Spreading their wings
Posted on Dimanche 20 juin 2010 at 9 h 59 min and filed under Magazine.In the early 20th century, it took guts and a strong personality for a woman to conquer the skies. Meet the pioneers. — By Marc Branchu
Élise Deroche, Harriet Quimby, Bessie Coleman… With the exception of Amelia Earhart, the names of these early woman pilots have been all but forgotten. And yet. In the early 20th century, they put wings, literally, on the movement for women’s emancipation. Standing up to the reigning male chauvinism, they faced obstacles that were equally as difficult as mechanical failure. “Aviation is not a women’s sport,” wrote a journalist at the time. “It’s not even a sport for men yet. It’s barely a sport for birds.” Prejudice dies hard. But the women who made it had strong, independent spirits, and aircraft offered an ideal vehicle to break free of both convention and gravity.
The artists — The first woman pilot was an artist. Élise Deroche, a friend of the famous actress and singer Mistinguett, also from a modest background, who had became the toast of Paris during the Belle Époque. Equally at ease on stage as astride a motorcycle, she fell in love with airplanes in 1906. On March 8, 1910, she became the first woman to receive a pilot’s license. “The sky is my stage,” she used to say. For nearly ten years, she was known as the courageous Baroness de Laroche (a title of nobility granted by Czar Nicholas II after a demonstration flight). She had already lost two husbands and her son, when she herself died in an airplane crash on July 18, 1919—a flight on which she was a passenger.
Another “artist,” another destiny: Harriet Quimby, a successful journalist and screenwriter, traveled the world for her stories. In 1911, she became the first American woman to receive her pilot’s license, and continued to write, both for magazines and for silent film—seven screenplays in 1911 alone. Although she crossed the English Channel on April 16, 1912, her exploit went unnoticed, as the Titanic had gone down the previous day. Three months later, she died in a plane crash during an aviation meet in Boston, aged 37.
Katherine Stinson was supposed to become a musician. To pay for her piano lessons, she climbed aboard a Wright B biplane in 1912, earning money from exhibition flights. She was so captivated by flying that she soon gave up her music. Nicknamed the “flying schoolgirl,” she was the youngest licensed American woman pilot, and was also the first woman to perform a loop, create skywriting and participate in shows in Japan and China. Later, she gave up flying to pursue architecture.
The athletes — Appearances are deceptive. Hélène Dutrieu may have been pretty and frail, but she was a fighter. She started out as a cyclist, winning trophy after trophy before performing in a show in Paris. Her specialty: the famous “leap of death,” bouncing off a trampoline in a circle, to land on a platform 15 meters higher, first on a bicycle, then on a motorbike. Yet even this was not perilous enough. It was flying, finally, that gave her the adrenaline she sought. After earning her pilot’s license in 1910, she began to fly just as she had cycled—like a champion, breaking one speed and distance record after another. She stopped flying after a car accident and became a journalist.
Give up flying? Marie Marvingt never even considered it. She flew from 1910 until the year she died, and even earned her helicopter license at the age of 85. Flying was only one of her many sports, and she was the first French woman to practice jujitsu, equestrian vaulting and boxing.
The bold — Another Frenchwoman, Adrienne Bolland, may go down as the toughest woman pilot in history. After earning her license in 1920, Bolland swore like a sailor and fought with her male colleagues. But she was courageous, joined the Resistance during World War II and was a great pilot. She conquered the Andes in 1921, aboard a Caudron G.3.
Maryse Bastié was also a member of the French Resistance, but the resemblance stops there. She was admired as a model of calm and kindness. Among other feats, she set a record for the longest flight in 1930, splashing eau de cologne on her face to stay awake.
Bessie Coleman’s stubbornness deserves respect. Born poor in Texas, this African-American dreamed of flying. She saved money from her job as a manicurist in Chicago and traveled to France, where flight schools were not as segregationist as in the U.S. On June 15, 1921, she became the first African-American woman to earn her license. Back in the U.S., “Queen Bess” wanted to open a school to “add a bit of color to aviation,” she joked. But she didn’t have the time, as she died in a crash in 1926—sabotage was suspected but never proven.
The stars — The romantic life of Beryl Markham would make a great movie: a childhood in Kenya, a prolific love life (three marriages and dozens of real or alleged affairs, including one with Saint-Exupéry), author of the memoir West With the Night and a glorious career as an acclaimed pilot (a North Atlantic crossing from east to west in 1936). Yet the movie was never made.
The life of Amelia Earhart, on the other hand, was recently celebrated in the film Amelia. “Dare to live” was the motto of this American born in Kansas, and she followed it her entire life. Athletic, intellectually curious and eager for new adventures, she was the first woman pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic west to east, three years after Charles Lindbergh. Nicknamed “Lady Lindy,” her international celebrity made her husband, publisher George Palmer Putman, a rich man. In 1937, she disappeared mysteriously during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe aboard a Lockheed Electra: at the age of 39, Amelia became a legend.
