Coming to The WORLD Channel’s Strength of Women series today, Friday, March 20: THE LEGEND OF PANCHO BARNES AND THE HAPPY BOTTOM RIDING CLUB
Amanda Pope’s biography of a colorful aviation pioneer debuted at NewFest in 2009. Other screenings included Hot Springs Doc, Los Angeles and San Francisco Women’s film fests, and various aviation museums, conventions, and air shows around the country.
Florence Lowe Barnes was once a well-known aviatrix and contemporary of Amelia Earhart who had a love for speed and danger – qualities which enabled her to become the first female stunt pilot in Hollywood, working for directors like Howard Hughes, before setting up a ranch on Edwards Air Force base that had a wild reputation as a test pilot hang out. Pope’s buoyant profile uncovers her forgotten history, exploring how the daughter of a well-to-do Pasadena family found herself married off to a priest, escaped her unhappy marriage by disguising herself as a man, and became unexpectedly embroiled in the Mexican Civil War, where she earned her masculine nickname, “Pancho.” Influenced by her grandfather’s love for flying, Pancho – who received lessons from Orville Wright while in her male guise – beat Earhart’s airspeed record before heading to Hollywood. When her hard-partying ways put an end to her flying career, she made a fresh start by forming the titular ranch – which despite its suggestive name, was not a brothel – and became a fixture on the airbase. Pope ably and genially celebrates a larger-than-life character who refused to let proscribed gender roles dictate her life.
what (not) to doc 