Which you can still see if you take \u201ca sweet trip,\u201d not to the candy shop but along Grand Central Avenue, where it cleaves through Disney\u2019s Grand Central Creative Campus. <\/p>\n
Completed in 1929 and restored by Disney in 2014<\/a>, the beautiful Spanish Revival and Art Deco building is all that remains of the airport. <\/p>\n Mary Pickford at Chaplin Airfield on Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in 1921 with Doug Fairbanks, her niece Gwynne Pickford, Mildred Harris and Sydney <\/b>Chaplin.<\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n Here Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh began their record-breaking<\/a> first regular L.A. to New York airline flight (a mere 50 hours!) and aviator Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly solo from the East Coast to the West. Here countless celebrities and industry titans alighted as they came, or returned, to L.A. The airport was also the site of scenes from many other early films, including 1930\u2019s \u201cHell\u2019s Angels,\u201d produced by Howard Hughes, and 1933\u2019s \u201cLady Killer,\u201d starring James Cagney. <\/p>\n It was not, however, the setting for the famous airport scene in \u201cCasablanca\u201d<\/a> \u2014 by best accounts, that was Van Nuys Airport.<\/p>\n That the Grand Central Air Terminal now houses Disney offices and event spaces (and is open for the occasional L.A. Conservancy or Art Deco Society tour) marks a full-circle moment. From the brief, hazy films of the Wright brothers\u2019 early flights<\/a> to complaints about celebrities\u2019 private-jet emissions<\/a>, Hollywood has had a deep, complicated, mutually beneficial (and occasionally tragic) relationship with aviation.<\/p>\n Ormer Locklear died in 1920 at age 28 after performing a stunt for his film \u201cThe Skywayman.\u201d<\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n So as we enter the holiday season, during which millions will flock to both the airport and (one hopes) the multiplex, it seems fitting to consider how Hollywood helped build, literally and figuratively, the air travel industry.<\/p>\n With its mild weather and acres of empty land, turn-of-the-20th century L.A. was perfect for two burgeoning industries: flight and film. <\/p>\n Hollywood power players and planes<\/p>\n Grand Central Air Terminal was not the first area airport. Even before World War I, L.A.\u2019s rich and innovative were transfixed by flight. In 1910 more than 200,000 people attended the Los Angeles International Air Meet<\/a> at Dominguez Field in what is now Rancho Dominguez.<\/p>\n Thomas Ince, second from right, at his airfield at Venice Boulevard and Mildred Avenue.<\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n As the small aircraft manufacturers that would eventually become, or be replaced by, Lockheed, Douglas and Northrop planted themselves on the West Coast, L.C. Brand \u2014 often called the \u201cfather of Glendale\u201d \u2014 built an airstrip in front of his hillside mansion (now the Brand Library) and silent film producer\/future studio head Thomas Ince built Ince Field in Venice as a base for stunt pilots. In 1914, the latter became the first airfield on the West Coast to be officially designated an airport.<\/p>\n By the time WWI ended, airports and airstrips dotted the L.A. area \u2014 by some accounts, 53 existed within 10 miles of City Hall. Hughes<\/a> is the most famous bridge between film and flight \u2014 producing movies and later running RKO Pictures while also founding Hughes Aircraft Co., building and flying game-changing planes and, eventually, running Trans World Airlines. But he was not the only one.<\/p>\n Cecil B. DeMille with his biplane at DeMille Field No. 2 on Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. <\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n In 1918, Cecil B. DeMille established the Mercury Aviation Co. \u2014 which would become the first commercial airline with regularly scheduled flights in the world \u2014 and built an airfield, DeMille Field No. 1<\/a>, at Melrose and Fairfax avenues. The first passenger flight from New York to L.A. landed at DeMille Field No. 2, at Wilshire and Fairfax.<\/p>\n Cecil B. DeMille\u2019s Mercury Aviation at DeMille Field No. 2 in 1920.<\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n In 1919, Sydney Chaplin (brother and business manager of Charlie) built his own airfield pretty much across the street on a parcel bordered by Fairfax, Wilshire and La Cienega. (Consider that the next time you\u2019re trying to make a left on La Cienega.)<\/p>\n Chaplin and DeMille soon discovered that air travel was not as profitable as it first seemed \u2014 the runways of L.A.\u2019s small airports became too short to accommodate increasingly large planes and, as the city grew, the land was more valuable for real estate development. But more important than these Hollywood-owned airfields was the role aviation played in the burgeoning film industry, and vice versa.<\/p>\n Aviation in film<\/p>\n Many World War I airmen came to L.A. to become stunt pilots<\/a> and, occasionally, movie stars. Former Royal Air Force gunner-actor Reginald Denny<\/a> flew stunts with the 13 Black Cats at Burdett Field (located at 94th Street and Western Avenue in what is now Inglewood) and appeared in dozens of non-aviation films, including \u201cAnna Karenina,\u201d \u201cThe Little Minister\u201d and \u201cRebecca.\u201d<\/p>\n Carl Laemmle on the wing of an airplane with aviator Frank Stites at Universal City\u2019s opening on March 15, 1915. Stites died the following day while performing an aerial stunt for the studio. <\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n Being a stunt pilot, even for the movies, was a perilous occupation. Frank Stites died while performing stunts during the 1915 festivities for Universal Studios\u2019 opening weekend. (He is said to haunt the backlot.) <\/p>\n Five years later, the death of American ex-serviceman Ormer Locklear made Hollywood history. Known for his ability to make \u201cwing-walking\u201d repairs during his stint in the Army Air Service, Locklear quit the military after WWI to form the Locklear Flying Circus. Carl Laemmle made him a star with \u201cThe Great Air Robbery\u201d (which was filmed at DeMille Field No. 1). But Locklear\u2019s second film, \u201cThe Skywayman\u201d for studio head William Fox, would be his last. The final stunt was filmed at night. Locklear asked that the lights at DeMille field be doused so he could see when he should pull out of his dive. When that didn\u2019t happen, Locklear crashed and was killed<\/a>, along with his flying partner Milton \u201cSkeets\u201d Elliott. (Fox included the crash in the film \u2014 no known footage exists today.)<\/p>\n According to L.A. and Hollywood historian Marc Wanamaker, the accident so appalled Denny that he began working on a way to film air stunts without putting pilots in danger. \u201cDenny devised a miniature radio plane, remote-controlled, which became the basis for drones in World War II,\u201d and was used to train fighter pilots, Wanamaker says. \u201cSo you see how intertwined it all was \u2014 Hollywood and flying.\u201d<\/p>\n Early motion pictures were obsessed with movement, Wanamaker says. \u201cIt started with horses, then trains and then planes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBright Eyes,\u201d in which the orphaned Shirley Blake (Temple) is adopted by a group of her father\u2019s pilot friends, was just one in a string of films that celebrated, and promoted, air travel and the miracle of flight. <\/p>\n Aviation hats were all the rage in the 1940s.<\/p>\n (Marc Wanamaker)<\/p>\n After WWI, everyone, including women, wanted to fly and Hollywood encouraged it. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made aviation comedies; Harry Houdini took to the skies in \u201cThe Grim Game.\u201d Rudolph Valentino learned to fly as did Mary Pickford and Ruth Roland, who became the queen of stunt flying films. Both women owned their own planes and Pickford, Wanamaker says, brought a \u201cdragon\u201d plane<\/a> to Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre, posing in front of it as a publicity stunt.<\/p>\n When stars began traveling by air, they made those travel plans known so photographers could capture them disembarking on the runway, the airline name clearly visible. Some posed with their own planes, others at various terminals or, occasionally, in flight-inspired styles, including hats shaped like planes. Studio costume designers, including Howard Greer and, later, Jean Louis, put together flight attendant fashion.<\/p>\n Camouflaging an airport<\/p>\n After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, studio production designers and artists came up with a way to disguise Hollywood Burbank Airport<\/a> (then Lockheed Air Terminal) as part of the suburban community. After it opened in 1930 as United Airport, Burbank became Glendale\u2019s main competitor in air travel and celebrity sightings (what would become Los Angeles International Airport was still Mines Field and acres of wheat and barley). <\/p>\n A terminal at Burbank Airport, on a postcard from Patt Morrison\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n United Airport was purchased by Lockheed in 1940 and after the United States entered WWI, it was used to build and stage military aircraft. Concerned that Japan would strike West Coast targets, the military turned to the studios to help camouflage Lockheed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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