WHO WAS ROSCOE TURNER?

ROSCOE TURNER

In anticipation of Sunday Night At The Movies, I thought you might like a little backstory on who Roscoe Turner was.

Of course, if I wrote the script as well as some people say I did, you would just meet him through the story. But the backstory is interesting, and photos of him and his airplanes will give you something to visualize as you read the movie.

Roscoe Turner, circa 1932

This was the last screenplay I got hired to write. It’s adapted from the non-fiction history “Roscoe Turner: America’s Master Aviation Showman,” by my old friend the late C.V. Glines. I got the gig because CeeVee let me know the deal was happening and wanted to use what power he had in the moment of deal-making to get the producers to at least take a look at and consider the one screenwriter in Hollywood CeeVee knew could write it right.

Above: Roscoe and Gilmore in front of the Lockheed Air Express, 1931. Gilmore was the symbol of the Gilmore Oil Company, Roscoe’s main sponsor.

The reason I was that guy is because my father worked for Roscoe during the 1932-33 season, and I heard a lot of stories from him. The producers decided to be nice and give me a meeting. I got the gig when I told them the story of what Gilmore the Lion’s real name was and why he got it. (That’s in the movie, so you have to wait to get there to find out). It also helped that I knew the airplane collector who had full-scale flying replicas of all the airplanes mentioned in the movie, so if they wanted to, they could do it without CGI.

Eventually, Gilmore couldn’t go flying with Roscoe anymore

Roscoe was a real showman, back in the days when people were really impressed with airplanes. In the midst of the Great Depresssion, over 100,000 people went to the National Air Races in Cleveland over Labor Day Weekend to see the competition for the Thompson Trophy. And there were all the other great competitions, like the 1934 MacRobertson England-Australia air race to celebrate the centenary of Australia becoming a regular colony, not just a penal colony. There was also the Bendix Transcontinental Race.

Roscoe made the cover of Time Magazine (“His merchandise is speed” - the movie title) These events caught the public imagination the way the Space Race did in the 1960s (in fact, one of the people NASA hired in 1958 as a consultant to figure out how to set up publicity for the Space Race was a guy who publicized the Thompson Trophy Races).

Roscoe and the Wedell-Williams racer - 1932

The one thing I got from the book that sold the producers on the story was that he was in show business, and was one step ahead of the wolf, just like all his friends in the movies. In fact, Roscoe even “starred” in a movie to raise money for his last race. So I brought in my knowledge of Hollywood history and life on a film set - which isn’t in the book.

The Boeing 247 Roscoe convinced Boeing to give him, ready to take off at Mildenhall, England, for the MacRobertson Race (sponsored by Warner Brothers and Heinz 57 - the engines were named “Nip” and “Tuck”)

Roscoe was also popular with kids. He had a “hit” radio show in the 1930s, and several of the World War II pilots I knew told me about being kids in the 30s and getting interested in aviation by listening to the show. The bit about why he stopped doing cigarette advertising because he realized it was influencing kids really happened. I was able to find a recording of the broadcast of one of the shows online and it’s used here.

Roscoe’s Packard Phaeton, now restored

Since the movie is episodic in structure, I decided to use Walter Winchell’s well-known radio show as the break point between moments.

And the whole era really did come to an end on September 3, 1939, the day Roscoe won the Thompson for the third time and permanently retired it, and Britain declared war on Germany. (The organizers of the post-war Thompson races had to pay him to release his permanent claim to the trophy so they could re-start air racing in 1946).

Roscoe wins the Thompson Trophy for the third time - 1939

So, settle back, the theater will go dark in a couple hours, and you can enjoy my favorite flying movie.

Roscoe’s big starring role

Why didn’t it become a movie? Because it came into existence just as the studios decided they could only make features with Big IP that everybody knew about. Roscoe was too obscure.

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