great Air Robbery" in 1919, a film that made him one of the most famous pilots in the world. After a protracted legal battle following that film, in which a studio executive initially refused to pick up his $25,000 option, he signed on to film "The Skywayman," an ultimate hell on earth job crafted to test the limits of his abilities.
The film promised never-before-seen stunts, and went out of its way in an attempt to deliver them. In the stunt pictured, Locklear's plane crashed into a church tower, toppling the tower and severely damaging the plane itself. Fortunately, Locklear himself managed to survive, but his risky duties were far from over.
Another harrowing incident followed soon after, when Locklear was meant to perform a transfer from his plane to a moving train. A transfer of what, you might ask? Himself. Miraculously, he survived yet again, and filming continued.
One would assume that, after such terrifying incidents, Locklear would retire to a quiet, uneventful life on the countryside, presumably spent with family and loved ones. Nope. Locklear was back at it immediately, and was ordered to perform his most gruesomely foreboding death-defying stunt yet.
Locklear was scheduled to perform a night spin, which was originally intended to be performed during the day with lighting filters that would simulate darkness. However, the shoot was moved to the nighttime time slot after studio executive (and Fox empire founder) William Fox protested, claiming real darkness would provide a real feel of danger. Locklear and his co-pilot crashed into the sludge pool adjacent to an oil well and died on impact.
Perhaps indicative of the business climate of the time, the studio decided, rather than scrapping the project and going into damage control mode, as would likely be the case today, to instead rush the project through to completion. They even used Locklear's death as a marketing tool. The film, bizarrely, was received with critical acclaim, and the rest, including Ormer Locklear, was history.
