How Hollywood helped build airports and air travel industry

Everyone knows the song “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Shirley Temple’s signature tune has become a cultural touchstone, showing up in the history of the Chicago mob (it was the nickname of the Cicero crew) and, of course, “The Simpsons.”

But if you haven’t seen the 1934 film “Bright Eyes,” you might not know that the ship in question is an airplane or that this hymn to air travel was originally sung as Temple’s character taxied around one of Los Angeles’ first commercial airports, Glendale’s Grand Central Air Terminal.

Which you can still see if you take “a sweet trip,” not to the candy shop but along Grand Central Avenue, where it cleaves through Disney’s Grand Central Creative Campus.

Completed in 1929 and restored by Disney in 2014, the beautiful Spanish Revival and Art Deco building is all that remains of the airport.

Here Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh began their record-breaking 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’s “Hell’s Angels,” produced by Howard Hughes, and 1933’s “Lady Killer,” starring James Cagney.

It was not, however, the setting for the famous airport scene in “Casablanca” — by best accounts, that was Van Nuys Airport.

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’ early flights to complaints about celebrities’ private-jet emissions, Hollywood has had a deep, complicated, mutually beneficial (and occasionally tragic) relationship with aviation.

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.

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.

Hollywood power players and planes

Grand Central Air Terminal was not the first area airport. Even before World War I, L.A.’s rich and innovative were transfixed by flight. In 1910 more than 200,000 people attended the Los Angeles International Air Meet at Dominguez Field in what is now Rancho Dominguez.

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 — often called the “father of Glendale” — 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.

By the time WWI ended, airports and airstrips dotted the L.A. area — by some accounts, 53 existed within 10 miles of City Hall. Hughes is the most famous bridge between film and flight — 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.

In 1918, Cecil B. DeMille established the Mercury Aviation Co. — which would become the first commercial airline with regularly scheduled flights in the world — and built an airfield, DeMille Field No. 1, 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.

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’re trying to make a left on La Cienega.)

Chaplin and DeMille soon discovered that air travel was not as profitable as it first seemed — the runways of L.A.’s 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.

Aviation in film

Many World War I airmen came to L.A. to become stunt pilots and, occasionally, movie stars. Former Royal Air Force gunner-actor Reginald Denny 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 “Anna Karenina,” “The Little Minister” and “Rebecca.”

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’ opening weekend. (He is said to haunt the backlot.)

Five years later, the death of American ex-serviceman Ormer Locklear made Hollywood history. Known for his ability to make “wing-walking” 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 “The Great Air Robbery” (which was filmed at DeMille Field No. 1). But Locklear’s second film, “The Skywayman” 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’t happen, Locklear crashed and was killed, along with his flying partner Milton “Skeets” Elliott. (Fox included the crash in the film — no known footage exists today.)

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. “Denny devised a miniature radio plane, remote-controlled, which became the basis for drones in World War II,” and was used to train fighter pilots, Wanamaker says. “So you see how intertwined it all was — Hollywood and flying.”

Early motion pictures were obsessed with movement, Wanamaker says. “It started with horses, then trains and then planes.”

“Bright Eyes,” in which the orphaned Shirley Blake (Temple) is adopted by a group of her father’s pilot friends, was just one in a string of films that celebrated, and promoted, air travel and the miracle of flight.

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 “The Grim Game.” 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 “dragon” plane to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, posing in front of it as a publicity stunt.

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.

Camouflaging an airport

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, studio production designers and artists came up with a way to disguise Hollywood Burbank Airport (then Lockheed Air Terminal) as part of the suburban community. After it opened in 1930 as United Airport, Burbank became Glendale’s 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).

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.

Designers from Disney, Paramount and 20th Century Fox helped design a 1,000-acre canopy that would make the airport indistinguishable from the neighborhood that surrounded it. According to the Lockheed Martin website: “The main factory was covered with a canopy of chicken wire, netting and painted canvas to blend in with the surrounding grass. And fake trees were erected with spray-painted chicken feathers for leaves, some painted green to represent new growth and some brown to represent decaying patches.”

No bombs were ever dropped on Lockheed airport so Operation Camouflage was a success, which is a good thing considering that even after commercial travel began at LAX in 1979, coastline fog often forced planes to land at Burbank.

This is not to say that LAX doesn’t have its own Hollywood history. Mines Field, purchased by L.A. in 1937, was where Jimmy Stewart and other aviation-loving actors, including Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor, learned to fly. Since LAX opened, it has been featured in countless films, television series, music videos, songs and video games, from the opening scene of “The Graduate” to the opening lyrics of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” The 2024 Netflix movie “Carry-On” takes place almost entirely at LAX, but was filmed in a decommissioned terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

Now, even as both the entertainment and air travel industries experience all manner of difficulties in the modern economy, their symbiotic relationship continues to thrive. Celebrities still endorse airlines (and continue to have their photos taken while traveling on them, though more often by fellow fliers) and though “Casablanca” set a very high bar, it’s still tough to beat a good airport scene. Film and flight are still touchstones of adventure and possibility, after all.