Tag Archives: Blanche Stuart Scott

“Rain, Shine, or Cyclone”: Pioneer Pilot Blanche Stuart Scott

Two weeks ago in this space we looked at “eminent Rochestrian” Blanche Stuart Scott, up until she came to Hammondsport in 1910 to become America’s first woman pilot.

*Assuming she was only 18 (as per her publicity), and figuring that a woman being killed would wreck the airplane business, Glenn and Lena Curtiss supervised Blanche closely at first. Even so, by the time she finished training Glenn had signed her on as an exhibition pilot… exhibitions being where the money was, in those early days.

*But someone as savvy as Blanche, and as skilled as Blanche, always had a crack at a better deal. She also flew in succession for Glenn Martin, for Tom Baldwin, and for Jimmie Ward… always a crowd-getter, and always a crowd pleaser.

*“Rain, Shine, or Cyclone,” her posters declared. Screaming crowds loved her “death dive,” from 4000 feet to 200. Billing herself as “the Tomboy of the Air,” she made (she claimed) $5000 a week, “and spent it just as fast.”

*“We were all kooks,” she said, “and I was probably one of the biggest.” Cerainly those who did stunt flying back before World War I were not run-of-the-mill or middle-of-the-road people, and even among the fliers, very few were women.

*Blanche was actually flying at the Harvard Air Meet on July 1, 1912 when she saw headliner Harriet Quimby and a passenger fall a thousand feet to their deaths. She landed safely, but was so shaken that she had to be lifted from the airplane. Even so, newspaper ads the following day listed Blanche as the Meet’s new headliner. And she flew.

*“Miss Scott,” as she was known, had some scares of her own, and she claimed to have broken dozens of bones. She acted and flew in two or three silent movies. But eventually she became disgusted at being treated as a freak (a woman pilot!) rather than as a highly-skilled aviator, which she certainly was.

*The snapping point came when she overheard a spectator complaining that nobody had been killed. “No more!” she said, and had given up flying by 1916.

*She stayed active in movies (mostly writing), and moved on to radio when that became popular. In the 1930s she came back to Rochester because her mother’s health was failing. Paul Roxon, who worked for the C.A.B. for years, told me that she used to come around to air shows and the like, but always seemed like she was on the outside looking in. Like so many of those pioneer pilots, she had been forgotten.

*She worked in a Rochester factory making batteries during World War II, regaling skeptical co-workers with tales of her exploits. After the war she worked in TV, and as a publicist for the Air Force Museum, besides boosting the idea of a museum for Glenn Curtiss. For quite a few years she lived near Hornell, broadcasting on WLEA. When Otto Kohl opened Curtiss Museum she donated her gauntlets and flying hood, still on exhibit there. (A 1980 air mail stamp, first issued in Rochester, depicted her in that hood.)

*Blanche Scott died in 1970, sixty years after becoming America’s first women pilot. “Life has been exciting and interesting,” she once said. “I have lived it my way, and found it good.”

Into the Air: Blanche Stuart Scott Leads the Way

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This month marks the 105th anniversary of a nationally-significant event that took place on Keuka Lake. On September 2, 1910 Blanche Stuart Scott coaxed her Curtiss biplane from the field outside Hammondsport for her first controlled, extended flight. It was the start of a remarkable aviation career, and it was the first flight by a woman pilot in America.

Since Bessica Raiche flew on Long Island also in September of 1910, the date’s been a matter of debate for a hundred years or so, especially since Blanche was not above “improving her lie.” But a radio interview recorded many years later pretty much seals the deal. The interviewer was asking about reports of her making her solo IN AUGUST. This would have been an ideal chance to grab an incontestably early date, on OTHER people’s say-so. But no, Blanche insisted. She HAD gotten into the air a few times previously, on inadvertent “hops,” but didn’t consider those true flights. September 2, she stressed, was the day.

She had already driven cross-country by auto (probably the first woman to do THAT) when she came to the Curtiss Flying School. Glenn was reluctant, not because he opposed women pilots per se, but because he figured that a woman pilot killed in a crash would take the airplane business down with her.

He did agree, but he and Mrs. Curtiss insisted that she board at their house. The company sponsoring her auto tour had touted Scott’s age at 18, and the Curtisses were concerned that she needed someone needed looking after her. She was probably more like 25, and also probably bored to tears spending evenings with Glenn and Lena, but didn’t want to undo her own publicity.

She wasn’t much more than five feet tall, and she rode down to the flying field on a borrowed Curtiss motorcycle. She was so short that she would aim the machine at a wall, cut the engine, coast in, and jump off, letting the motorcycle prop up.

There are stories that Curtiss put governors on her airplane engine so that she couldn’t take off, and one day the governors were “mysteriously” omitted, so that she flew without his permission and forced him to accept her as a full student. The reality is that EVERYONE stared out on underpowered machines, and just about everyone, when the conditions were right, had those inadvertent hops.

By October Curtiss had taken her under contract as an exhibition pilot, though he and Lena remained very protective. She soon went on to other exhibition teams headed by Glenn Martin, Tom Baldwin, and Jimmie Ward. She was a star, sometimes (she said) making $5000 a week (but spent it just as fast). She also said she broke 41 bones.

She quit after a few years, disgusted to be billed as a freak woman flier, rather than a highly-skilled pilot. Supposedly she also overheard a spectator complain because no one had been killed.

She then spent years in movies, radio, and television broadcasting later in life from WLEA in Hornell (she was a Rochester native). Folks I’ve talked to who knew her (she died in 1970) remember her variously – as vivid, vibrant, exciting, crazy, or demanding and imperious. One man remembered her hanging around the Rochester airport in the 1930s, “on the outside looking in.” She was probably all those things. She was also the founder of a line of American woman pilots from Tuth Law and Katherine Stinson through Elinor Smith, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Cochran, and Eileen Collins.

We’re not sure how many times Blanche married, but she never had children (“I can’t even get a pet to obey me,” she said). She summed herself up by saying, “Life has been exciting and interesting. I have lived it my way, and found it good.”