The North Atlantic Ocean has been flown 85 times by 58 airplanes carrying 179 persons. Among others, they included professionals and amateurs, men and women, Jews and gentiles, a photographer, an ambitious socialite, a stenographer, a mechanic, a junkman. To this motley group last week were added two new types—a Broadway crooner and a British mother.
¶ Browsing peacefully in a tiny pasture at Llwyncelyn, near Llandilo. in a desolate part of Carmarthenshire, Wales, last week, three cows had the fright of their lives as a trim blue & silver monoplane suddenly dropped down out of the mist to a bumpy landing beside them. As the cows' owner ran up, out o? the plane stepped a black-jowled, slick-&-kinky-haired man wearing a very dark shirt, a very light necktie. In a voice which sounded as if he had a hot potato in his mouth he demanded: "Is this Scotland?''
The unshaven flyer was Harry Richman, 41, who has had a certain success singing torch songs while beating himself on the chest. Born Harry Reichman in Cincinnati, Crooner Richman went on the stage in 1907, rose to vaudeville prominence in 1921 as accompanist to Mae West. Same year he started as a radio performer, has since been a steady Broadway revue star, appeared in several cinemas, run a Manhattan night club across the street from his tough brother's speakeasy. Unmarried and supposedly well-off, he occasionally splurges money in such ways as insuring his voice for $1,000,000. Lately he has made a hobby of aviation, become a pilot himself. Last year he set a world amphibian altitude record, since bettered.
Deciding on a transatlantic flight. Crooner Richman had a special Wright Cyclone engine installed in his smgle-motored $95,000 Vultee monoplane Lady Peace. For a co-pilot he picked Eastern Air Lines' No. 1 Flyer Henry Tindall ("Dick"') Merrill, who has flown 2,000,000 miles without injury, last year made news by flying a plane from the U. S. to Chile to aid the overpublicized search for Explorer Lincoln Ellsworth (TIME, Jan. 27). A slight. 39-year-old bachelor. Pilot Merrill does not smoke or drink but has a weakness for perfume. When flying, he usually has a vial of Surrender or Evening in Paris in his pocket, steals an occasional sniff. Singer Richman paid him a reputed $25,000 to go on the trip to England, announced it would be a round-trip affair with only a few hours' pause at Croydon. To safeguard themselves in case the Lady Peace plopped into the ocean, Flyers Richman and Merrill stuffed every cranny of her metal wings and tail with 41,000 Ping-Pong balls to give buoyancy in the water, added publicity value to the trip.