Pilots

It wasn't working with Marilyn Monroe or Clark Gable or even Montgomery Clift. It was the hot coffee, always fresh. The year was 1960 and Jim Gavin was a pilot in his 20s flying a turbine Bell helicopter for the U.S. Forestry Service.

"I was flying under contract," he recalls. "It was basically their aircraft four months out of the year. We did lookouts and transported firefighters near the fires." The company filming The Misfits had booked another helicopter to shoot an aerial sequence: a mustang herd galloping in the desert near Reno, Nevada. The trouble lay with the helicopter they'd rented: The normally aspirated machine couldn't lift the motion picture camera at Reno's altitude, about one mile above sea level. So the film's producers were in a panic — until they heard about Gavin's turbine Bell. They asked the Forestry Service to let him fly the scene, and the service said he could — provided Gavin flew before 10 a.m.

"I didn't have a clue who the producer and director were, but everybody had a kind of glow and they always had fresh coffee sitting around and caterers," Gavin says. "It was a contrast to the Forestry Service. I thought, 'I'd like to do this.'"

The producers and directors liked him, too — for one reason. The rotor blades on other helicopters they'd used had been built from wood and fiberglass, and that translated into an extra-bumpy flight — which meant extra-bumpy-looking film work. But Gavin's helicopter had rotor blades of metal. It — and Gavin — flew with a smoothness that director John Huston had never seen before. Gavin's helicopter was a turbine, which meant it could lift more. And he was such a nice guy.

"Gee whiz," Huston said, "I wish you were in L.A. so we could do business with you."

"Hey, I'm from there," Gavin said.

And so a stunt pilot was born.

Gavin had earned his certificate a few years earlier, at age 18, but he first flew earlier than that. "The thing that got me flying was at the start of World War II [when] my father took me for a birthday ride," he recalls. "I got on a DC-3 airliner in L.A. and flew down to San Diego to spend the day at the zoo." As part of the trip the crew let him go up into the cockpit. That hooked him.

Since the filming of The Misfits he's piloted a lot of airplanes, from a Ford Tri-motor to a Learjet to a North American B-25 to a Douglas AD-4. He's flown tons of hours before and behind the camera. His favorite movies — well, you've probably forgotten them by now. There was Airport '75, where he flew a helicopter alongside a Boeing 747 and actually put a stunt guy down next to the cockpit. In 1983's Blue Thunder he put a helicopter down in the city streets. Then there was 1972's made-for-television movie Birds of Prey. "It was a God-awful story but the flying was exceptional," he says. "It set the tone for all helicopter movies." The flying was phenomenal — two helicopters dogfighting inside an aircraft hangar. "It was more like a dance sequence," Gavin says. Then there was White Knights, a 1985 flick that features a full-size Boeing 707 crashing into the ground. "That was the only time it will be done on that scale," Gavin laments. "Now they will do it computer-generated for twice the money."

He's no longer soliciting business and works only when he wants to. Still, he'll fly any day for Clint Eastwood or Mel Gibson "because they're real people." Gavin and fellow motion picture pilot Steve Hoskings taught Eastwood to fly helicopters a few years ago, and recently Gavin piloted one of the napalm-spewing Douglas Skyraiders in Gibson's film We Were Soldiers. The year before, he flew three airplanes in the movie Pearl Harbor: a Kate, a Val, and the lead B-25 from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation (dressed up to be the USS Hornet). "The Connie was an easy 40 knots across the deck," he says. "I had to hold the airplane on the deck to keep it down."

Gavin lives in his home near San Diego with his wife of 35 years, K.C., and takes care of his show horses. He is deeply involved in The Motion Picture Pilots Association and its mission of safety, high aviation standards, and better business practices. Movie pilots started the MPPA five years ago, with Gavin as its first president. "During the first meeting, I got up to go to the john and when I came back I was president," he says. Today he's the executive director. "It's been a highlight of my career," Gavin says. For someone who's been in the movies for 42 years — the most experienced film pilot to date — that's saying something.