About

Pioneers of Aviation
Howard Hughes, Part 1
The Lindberghs, Part 1
Howard Hughes, Part 2
Amelia Earhart
Howard Hughes, Part 3
The Lindberghs, Part 2
Howard Hughes, Part 4

While researching Jayne Mansfield for her portrayal of the buxom starlet in Extreme Women,
Iris Rose purchased a VHS tape called Hollywood Home Movies from a discount video
catalog. It was a collection of semi-candid footage of Hollywood stars shot by minor
celebrity Ken Murray. When she received the tape, Iris was disappointed by the very brief
clip of an inexplicably dark-haired Jayne splashing in a swimming pool. The real treasure on
Hollywood Home Movies was a clip that was not mentioned in the catalog or on the
packaging: a surprise video of Amelia Earhart visiting Mary Pickford at Pickfair, her palatial
home. When Mary congratulated her on her solo flight across the Atlantic, Amelia replied,
“I can’t help feeling that my flight meant little to aviation, but if it meant something to women,
then it will have been worthwhile.” Iris had never seen the famous aviator on film or heard
her speak, and her fascination with Amelia Earhart was immediately rekindled.

Iris had played Amelia 15 years earlier in a college production of the play “Chamber Music”
by Arthur Kopit. In the one-act drama, the inmates of an asylum believe they are famous
women from history, such as Gertrude Stein, Isabella of Spain, Joan of Arc, Susan B. Anthony,
and Amelia Earhart. Amelia tries to convince the others that she really is Amelia Earhart. Of
course, none of the other women believe her, but the plausibility of her claim, due to the
mysterious circumstances of her disappearance, leaves the audience to decide for
themselves whether she’s telling the truth.

Iris did some superficial research into Amelia’s life at that time, but remained curious about
the details. In the years between “Chamber Music” and Iris’ encounter with Hollywood Home
Movies, Amelia never left the public spotlight for long. Friends often brought news items to
Iris’ attention concerning the latest theories or evidence that was thought to explain the
mystery of Amelia’s disappearance, and in 1989, two new biographies appeared
simultaneously, Amelia Earhart by Doris L. Rich and The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell.

Shortly before Iris moved to New York, she read Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years by James
Phelan, a compelling tale of the retired aviator and business mogul’s last days, spent in a
hospital bed in the penthouse of a hotel in Las Vegas. Wealthy enough to live in any manner
he wanted, Hughes chose to live in a dark room, doing little but eating ice cream and
watching his favorite movie, Ice Station Zebra, over and over, as his hair and fingernails grew
unchecked and jars of his urine accumulated. Iris hadn’t thought of turning that story into a
performance – there wasn’t much action to dramatize, for one thing – until she chose to pair
it with a portrait of Amelia Earhart. She cast young, energetic Chazz Dean against type to lie
immobile onstage as the elderly Hughes and herself as Amelia. In preparation, Iris read The
Sound of Wings and re-read Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years, but she also read Last Flight,
written by Amelia Earhart herself as she was still engaged in the round-the-world flight that
claimed her life. It was assembled from journal entries and dispatches Amelia sent back to
her husband and publicist, George Putnam, who in turn passed them on to women’s
magazines for publishing.

To round out the performance, Iris chose to research Charles and Ann Lindbergh, to whom
Watchface’s Kurt Fulton and Melanie Monios conveniently bore a striking resemblance.
Though Iris initially knew very little of their story other than the infamous kidnapping of their
child, she soon learned, primarily from Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg, that the Lindberghs had a
great story as well. In addition to the tragic kidnapping and murder of their firstborn, their
increasing isolation afterwards led them to retreat from the public eye, and their admiration
for the Nazi party in the years leading up to World War II caused America to turn its back on
one of its most popular heroes.

In performance, each of the three stories was presented in its own style. Howard Hughes was
a stationary monologue written from Chazz’s improvisations on themes from Hughes’ life. It
was presented in four parts with sound design and music by Joan Grossman, who had
served as co-producer on Iris’s radio piece Society of Mothers. Chazz wore white boxer shorts,
elongated fingernails, and a long, matted wig and scraggly beard. As the show began, he
stared into space as an audio recording of Ice Station Zebra played. When he spoke, the
audio segued into Joan’s original music. Because the Howard Hughes sections occurred
first, last, and in between each of the other sections, Chazz remained in his bed throughout
the performance.

Original music by Conrad Cummings was an integral component of Amelia Earhart, in which
Iris sang two-thirds of the sections. Conrad, a modern classical composer, was an avid
Watchface fan who had just finished composing an opera about political language called
Photo-Op, based on a libretto by James Siena. It was later presented in a full-scale
production at La MaMa by Ridge Theater. Amelia Earhart was originally intended to be sung
throughout to recorded music by a small ensemble. Conrad, who was in the early stages of
work on an ambitious full-length opera about Vietnam, later titled Tonkin, was worried about
having time to fit Amelia Earhart into his schedule, despite his enthusiasm for the project. Iris
asked him to record the accompaniment on synthesizer only and eliminate the exposition
portions of the script that primarily advanced the story. They could be performed without
music, she decided, as opposed to the ones about specific flights and Amelia’s personal life,
which she felt had to be sung.

The Lindberghs, which was divided into two parts, contained no music at all but had nearly
continuous movement throughout. The Lindberghs, Part 1 began at the peak of Charles
Lindbergh’s fame with a parade in his honor. It went on to cover: his courtship with Anne, in
which he described his legendary solo Atlantic flight; “Spirit of St. Louis” script and choreography
their early marriage and her training to become a navigator so she could accompany him
on flights; the kidnapping of their first child plus the investigation and trial that followed;
“Kidnapping” script and choreography and a brief recounting of the security measures that they
put into place as a result of the tragedy.

The Lindberghs, Part 2 told of their travels in England and Germany, where Charles was
impressed by the Nazis’ efficiency and the Luftwaffe’s superior airpower. Part 2 ended with
Charles’ involvement in isolationist politics and America’s disappointment in its former hero.
It concluded on a low point for the Lindberghs:

Anne:
They conceived their fifth child as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.

Charles:
Anne was ill.

Anne:
Charles was depressed.

Charles:
His mother had Parkinson’s.

Anne:
Thor, the German Shepherd, fell ill and died. Charles buried him in the
backyard

Kurt wore a blue suit and tie; Melanie wore a vintage crêpe ensemble in cream and purple
with vintage shoes. Her dark, bobbed hair was held in place with a barrette. They used no
props or set pieces.

Chazz and Iris played only the title characters of their sections, but Kurt and Melanie played
many characters besides Charles and Anne and made full use of the space. In addition to
personifying reporters, detectives, a wide variety of participants in the kidnapping trial, and
a French eugenicist Charles admired, they often narrated the tale in the third person. Iris had
made use of this interweaving of first- and third-person narratives earlier, in The Serial Killer
Series and Extreme Women and found it a satisfying way to tell a complex story economically.

Pioneers of Aviation was scheduled for January at PS 122, but was first performed as a weekly
work-in-progress at Dixon Place in October*, with each of the three stories receiving its own
night. Dixon Place flyer Iris had just begun graduate school at New York University a few weeks
before the Dixon Place performances, pursuing a master’s degree in Performance Studies.
The first full production of Pioneers of Aviation occurred, conveniently, during the winter break
between her first two semesters. PS 122 program Exactly one week before the opening, the
New York Post published an article about a map case recovered in the Pacific that may
have been Earhart’s. Post article

Between the work-in-progress at Dixon Place and the opening at PS 122, Watchface broke
up, ending its seven-year collaboration; the impact on the production itself was minimal,
and it went on as planned, minus the word Watchface on the program.

The original concept for the staging of Pioneers of Aviation was quite simple: a bed for
Howard Hughes and wall-sized projections of clouds for Amelia Earhart. cloud projection
A short time before the production moved into PS 122, Iris learned that she had received a
$1,500 grant from Art Matters to fund the production. Since the rehearsal period was nearly
finished, she had only a short time to decide what to spend this windfall on while still keeping
a clean, simple look for the production. She rented a real hospital bed for Howard Hughes to
lie in for the run of the show and bought airplane models that Chazz assembled and
suspended from the ceiling. They were lit to cast large shadows on the back wall, and many
yards of white acetate fabric resembling parachute silk were also suspended and draped
around PS 122’s white-columned main space. Iris noticed a large wooden structure with a
high platform that the technical crew there used for painting the ceiling and other high
places. She was given permission to paint it white and incorporate it into the show.

Iris also bought a ladder and painted it white so she could climb onto the platform for the
subsections that represented Earhart’s flights. For the expositional portions that advanced
the story and did not include Conrad’s music, Iris used traveling, emblematic action in the
main stage space, also used by the Lindberghs. For the third kind of subsection, those that
explored Amelia’s personal life, Iris stood still at the edge of the stage with a single spotlight
illuminating her face. For both the personal and flight subsections, Iris sang into a stationary
microphone.

Iris had received a permanent and a haircut to make her straight, baby fine hair resemble
Amelia’s curly mop as much as possible. In a military surplus store, she found a close-fitting
but comfortable brown jumpsuit, perfect since brown was Amelia’s favorite color.
“Self Portrait” poem

When the three stories of the show were assembled into one piece, Iris noticed an overall
theme that she had not recognized when they were separate. She had chosen her subjects
because of their interesting lives, but as their narratives took shape, it became clear that
they all had similar stories: they had begun flying because they loved it but had all paid a
very steep price when they were forced to deal with the fame that came along with it.

Neither Howard Hughes nor The Lindberghs was ever performed again, but Iris used Amelia
Earhart as the first half of a bill with Camden on two occasions. Barbara Masters, an English
teacher at Plymouth-Canton High School in Plymouth, Michigan, had seen Camden on a trip
to New York with a group of her students. She loved the show and, after Iris gave her a
cassette tape to play for her English class, made it a permanent part of her curriculum. It
remained part of the curriculum at the school for the next 20 years, even after Ms. Masters
retired. As her retirement was approaching, she wrote a grant to bring Iris to Michigan to
perform Camden – and Amelia Earhart – live for the students at her school. student responses
Three years later, one of those students raised funds to bring Iris to her college in California to
perform Camden and Amelia Earhart. By coincidence, the college was also Iris’ alma mater,
California State University Long Beach.

Iris spent $400 of her last-minute Art Matters grant for the PS 122 performance on a
professional 3/4″ video documentation of Pioneers of Aviation. In the years after Watchface
disbanded, Iris often showed those who were curious the “Kidnapping” sequence from The
Lindberghs as the best example of the group’s style. The good quality video plus the
masterfully executed movement of Kurt and Melanie and Iris’ compact biographical writing
made it her favorite representation of what Watchface was all about.
 
 
*For the Dixon Place performance of Howard Hughes, Sam Novgorodoff appeared briefly as
Hughes’ assistant. The role was eliminated for the PS 122 performance.