Page 25 - Volume12 Number 5

Hollywood’s WWallace Beery
allace Fitzgerald Beery was not only one of Hollywood’s top ten, highest-paid actors during the 1920s and early 1930s, but he was an avid
supporter of aviation, a licensed pilot and owner of a number of airplanes during his career including a Travel Air Type BW biplane and the powerful Type A-6000-A cabin monoplane.
Field, Texas. The film includes excellent footage of Fleet primary trainers.
By 1928 Beery’s flying career was taking off. He had earned a Transport License from the Department of Commerce and frequently flew his Travel Air Type BW open-cockpit biplane powered by a Wright J4 static,
Travel Air serial number 816, registered 9015, after initial test flights and before delivery to Wallace Beery. He flew the ship on many cross-country flights and was enamored with its comfort and performance. In March 1930 the airplane was destroyed in a crash that killed pilot George Maves, his wife and a friend. (TEXTRON AVIATION)
Born in Clay County, Missouri, in April 1885, Beery began his acting career in 1904 when he joined his older brother Noah Beery, Sr., in New York City. Wallace sang in comic operas and later appeared on Broadway in The Belle of the West in 1905 before landing a role in The Yankee Tourist that gained him notable recognition. Before the outbreak of World War I Beery had established himself as a star of comedy films before moving on to play more serious roles as a villain, including his portrayal in 1933 of Mexican partisan Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!
Beery also acted in films based on history such as King Richard I in Robin Hood, alongside Hollywood movie titan Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. In 1930 Beery reached true stardom in Min and Bill that proved to be a box office hit despite the Great Depression. He also found success in The Champ, for which he received an Academy Award (shared with Frederic March) in 1931, and The Secret Six where he played a gangster and shared the marquis with Clark Gable and starlet Jean Harlow.
Beery’s first aviation movie was Hell Divers produced in in 1932, once again teaming up with the young but rising star, Clark Gable. The film, in which Beery portrays Chief Petty Officer “Windy” Riker as a veteran aerial gunner in a squadron of Curtiss Helldiver biplanes, includes rare footage of flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Saratoga. In 1935 he played seasoned flight instructor “Big Mike” Stone in West Point of the Air – an epic Hollywood production that centered on the rigors of training Army Air Corps cadets at Randolph
MAY 2018
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 23