Don Dwiggins

(Albert) Paul Mantz was a noted air racing pilot, movie stunt pilot and consultant from the late 1930s until his death in the mid-1960s. This is the amusing, sometimes exciting biography of Paul Mantz, one of the great movie stunt pilots who died while filming The Flight of the Phoenix (July 8, 1965). (In Phoenix Mantz flew a jerrybuilt plane constructed from the wreck of another plane, and crashed on takeoff.) Some of his better known pictures were Ceiling Zero, Test Pilot, Only Angels' Have Wings, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Twelve O'Clock High, so on and so forth. He was technical advisor for Amelia Earhart on her ill-fated final flight and a very long chapter is devoted to that. He was also a camera pilot who could shoot dazzling serial effects. At his two million dollar Movieland Museum of the Air he had a collection of rare old planes that was probably unequalled....This is, briefly, a sprightly rundown on a dashing fellow.… (meer)