Viewing page 81 of 123

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

into a group photograph of World War I pilots, Tallman leaned on a silverheaded cane as he greated us. He explained with some embarrassment that he had broken his foot sky-diving. Even with both feet on the ground, Tallman strikes you immediately as one of the last of the old-time adventurers.

There are few men alive who have as intimate a knowledge of aviation and fewer still who can handle an airplane with Tallman's facility. Even his office is a small-scale aviation museum. On one wall a fighter streaks away from the flames of a dirigible it has destroyed. On another wall hang a dozen drawings of famous World War I aerial combat situations. A photo of Jayne Mansfield smiles from the midst of the smoke and flames, signed and inscribed, "To Frank, with full throttle and no brakes." Machine guns loaded with dummy clips hang over each window, and beside Tallman's walnut desk is a beautiful gun belt with its Colt .45 holstered.

"I'm a nut about guns," Tallman said, taking the Colt .45 from the belt. He opened a drawer and brought out a service revolver, loaded. "Paul and I always have considerable cash around," he explained. Then he reached into his hip pocket and produced a tiny firearm. "Beretta automatic. Just flip this lever, and you have nine shots."

On a table stood a large silver tray inscribed, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World--1962--with all my thanks, Stanley Kramer."

"Kramer sent me that after the stunts were over," Tallman told us. "Darned nice of him."

The stunts Tallman referred to were many and hair-raising. For the Mad World movie he had buzzed a control tower far inside the safety margin. He had taxied a plane into the glass wall of an airport restaurant. He had flown at 160 miles per hour through an open hangar. And he had flown through a billboard.

"That was the single most dangerous flying stunt that has ever been done," Tallman said. "It will never be done again because no one else will do it, and neither will I. We set up a billboard shape with cloth tapes, and for three weeks I practiced flying through it in all kinds of wind conditions. On the real signboard, the middle was
[[image]]
Styrofoam and balsa-wood planks. What made it dangerous was the steel girder around the outside of the sign. I only had three feet of clearance off each wingtip when I went through."

We had planned to photograph Tallman flying his 1909 Blériot later that day, but by the time the airplane had been checked out it was nearly dark. Tallman limped over to where we were standing by Blériot. He had on coveralls, an old, heavily stitched leather helmet, goggles and a white silk scarf around his neck. Standing by the Blériot he looked like something out of an old movie. "It's too dammed late for pictures," he said, absently caressing the plane's varnished propeller. "Well, hell, this bird is ready to go, so I may as well take it for a spin anyway."

Dragging the heavy foot cast, he climbed through the framework of oak, fabric and wires into the tiny seat. The prop was spun. Tallman ran up the engine, waved and bounced off down a grass strip on the Blériot's thin, bicycle-spoked wheels. One of his mechanics watched the frail plane waver into the air and muttered, "I wouldn't fly that thing for a thousand in cash, and he's doing it for kicks."

Touch and go in a Blériot

Tallman banked around and dove the Blériot at us as he came by, pulling up sharply just a few feet from the ground. Then he leveled off, touched the wheels down for about twenty yards, added power and was off again. When you consider the antiquated control system of such an airplane (the Blériot has no ailerons--the fabric-covered wing must be "warped" with cables to bank the plane), it was an incredible performance.

Frank Tallman has been flying in old airplanes since he was five. His father, a World War I piolot, owned a Curtiss Jenny, and would hold Tallman in his lap when he flew short hops. When Frank was eight his father bought a two-seater bilplane, and at an age when most boys have not even thought about driving the family car around the yard Tallman begain to get in some flying time. In 1938 he soloed. "I was born a little too late to late to begin flying when I would have liked to, but I made it," Tallman recalls. "I was probably one of th elast to learn to fly in the helmet-and-goggle days of the open cockpit. Of course when the war started, that type of training was revived because planes were scarce." During the war Tallman was a flight instructor for both the Army and Navy and later commanded a helicopter squadron.

During Tallman's long romance with airplanes he as been a charter pilot, flown crop dusters, tested planes for the government and private industry, and has stunted for air shows and movies. Just a few years ago at a Pittsburgh air show he finally caught up with something he had never tried, wing-riding. A wing-rider stands on the top wing of a biplane, strapped to a special support while the plane stunts. "I had to see what it was like," Tallman said. "I went up with loose clothing and just goggles, no helmet. The wind whipped away most of my clothes, and I couldn't comb my hair for a week."

Tallman's ability as a pilot can be measured in part by his easy command of so many planes. In one day at Orange County we saw him fly the Blériot eight miles out to sea for a photograph we wanted. Then he test-flew his German 1918 Fokker D-7 fighter, performed aerobatics with a 1917 French Nieuport and finally flew tight maneuvers for an hour with the only 1918 German Pflz fighter in existence--a plane even the German aces thought was a horror to handle.

Scoot Crossfield, the former test pilot whose exploits with the X-15 rocket plane have made aviation history, once flew the 1916 Lincoln Standard that Tallman and Mantz own. He siad, "I've got nothing but respect for the men who had to fly those old warplanes. Compared to today's jets those old crates were impossible to control. Tallman is a real expert."

Tallman once decided he had better buckle down to a "good respectable job with a future." This was just after the war. He tried advertising and then broadcasting. "From the moment I heard the first plane fly overhead I knew I didn't belong on Madison Avenue."

Airplanes had remained a hobby, and it was an old Sopwith Camel, famed British World War I fighter plane, that turned him back toward the aviation business. Tallman stumbled upon the tattered remains of a Camel in an old barn near Moorestown, New Jersey, one afternoon in 1949. The rarity of his find sent him on a search for the Camel's owner, who sold him the plane and five other World War I relics for $500.

Tallman supervised the restoration of the Camel, and soon was off for Europe in search of more antique airplanes. When he returned he went to California and flew for the filming of the Lafayette Escadrille. He bought more planes while flying for the movie and shortly was building an impressive collection.

He also did stunt flying for Hollywood--under bridges, through open hangers--even crashing planes when the script called for it. In "The Last Time I Saw Archie" he demolished a Fairchild World War II trainer. He crash-landed a P-51 on one wheel eight times for "Wake Me When It's Over" before the director was satisfied that the action looked real enough. Recently Tallman has flown sequencs for television's "Route 66" and "Twilight Zone".

Just a year and a half ago Tallman joined forces with Paul Mantz, an expert pilot who has has been thinking up wild aerial stunts and executing them for the movies for many years. Eventually Tallman and Mantz hope to establish a flight museum near the headquarters of Tallmantz Aviation, Incorporated.

At dusk on the last day we were at Orange County an old Spad was reported missing. Tallman roared frantically off to look for it. He returned in 15 minutes, visibly relieved. He had located the Spad in a filed where on of his pilots, Jim Bissel, had been forced to make a dead-stick landing when his engine failed. Part of Tallman's concern was explained when a mechanic told us how another plane had been missing six months earlier. At that time both pilot and plane had been lost in a crash.

Tallman limped over to us as the setting sun made eerie shadows of the Corsairs, B-25's and biplanes tethered in front of his hangers. The planes were through for the day, and it was very quiet. "You know," he said, "at the end of a day like this I'm tired. Thousands of dollars' worth of irreplaceable planes to worry about, cranky engines to fix, pilots to check out, crosswinds we can't fly in, and now this scare. You know, " and he smiled a little, "I'd rather fly through the damn billboard again." He had to be joking. THE END

Transcription Notes:
[[image]] plane flying through billboard "Twilight Zone" etc. are in quotes to signify move and TV titles originally in italics.