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Paul Mantz and his various companies, primarily United Air Services and Paul Mantz Air Services, no doubt employed dozens or more people through the years. A comprehensive listing would be near impossible to assemble, as it is many, many decades in the past, now. So, this admittedly a very incomplete listing.
However, there are clues here and there that provide a starting point of a list, and that is presented here. I am always on the lookout for more tidbits of information and, particularly, photos of these individuals that contributed to the legacy of Paul Mantz.
Another Mantz pilot with few details known but he was credited for flying with Mantz during the filming of The Spirit of St. Louis in 1956.
Not much is known at this point about Mantz’s secretary Marion Johnson. She is mentioned in one source (Dwiggins) as being his secretary during the period around the filming and promotion of the 1947 film Blaze of Noon. Beyond that, nada.
Cort Johnston served Mantz well from the mid-1940s through the late 1950s as both a mechanic and as his B-25 flight engineer. One telling of the story (Dwiggins) has Johnston being the guy who converted B-25H N1203 from a bomber to a well-equipped camera platform. He also served as flight engineer on most of the 1950s B-25 Cinerama, Circarama, and other significant film assignments. Details about his later years with Mantz are sparse. The photo at left was taken during the filming of The Top of World with Mantz in 1952.
The main notoriety of Mantz mechanic Bob King is that he gets mentioned as someone who “rigged as welded rod across the four throttle levers” (Dwiggins) of the B-17G, 44-83592, that Mantz flew solo for the belly landing sequence in 1949 for Twelve O’Clock High. Apart from that dubious account, King is largely unmentioned in the Mantz story.
Paul Mantz secretary who came to Tallmantz with Mantz and remained until Tallmantz ceased operation in 1986. Marchak’s name surfaces several times in accounts of Mantz and Tallmantz. She was in Yuma, Arizona, in July 1965 when Mantz was killed filming The Flight of the Phoenix. Eventually she married Tallmantz B-25 pilot Frank Pine. Her sister, Ruth Marchak, eventually married Frank Tallman, becoming ‘Boots’ Tallman in the process. Martha and Ruth were the ones who ended up selling Tallmantz to an investor in 1986, cutting all prior ties with the historic company. Marchak got a name check on Tallmantz B-25N camera ship N9451Z, which carried the name Marty under the pilot’s window in honor of her.
Another Mantz pilot who gets a name check in one source (Dwiggins) as a charter pilot working for Mantz in the 1950s.
Another Mantz pilot for which there is little information. It is known that he helped Mantz in the mid-1950s with flying his TBM air tanker during early tests, and as late as 1966 was still flying for Tallmantz.
Frank Pine went to work for Mantz in 1959 as, initially, an air tanker pilot for Mantz’s tanker operations. Pine had earlier experience as a TBM tanker pilot based on his earlier flying with the U.S. Navy. He knew Mantz and began working for him on occasion until 1959 when Mantz hired him as a B-25 tanker pilot to go to Venezuela with Jim Thompson to assist in fighting a massive forest fire. Through the years, he segued from a Mantz pilot to the main Tallmantz B-25 cameraship pilot. Pine was on site in Yuma in July 1965 for some of the air-to-air filming done with Mantz for The Flight of the Phoenix, for which Mantz was later killed filming another sequence for the same film. Pine eventually became the Tallmantz general manager until Tallman’s 1978 death in a plane crash. He then became company president until he passed, at the age of 65, in 1984 from a heart attack. After his death, the surviving principals of Tallmantz began to work to sell the company to outside investors, something that was accomplished by 1986.
Stanley Reaver was one of Mantz’s ‘go-to’ pilots beginning in the late 1940s and extending to the late 1950s. He held the position as Mantz’s chief pilot for part of that time. He had several notable episodes with Mantz. In 1949, he replaced Mantz in the Bendix transcontinental air race (Mantz had won the 1946, 1947, and 1948 events and decided to step back from the 1949 race). Reaver placed second in the race flying Mantz P-51C N1204.
Reaver also gained a bit of notoriety in 1952 in the ‘Battle of the Coronation Film.” In the days before satellite transmission, Mantz was hired by NBC in 1953 to rush a copy of the coronation film of Queen Elizabeth II in England across the Atlantic to get the film first to the network for broadcast to U.S. audiences. Mantz assigned Reaver and P-51C N1204 to the job. CBS, meanwhile, hired race pilot Joe Debona to do the same thing in his P-51C…and Debona won the trans-Atlantic race to Boston by a mere 20 minutes.
Reaver was also a principal pilot for the filming of The Spirit of St. Louis in 1956, flying the film Spirits during the filming along with fellow Mantz pilot Jim Thompson. Reaver flew Mantz’s B-25H, N1203, for several film assignments including Around the World in 80 Days also in 1956. Reaver also was a principal pilot in the other Mantz operations including charter flying and the early tests of Mantz’s TBM air tanker.
Apart from his work with Mantz, there is little available information about Reaver. How he came to work with Mantz and what he did after Mantz are unknown, as is the availability of a photo of him.
Bob Siemieniewicz was a mechanic and flight engineer for both Paul Mantz and Tallmantz Aviation. He started with Mantz by at least 1960 when he flew with Frank Pine and Jim Thompson in a pair of B-25s to fight forest fires in Venezuela. And, he was still with Tallmantz in the early 1970s. No photos of him have yet surfaced.
Jim Thompson is one of Mantz’s long time pilots in the 1950s that, along with Stanley Reaver, did a significant amount of film flying. Thompson few extensively for The Spirit of St. Louis in 1956, and had further experience flying various aircraft and serving as primary B-25H N1203 copilot for many of Mantz’s 1950s projects. One account (Dwiggins) has Thompson as a DC-3 pilot flying with Mantz in a Lockheed 12 (N16020) while filming the TV show Terry and the Pirates circa 1952. Turbulence brought the two airplanes together mid-air, but both were able to land safely. Thompson’s story beyond these tidbits remains elusive, as is a photo of the man.
One can find Carroll Wright’s name involved in many of Mantz’s 1950s and Tallmantz’s 1960s projects. He was the chief mechanic for Paul Mantz beginning in 1945, and continuously worked for Mantz and, later, Tallmantz until the company closed up in early 1986. Wright started his job with Mantz at his Burbank facility, moving to Orange County when Mantz moved his operation there. Wright was was AAF mechanic on Guam during World War II before going to work with Mantz. He was intimately involved in the 1956 filming of The Spirit of St. Louis, spending six months on that project in various locations. In 1967, he was also deeply involved in the building of a Spirit of St. Louis replica for Tallmantz to participate in the 40th anniversary of that historic flight. As an ‘additional duty,’ he also spent time working on Mantz’s yacht, the Pez Espada, docked at the Balboa Yacht Club in Newport Harbor, fine tuning the engines. Wright’s family also enjoyed time on that yacht as the Mantz and Tallmantz operations were largely a family affair.
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