Photo of the Day

No. 560

Stunt pilot Ormer Locklear flying a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny aircraft through a church steeple during a scene in "The Skywayman," 1920. Locklear was killed during the filming of a subsequent film scene and the footage of his fatal accident was retained in the movie.

Airplanes and the movies.

In the 1920s, they were the nation’s ‘new toys.’

Together, they formed a powerful entertainment partnership.

Left: Thomas Edison filed patents for a movie camera and viewer in 1891 and opened the nation's first film production studio in 1893. Left: the Wright Brothers offered flight instruction in College Park, MD, beginning in 1909.

Inventors had brought motion pictures and airplanes into the mainstream around the turn of the twentieth century.

And both developed rapidly.

Left: Eddie Rickenbacker, celebrated WWI US flying ace. Right: the US Postmaster General hands a bag of mail to Earle Ovington in the first US airmail flight, September 1911.

Veteran aviators from World War I became national heroes.

The federal government beg…