Omar Locklear - Daredevil Extraordinaire

 

Omar Locklear, 1919
(historical photo)

In Greenwood Cemetery in Fort Worth is a nondescript grave with nothing to distinguish it from all the other graves. Well, except for the large Texas Historical marker next to it. Here lies Omar Leslie "Lock" Locklear. Few people know of him now, but during his short life, he was the world's greatest stuntman, a fearless daredevil, the man who invented wing-walking and the first to transfer from one plane to another while in flight.

Born in Greenville, Texas on October 28, 1891, he was raised in Ft. Worth after his parents moved there in the early 1900s. In 1911, Calbraith Rodgers landed his plane in a nearby field to clear a clogged fuel line. Locklear witnessed the landing, ran to meet Rodgers and to see the plane up close. From that point on, he was intensely fascinated with aviation and airplanes. 

"Lock," as he came to be called, joined the Army Air Corps in October 1917. He was such a gifted pilot that he was made a flight instructor in WWI. He was well-known for leaving the cockpit during flight and crawling along the wings or fuselage back to the tail section to make in-flight repairs when necessary. After the war ended in 1918, Omar happened to see a barnstorming air show and marveled at how the spectators cheered and gave money to the pilots and how the women were enamored of them. He also quickly realized his own regular flying exploits were much more impressive. 

He left the Army in early 1919 and along with two of his colleagues and a manager, acquired airplanes and formed their own flying show, "The Locklear Flying Circus." It was a huge success and with Locklear as the star, the men became wealthy. In addition to stunts such as wing-walking and doing headstands on the top wing of his Curtiss Jenny biplane, Omar perfected the death-defying stunts of jumping from one airplane to another and the "Dance of Death" in which he and another pilot in a different airplane would switch places while in mid-air.

(Historical photo)

The "Locklear Flying Circus" became such a hit that Hollywood came calling. Locklear moved to California and was hired to be a stuntman in movies. He soon was being billed as the foremost "aviation stuntman in the world." The first movie featuring Omar as the star was "The Great Air Robbery," a film about pilots flying air mail. In the movie, "Lock" performed his famous airplane-to-airplane transfer and a stunt where he transferred from a flying plane to a speeding automobile and then back to the plane moments before the car crashed. The film was a commercial success and he was soon hired to star in a second film, "The Skywayman," about an American ace battling against German pilots in World War I.

Filming began on June 11, 1920, and, until the final scene was recorded on August 2nd, there were problems. Two of Lock's stunts, one where a church steeple was toppled by his plane and another where he transferred from a flying plane to a speeding train, took a number of takes and almost ended in disaster. On the last scheduled day of filming, Omar was to be in a nighttime spin, pulling out to safety at the last second. The night before filming, Lock told his girlfriend, actress Viola Dana, that he had an uneasy feeling about the next day and gave her some of his personal possessions. The scene was originally scheduled to take place in the daytime with red filters on the camera lenses to simulate darkness, but Omar demanded he be allowed to perform the stunt at night for realism. 

(Historical photo)

Large studio arc lights were set up to illuminate Omar and his plane. The lights were set to turn off when he reached 1,000 feet so he would know where he was at and be able to recover from the downward spin. The dive toward an oil derrick was intended to make it appear in the movie that he crashed into the derrick. As Viola Dana, numerous spectators and the full film crew watched, Omar performed several preliminary aerial maneuvers with lit flares to simulate the plane being on fire. Lock then signaled he was ready to begin the spinning dive. For some reason, mechanical or human error, the bright lights did not go off as planned and remained on, blinding Omar and his long-time co-pilot, "Skeets" Elliot. Instead of correcting the spin at 1,000 feet, they started at 200 feet, not nearly enough time to be successful. The plane crashed nose-first into a sludge pool of oil next to the derrick and the lit flares caused an immediate explosion, killing both men instantly.

The crash so horrified Viola that she refused to get on an airplane for the next 25 years. With the entire film having been completed except for the night scene, the movie's studio, Fox, decided to cash in on the fatal crash and rushed the film's release. With advertising proclaiming "Every inch of film showing Locklear's spectacular and fatal last flight, his death-defying feats and a close-up of his spectacular crash to earth," the movie was released to theatres just a month later.

Omar Locklear's remains were brought back to Fort Worth's Greenwood Cemetery where "the world's foremost aviation daredevil" was laid to rest.