Because of its proximity to Tinsel Town, Catalina Island’s history is inextricably linked with some of Hollywood’s most colorful characters.
Well-known celebrities like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and, more recently, Whoopi Goldberg and Nicholas Cage, have all been regular visitors to the Island at one time or another.
Because of its proximity to Tinsel Town, Catalina Island’s history is inextricably linked with some of Hollywood’s most colorful characters.
Well-known celebrities like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and, more recently, Whoopi Goldberg and Nicholas Cage, have all been regular visitors to the Island at one time or another.
Sharing the Catalina sun with these stars over the years has been a long list of less well-known—but equally influential—players in Hollywood lore, including the king of stunt pilots, Paul Mantz. And unlike most of our Hollywood visitors over the years, Mantz came not only for pleasure, but kept his hand in local business for a while as well.
While you may have never heard of Albert Paul Mantz, if you’ve spent any time at all in your life watching old movies as have I, you have no doubt seen the planes he flew—and sometimes crashed—in movies for nearly half a century.
As it is with many early pilots, Mantz’s start in aviation makes for a remarkable tale in itself (he earned the money for his first flying lessons at the age of 16 by driving hearses during the deadly 1919 influenza epidemic).
Early on, he nearly got out of aviation altogether after watching one of his instructors die in a plane crash, but he eventually resumed his career path and became a cadet in the U.S. Army Air Service. This, however, didn’t last long because of a game of “chicken” he played once in his Army trainer biplane with an oncoming train, pulling up and rolling over the train at the last second.
Although these were the loosely-regulated days of flying and such antics were not uncommon, Mantz’s stunt didn’t go over well with the Army brass that happened to be on the train and Mantz was drummed out of the service.
Nevertheless, his instructors saw potential in him and urged him to continue pursuing his flying career, which he did.
After several years of flying as a Hollywood stunt pilot, Mantz eventually earned himself the title of Hollywood’s premiere “go to” guy when it came to filming aviation sequences, particularly after the end of World War II. To these ends, he maintained a small fleet of aircraft for use as movie props for hire. The story of how he acquired this “air force” is the stuff of Hollywood legend itself. It goes like this:
When the war was over, there existed colossal amounts of war surplus in the form of everything from jeeps and guns to planes and even entire ships. Surplus aircraft, for example, were so numerous that they were sold to scrappers not by the plane or by the ton, but by the acre.
Vast stretches of the western deserts were the “graveyards” of much of this surplus and one by one, they were taken off to be melted into peacetime commodities like automobiles, toasters and those new-fangled things called televisions.
Mantz, prophesizing that there would be a huge market for war films in the decades to come (and therefore the need for props), regularly toured these boneyards, picking out the best, still-functional aircraft he could find.
Despite the bargain-basement prices, Mantz’s friends thought he was crazy. Nevertheless, he spent nearly $60,000 buying a total of 475 aircraft. But Mantz got the last laugh on his friends right off the bat by draining all the surplus fuel from the tanks of these aircraft and then re-selling it. This act alone recouped nearly his entire initial investment. From this time on, his earnings from this enterprise would be nothing but profit.
Though brief, Mantz’s Catalina years began in earnest shortly after the war when he began his own air charter business called (what else) Paul Mantz Catalina Air Charter Service. In 1947 and ’48, Mantz made a local niche for himself by flying many of Hollywood’s movers and shakers to Catalina.
A quick search of his passenger manifests from 1947, for example, yields such mega-names in the motion picture business as Columbia Pictures President Harry Cohn, film star Joel McCrea, Producer Howard Pine and even Howard Hughes. During the operation of his air charter service, Mantz also threw his hat into the ring of Avalon business, becoming owner of the old “Flying Yachtsman” (hence the name) bar and restaurant at 403 Crescent Avenue, where Sugarloaf Books is now.
But in the immediate post-war years, Mantz Air Service was competing not only with young upstart airlines like Amphibian Air Transport and California Maritime Airlines, he was also competing with United Air Lines, which began service to the Catalina Airport in 1946.
This competition, coupled with a busy lifestyle and Catalina’s infamous slow winter season, caused Mantz to eventually hang up his local air service. He retained ownership of the Flying Yachtsman until 1961.
In my documentary “Wings Across the Channel,” local barber Lolo Saldana tells a hilarious story that unfolded one day back in the 1950s. Lolo was cutting Paul Mantz’s hair when Mantz got a phone call right there in the barber shop.
“I believe it’s Chuck Yeager,” said Lolo to Mantz.
Lolo listened in amusement as Mantz spoke with the aviation legend. Mantz kept repeating “You’re nuts, Chuck! You’re crazy!”
Turned out that Yeager, who was making the call from the Marine Corps Air Base in El Toro, was forewarning Mantz that he would be out at Catalina “in 10 minutes.”
“You gotta be nuts!,” said Mantz to Yeager. “That’s what I’m telling you. You are crazy!”
As Lolo continued the haircut, a few minutes went by when suddenly Yeager roared over Avalon in an F86 Sabre at an uncomfortably low altitude.
“He was here in 10 minutes,” said Lolo. “Just like he said he would be.”
Although Mantz’s air service on Catalina lasted only two years, his involvement with the film industry continued for many years afterwards until his untimely death.
At the age of 61, Mantz met his end, perhaps predictably, the way he had spent much of his life. In 1965, while filming the Jimmy Stewart classic “Flight of the Phoenix” in the Arizona desert, Mantz was killed when he crashed in a small plane built specifically for the film.
All that remains of Mantz’s Catalina years, besides memories, is the sign for his former restaurant the “Flying Yachtsman,” which hangs prominently in Antonio’s Cabaret as part of the décor.
Jim Watson is the author of “Mysterious Island: Catalina,” available on Amazon, Kindle and in stores all over Avalon.
