Garbo Of The Skies....still lookin!

[Deleted]

Hi all!

Tried to find my original thread from way back when, but cannot. So.

ANYONE have a copy of Ian Mackersey's doco "Jean Batten: Garbo Of The Skies" that they can lend me? I'll happily pay postage.



About time we had a feature film based on the book, too. How does Helen Mirren sound to play Ellen, Jean's domineering mother? I had Courtney Cox Arquette (with dialogue coaching ) in mind for Jean, but perhaps she's getting on in age a bit?

[Dave Homewood]

Zac, I still have Joe's copy here. I must copy it and get it back to him. Sorry Joe. When i get a chance I'll make you a copy too. What's your postal address? PM me

As for a feature film, not a bad idea. But how about thinking about New Zealand actors and actresses? We don't need nor want foreigners playing our heroes. We have some superb New Zealand actors and actresses. It annoys me when films are made here with foreigners cast as New Zealanders. The only ones who've pulled it off well are Anthony Hopkins as Bert Munro and Robert Powell in Chunuk Bair.

[Dave Homewood]

In fact when i was at university a few years back i had a good friend named Rebecca Trelease who is a very good actress and film maker, and I have thought for some years she would be great in the role of Jean Batten. She's a really lovely girl too, and has the grace and presence to carry it off. You can see a photo of her here
downbytheriverside.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

[Deleted]

Jean! If only I had the money to finance a film....................someone page PJ, quick!

PM inbound Dave, thanks a bundle!

[contourcreative]

Jean is probably not my favourite aviation figure. About twenty years ago I went to the dedication of the then Auckland Airport and had the opportunity to talk to some of her relatives. They supported the analysis of her personality that was established in the book. I think Batten is a manifestation of the 'Aviator as Hero' (or heroine) period in world history. One is left with the impression that she wasn't that keen on flying itself, but perceived it as a means to achieve fame.

Her book 'Alone in the sky' is one of the least revealing biographies I have read, with a pervasive insistence on 'niceness' that makes the book particularly unsatisfying.

[Deleted]

But I think she's all the more interesting for the fact she WAS such a b*tch at times! Alone in the Sky was a good buy off TradeMe for around $10, and for me at least is a book I find hard to put down. I guess I get immersed in that style of flying....

[Dave Homewood]

Film and TV companies love to expose the more seedy side of national heroes (watch A Thousand Skies to see what a drunken, angry man Kingsford Smith was, and what a coniving conman Ulm was, etc, or other examples are every virtually single biopic done on US rock or film stars...) so it's amazing no-one has done that treatment to Jean Batten, an expose' with all the nasty bits.

[contourcreative]

Dave, the de-mythologising process, an essentially post-modern position, on many historic figures is fascinating. (For some years I have been trying to cobble together a PH D thesis proposal on many of these 'aviation icons') Batten, as you know, was not the greatest of fliers and it is significant hat once she had accomplished what she wanted to, she NEVER flew (piloted) again. I have a large collection of period biographies and auto-biographies and unsurprisingly they tend to break down to a similar pattern...the hassles of preparation, the flight itself with the concerns about the status of the aircraft, and, as in all travel biographies, the issue of 'dealing with the natives'. Racism, which in indicative of the attitudes of the time, is rampant. Francis Chichester in 'Alone Over the Tasman Sea' writes;

"Heavens! they were Maoris'....Presently the brown-faced man with a squashed nose turned to the boy and said: 'Py Corry, he want te phlurry anchor, I tink, hey?'...Chichester continues: 'Now the Maori is a devilish fine fellow, friendly, good-natured, sporting and with perfect manners of a kind:in fact, quite a gentleman. So I suppose one should not blame him if he is a trifle slow in absorbing new ideas'...he then goes onto account over many pages his encounter with a Maori called 'Hori' and the trouble he has getting petrol before his flight...

Political incorrectness was not confined to the pilots however. One of my favorite Jean Batten stories is from NZ Yesterdays, edited by Hamish Keith. The Mayor of Auckland, Ernest Davis at the official welcome for Batten at the conclusion of her trans-Tasman flight in 1936, was outrageous!

"Jean, you are a very naughty girl, and really I think you want a GOOD SPANKING for giving us such a terribly anxious time here!"

My perception of Jean Batten is that there wasn't a great deal to her. She never translated her fame into any kind of wider, socially useful direction and presents as a consistently self-focused individual, as indeed were many of the record breaking pilots of the Golden Age.

Here's a postcard/print we designed featuring Jean Batten

[Dave Homewood]

I like that postcard Terry. I wonder if Mr Davis later took Jean home and gave her that spanking, wouldn't be surprised.

Another thing about these long distance flyers and record breakers is how few of them actually managed to make it to old age, and I wonder if perhaps the loss of so many while still young was something that helped her decide to give it up. I can't think of too many who lived into their 70's or 80's. Jean and Oscar Garden. Any others?

That de-mythologising process you talk of is more prevalent now than ever, with the tabloid newspapers and worse the weekly woman's magazines simply making up rubbish about so-called celebrities to try to shatter their image. I find it crazy that they are allowed to do it. It seems like the write an outragious story and then pick a Hollywood star at random's name to add into it, then find a photo taken by papparazzi of an off moment where they look upset, and bingo, another story to peddle to the housewives. I have lost count of how many Woman's Day and No Idea covers I've seen on posters outside shops saying Katie Holmes is leaving Tom Cruise's oppressive grasp, or Jolie can't cope with Pitt, or Pitt can't cope with Jolie, blah blah blah. When anything genuine happens I tend not to believe it because the gutter media cry wolf so often.

[contourcreative]

Regarding the spanking...well he was the mayor of Auckland...perhaps he went to a Public School.

The 1920's and 1930's, in which Modernism really took centre stage, was very much linked with the global shrinking accompanied by the activities of the airplane. The airplane in a practical sense is the tool of internationalism. The racist comments of aviator would be writers, are about that. The League of Nations, the War to End all Wars, Talking pictures, Polar Exploration, Jazz, Surrealism, Psychology, Prohibition are just some of the hallmarks of this period. The notion of the pilot as hero, was a carry over from the journalism of World War I.

So in both a practical sense and a symbolic sense the aviator and the aircraft occupy an important place, not just in international consciousness, but in the development, in particular of the arts - particularly Graphic Design

.In a visual sense the reality of flight changes the way perspectives are presented. The practice of dispensing with a horizontal horizon is seen in all the visual arts. Where the aircraft went the camera followed, and contemporary computer generated entertainment makes extensive use of 'flying cameras'

Seldom considered, is the impact the aircraft made on fiction and film. In a technical sense narratives could use the device of the aircraft to quickly shift the protaganists in their stories from country to country.

Jean Batten became an icon because she wanted to be one and New Zealand wanted 'their' female aviatrix. In terms of our design, we deliberately created a Jean that was iconic rather than slavishly representational...Larger than life, but sadly smaller than it, in many respects.

[Dave Homewood]

At least our female aviatrix hero was not killed by the Royal Navy like poor Amy Johnson.

[Deleted]

Terry! Any chance of procuring an A3 print of that? I love the fact that Buddy is playing with a globe, how apt .

Guys, I really am loving the discussion here, it's fantastic! Regards Jean, don't forget her smothering mum Ellen....if not for Ellen, Jean would've made a long lecture tour of the States, who knows what sort of boost that may have given her fame.

Dave, please don't mention A Thousand Skies! That's another production I'm dying to see!

[contourcreative]

Hi Zac

No problem with the print...that's the postcard version..contact me off-forum if you are interested..The print has a great more detail...

Glad you spotted the little cat...are bit of art deco whimsy..we worked Native flowers into the design and in the border tried to capture something of the steam plumes of Rotorua...We decided against the flying cap which was not flattering, and the dress under the greatcoat was a good way to convey her sensibility towards her attire. 'Nothing sooths the heart like a silk dress' as Dorothy Parker would say, but I think Batten would have liked to be portrayed as feminine, but monumental.

Also Zac, I would politely suggest that any fascination with her being a 'bitch' is tempered with ones own life experiences with women for whom the adjective would be considered mild. There is an element of irrational destructiveness in Jean Batten that I still can't put my finger on. In that respect it needs to be remembered that Ellen's views on health, would ultimately lead to the avoidable death of her daughter. Kind of like Mrs Haversham in Dicken's Great Expectations.

[FlyNavy]

Dave Homewood you can 'forum' the darndest things. Where did you get the idea that the Royal Navy killed Amy Johnson? Here are a few 'first person' accounts:
www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/31/a1363231.shtml
&
www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/71/a4220371.shtml
&

"TRIBUTE TO THE QUEEN OF THE AIR AND ATA PILOT
Mrs Amy JOHNSON MOLLISON

www.fleetairarmarchive.net/rollofhonour/Women.html

Amy Mollison (nee Johnson) graduated from the University of Sheffield in 1926 and began work as a secretary in London. While in London she became a member of the London Aeroplane Club, gaining her pilot's license in 1928. She was also the first British woman granted an aircraft engineer's license.

In 1929 she decided to make a reputation for herself by attempting a long distance flight no woman had ever tried before. She chose to fly to Australia so she would not have to pilot over a large expanse of ocean. Lord Wakefield to front half of the expense for her craft, a De Havilland Gipsy Moth named "Jason", her father paid for the other half. After 85 hours of solo flight and a previous cross country flight record of 147 miles she left for Darwin, Australia on 5 May, 1930. Her trip took 19 days and she became and instant celebrity, and she was dubbed "Queen of the Air" by the British press.

Thereafter, she continued making record flights, including a failed attempt to Peking in 1931 and with Jack Humphries as a copilot again in 1931 set a speed record from London to Tokyo in ten days. In 1932 she broke the record for solo flight to Cape Town, South Africa.

Amy Johnston joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in 1939. On 5 January 1941, while on a flying mission for the Air Ministry from Blackpool to Oxford Amy overshot her destination by 100 miles. She ditched in the Thames Estuary after running out of fuel, and although a convoy trawler tried to rescue her, she drowned.

Amy is remembered in many ways, one of which is the British Women Pilot's Association award -- an annual Amy Johnson Memorial Trust Scholarship to help outstanding women pilots further their careers."

[FlyNavy]

Another account here implies nothing other than the ship was aground when perhaps the 'stern crashed down on the struggling form': (not mentioned in articles above though)

findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n9664040

The above account is much different claiming that Amy had parachuted out of her stricken aircraft. This 'fact' is not mentioned in the account below either: (Methinks the idea puts the other 'fact' about stern crashing down a bit suspect also.)

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/wartime-heroines-killed-in-the-line-of-duty-477564.html

[Dave Homewood]

There was a cover up Phil which was only admitted to a few years back. She was indeed delivering an aircraft and got lost due to cloud below here. She flew well out to sea to drop below the cloud (the usual tactic in that situation so you don't hit a hill on descent rhough cloud) and tried to make it back to land but over the Thames Estuary her aircraft ran out of gas. She bailed out and landed safely in the water but because she landed right in the port, she landed next to a ship of the Royal Navy which had its engines running. Her chute, and then her, was dragged into the prop screw. She did not drown, she was cut to pieces. Dreadful way to die, and as she was such a hero the Govt covered it up till about 2005. I heard this story uncovered on the BBC Radio 4's excellent series Making History. So those websites are out of date.

[contourcreative]

a hideous way to die, Dave, but were her remains actually recovered??

[Dave Homewood]

I'm not sure.

[contourcreative]

just googled the story...whatever the case, I have profound respect for the officer who dived into the water to try and save the pilot, and who perished from the cold.

[Dave Homewood]

Here is the BBC link to the story, the piece begins 22 minutes in from the start of the programme
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/making_history/making_history_spring2003.shtml