THRILLS IN THE AIR

Grey River Argus, 13 June 1931, Page 3

THRILLS IN THE AIR

AERIAL CAMERAMEN. “There’s no thrill like that provided by the ‘flying fool,’ and there’s no job like .that of the man who provides th(f thrill or the fellow who film.- it!--Propped up in his hospital bed. bandaged and pale, but with a cheerful grin playing about his lips. Stanley Rodwell, crack film camera-man, voiced the philosophy of his calling to a “Sunday Chronicle’ interviewer. Only a day or two before hp had come about as close to the next world as anyone ever has. A passenger in the two-sea;ter machine, he was filming the pursuit of one ’plane by another aver a London suburb, when the eng;ne stopped and the ’plane crashed in a back garden. The pilot, Richard Bush, was badly injured, and his companion was in a condition that will also mean his detention in bed for weeks. “What did I feel like before the crash?” the film-man echoed from his nest of pillows. “At the last minute T suddenly remembered the cost of film per foot, and the thought flashed through my mind: ‘I hope the camera survives!’ There was any amount of good stuff in that little box-film that m’ght have cost the lives of two men to shoot. “Well after the crash T thought first of Bush, of course, and then my mind went on working in its groove of a moment before. I was amazingly relieved when someone to’d me that the film was safe.’’ Much has been written about the amazing nerve and daring of the “fly-

ing fools.” the professional aviation stuliters whose whole lives are a gamb--1 1 with fate, with death a- the stake. Put seldom has approprate tribute been paid to the camera-men. who take practically the same risks, and who are never seen on the screen. Dick Grave, greatest of all flying dare-devils, has always been the first to pay tribute to the courage of the man with the cam- <■ :!. “We’re the boys who make the tlir lls, ” he once said, “but ours is an i .’ sier job than that of the fellows who p t ’em on celluloid. ’ ‘ It come- easy to us, because it’s <v trade, but the camera-men aren’t 1 »-i fessional flyers, and they have to do a highly technical job with other f>. i ; ows all the time trying to break ti. r necks for,them.” Grace and his colleagues have their counterparts on this side of the Atlant c. The daring feats of the doubles who have worked in the British International picture, “The Flying Fool”— the one that was being made when Stanley Rodwell crashed—do things that rank with the best efforts of American stunters. ‘ ‘ I guess that Claude Friese Green knows about the thr’lls we get.” Rodwell went on. (Friese Green is Number One cameraman for “The Flying Fool” Rodwell is Number Two). “He’s had as many narrow squeaks as any man in the game. When they were making a film in Spain on one occasion his party wore shooting the charge of a band of cavalry. To get the pictures a motor ear containing the camera had been raced down a boulder-strewn mountain road. The driver had nerve all right.

start of the ride, and .the machine, bounding all over the place, kept pace with the madly galloping troop of cavalry. Then an unu-ually large boulder got in the way of the car. The driver wrenched at the steering wheel just, too late and the machine struck the rock and bounded straight in the air. “It turned a complete somersault and landed in thp ditch in a cloud of dust. By one of those amazing freaks which are always happening in the game. not. a single member of the party was badlv hunt. ” The injured cameraman wriggled his shoulders and settled himself into a more comfortable position. He lighted a cigarette with one hand and went on with his story. “Probably the biggest air thrill that Claude ever got was when he was a passenger in a mach’ne that was racing the Cornish Riviera express.” he “Friese Green was busily fi ming the express when, just as the plane drew level with the engine the motor gave out entirely and the pilot was in just the same position as mine was except that it seemed certain that he would plump straight on to the express train instead of roof tops. “I don’t suppose anyone has had a bigger thrill than those two men had. They were so near to the top of the eng ; ne that the smoke and sparks from the chimney flew in their faces. In a last despairing effort the pilot kicked again at the rudder pedal, and the machine swerved slightly, just cleared the top of the train, and came down on the .track alongside.”