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In Flight USA Articles
Long Island's Parrish Art Museum Features Works by Malcom Morley Heavily Influenced by Aviation
By S. Mark Rhodes
Flight of Icarus (1995) - Collection Timothy EgertLong Island’s venerable Parrish Art Museum has recently opened in a striking new location on the Island’s East end and it’s inaugural exhibit features the work of renowned, British-born artist Malcom Morley. This is particularly fitting since Mr. Morley has lived and worked on Long Island for almost 30 years.
Mr. Morley’s work in this particular exhibit (titled “Malcom Morley: Painting, Paper, Process”) includes almost 50 works of Mr. Morley’s art covering roughly the last 30 years of his work. This exhibit is heavily influenced by Mr. Morley’s memories of growing up in wartime Britain and going through the Blitz.
Two Great Gift Books for the Holidays...
By S. Mark Rhodes
Aerial Photography is one of aviation’s oldest traditions (and a rare creative act associated with the practice of aviation) dating back well before the Wright Brothers to mid-19th century France where baloonists frequently captured the city of lights from above. This venerable tradition is brought up to date in this year’s Leave No Trace; The Vanishing North American Wilderness (Rizzoli/Universe), which is a great collaborative book by Essayist Roderick Nash and photographer/pilot Jim Wark.
Film Critic and Author Leonard Maltin On Some of His Favorite Aviation Films
By S. Mark Rhodes
Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guides have been a great resource for filmgoers to discover new favorites and re-visit old chestnuts. His most recent addition (Leonard Maltin’s 2012 Movie Guide from Signet) is nearly 1,700 pages and weighs in at nearly two pounds (it can crush the Kindle!).
Embedded within this guide are insightful, capsule interviews of some of the most noteworthy aviation films that Hollywood turned out in its golden age. Mr. Maltin was nice enough to speak to In Flight USA’s Mark Rhodes about some of his favorite aviation films and how the aviation film genre might make a comeback.
In Flight USA: Once upon a time the aviation film was as much a part of Hollywood genre films as the Detective film, the Western, the Science Fiction film and so on. What do you think are the reasons that the genre declined?
Leonard Maltin: (Long Pause) “I am just guessing mind you, but I think a lot of it has to do with gaming (video games) which maybe has taken the place of the excitement audiences used to get with aviation movies. When Top Gun (1986) came out in the 80s there was a lot of comment then about how some of the combat flying sequences resembled video games. And in those intervening years, those games have become really vivid and even realistic. This (the rise of gaming) might have replaced some of the thrill that films like Top Gun used to provide movie audiences.”
Author Jack Whitehouse’s Fire Island History Sheds Light on an Early Chapter of U.S. Military Aviation
By S. Mark Rhodes
Embedded within the pages of Jack Whitehouse’s new book, Fire Island: Heroes & Villains on Long Island’s Wild Shore (History Press) is the fascinating, but mostly forgotten story of the creation of one of the first U.S. Naval Air Station’s on Long Island near the community of Bay Shore, New York in 1917. Whitehouse, an author/historian with a fascinating resume that includes graduation from Brown, a stint as the commanding officer of a patrol gunboat as well as having had the honor of being the first Naval Officer to participate in an exchange program with the Royal Norwegian Navy was nice enough to check in with In Flight’s Mark Rhodes about his book and this unique chapter in not only Long Island, but U.S. aviation.
In Flight USA: Bay Shore was basically the second American community to get a United States Naval Air Station. What do you think the rationale for locating it there was in particular?
Jack Whitehouse: “The Navy had several good reasons for selecting Bay Shore, located in approximately the geographic middle of the south shore of Long Island, as a location for a U.S. Naval Air Station. First, in 1916 the Second Battalion of the Naval Militia of the State of New York had built an eight-acre base in Bay Shore on the edge of the Great South Bay. The purpose of the naval militia base was to train naval volunteers in flying and aviation mechanics; thus to a great extent the site was already functioning as a naval air station.”
Winter Reading Club
The Art of the Airways (Zenith Press) is a handsome coffee-table book whose appeal might stretch beyond the garden-variety aviation enthusiast. This work is a chronicle and celebration of airline poster imagery and advertising from the golden age of commercial flight. The work provides some
Artist and Author Josh Finney Brings Aviation Comics into the 21st Century With Titanium Rain
By S. Mark Rhodes
Set in the very near future, Titanium Rain deals with the ramifications of a civil war in China spills into a more international concern. The protagonist, USAF pilot Alec Killian finds himself quickly mixed up in a conflict, which will test his morality, humanity and will to live.
Titanium Rain (Archaia Comics) is a sleek piece of speculative graphic novel storytelling with an intriguing mix of political, science fiction and aviation themes created by Josh Finney and Kat Rocha. Mark Rhodes of In Flight was fortunate enough to interview co-creator Josh Finney about his work, his interest in aviation and the decline of aviation and war comics.
The Flight of the Century: Lucky Lindy's Dark Side
Charles Lindbergh remains probably the most famous aviator in US History due in no small part to his historic and daring solo transatlantic flight in 1927. However Lindbergh’s racist tendencies open sympathy to the Nazis and poor record as a family man obviously complicates Lindbergh’s life and
Pancho Barnes Legend is Committed to Film With Pancho Barnes and The Happy Bottom Riding Club
By S. Mark Rhodes
The great Pancho at the peak of her profane glory. (Courtesy of the Pancho Barnes Trust Estate)If there was ever a figure worthy of cult status in the aviation world, that individual must be Florence “Pancho” Barnes. Barnes is probably best known as a character in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff as well as the film version (played by Kim Stanley). The time frame of the book and especially the film pick up at a point in Barnes’ life where she is the owner and operator of the “Happy Bottom Riding Club.” The HBRC was basically a saloon out in the middle of the Mohave Dessert, which catered to the flyers at Muroc Field (later Edwards Air Force Base) who happened to be some of the finest and most legendary test pilots of the time like Chuck Yeager, Scott Crosffield and Buzz Aldrin. Barnes held court at this raucous bar and “dude ranch” for many years helping provide emotional and libational support to this elite group of aviators.
The recently released Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club (Nick Spark Productions) helps give a full picture of Barnes that has only been hinted at in The Right Stuff. Barnes grew up in a kind of blue blood family in Pasadena, California where she was expected to become a society lady like her mother. This was not to be as the young Florence showed an adventuresome streak that was at considerable odds with her mom’s idea of how a young woman should conduct herself in public.
The Battleship North Carolina's Kingfisher is a One of a Kind Aircraft Rarity
By S. Mark Rhodes
The handsome grandson of the author, Jackson Perkins surveys the deck of the Battleship North Carolina. (Papa Rhodes)In the early 1960’s, the people of North Carolina raised $330,000 (much of it from lunch money from NC school children) to buy the decommissioned USS Battleship North Carolina. The result? The birth of one of North Carolina’s most striking and iconic attractions and a great artifact of US military history. One memorable day in 1961, it chugged up the Cape Fear River and tucked into a conspicuous area across the way from downtown Wilmington, North Carolina where it’s mass and gravity dominates the landscape of this port city.