"LEGEND NEVER DIES"™ Blog

Born in Romania on April 23, 1904, Duncan Renaldo (birth name Vasile Dumitru Cughieaneas) was orphaned at an early age and never knew his birth parents. He was raised and educated in various European countries and arrived in the United States in 1917 as a stoker on a Brazilian coal ship. After his ship caught fire at the docks in… [Read More]

Waldo Waterman (1894 – 1976), was an aviation pioneer, inventor, and son of a California governor.  In 1929, at age 35, Waldo became general manager of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport (now known as Van Nuys Airport) where Pancho Barnes (aka: Florence Lowe Barnes) and her cousin, Dean Banks, kept their airplanes. Pancho Barnes and Waldo Watermen had been friends… [Read More]

In early 1936 James ‘Jimmy’ Stewart was a young rising star of the silver screen and had landed his first starring role in the MGM film “Speed.”  In the movie, Stewart plays a gifted mechanic and race car driver who struggles to prove that his newly developed carburetor provides the best performance by entering cars in the Indy 500 and… [Read More]

The custom of commemorating a US Air Force pilot trainee’s inaugural solo flight with a water dunking traces its roots back to Pancho Barnes’ Happy Bottom Riding Club in the early 1940s. The story goes that one sunny afternoon, a group of experienced pilots was celebrating the successful completion of a young pilot’s first solo flight at the Happy Bottom… [Read More]

Once Upon a time in the golden age of Hollywood, the daring and unconventional aviatrix Pancho Barnes received a special invitation from her close friend, the dashing and talented actor Ramon Navarro. Ramon Navarro was a world-famous leading man and one of the top box office stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. It was February 6, 1930, and the… [Read More]

Pancho Barnes and George Hurrell were both eager for an adventure in the summer of 1928, and decided to embark on a three day fishing trip to Baja Mexico together. Pancho was an experienced fisherman, and loved nothing more than spending her days on the water, casting her line and reeling in the biggest catch. As they set off on their… [Read More]

In early January 1935, Pancho Barnes and her young son, Billy Barnes, moved to Rancho Oro Verde (later known as The Happy Bottom Riding Club), where they planned to live full time. On February 22nd of that same year, Wiley Post, who was world-famous for being the first pilot to fly solo around the world, “belly” landed his Lockheed Vega, the… [Read More]

In addition to her many accomplishments, Pancho Barnes was an early supporter and pioneer in television. In late 1947 Pancho Barnes decided to help fund an early television series called COWBOY SLIM. The series was filmed at her 360-acre ‘Rancho Oro Verde’ property and ‘Happy Bottom Riding Club.’ The Pancho Barnes Trust Estate Archive contains the only two known surviving… [Read More]

We salute General Chuck Yeager (February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020), a true American hero, on what would have been his 100th birthday. Among his many achievements, on October 14, 1947, while piloting the experimental Bell X-1, General Yeager became the first to fly faster than the speed of sound. That evening Yeager and his X-1 team celebrated this… [Read More]

The following interview is excerpted from the forthcoming book VOICES FROM THE HAPPY BOTTOM RIDING CLUB. Dr. Barney Oldfield was an aircraft design engineer and was head of the flight research instrumentation group for Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, New York. He was a charter member of Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club. His membership card is dated 1944. My name is… [Read More]