Tailspin Tommy

Written by Glenn Chaffin and drawn by Hal Forrest, Tailspin Tommy debuted in 1928, just one year after Charles Lindbergh’s historic nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Because American interest in aviation was at an all-time high, the strip about a teen who parlayed a job fixing planes into a career in piloting was a huge hit with newspaper readers, quickly expanding from its four debut newspapers to a list of 250 local newspapers.

Within five years, Tailspin Tommy dominated a wide range of media including reprint books, a radio series, Big Little Books, a two-issue pulp magazine and even films. In 1934, Tailspin Tommy became the first comic strip character to spawn a movie serial. The 12-part series was released by Universal Studios with Maurice Murphy in the title role and Patricia Farr and Noah Beery, Jr. as Tommy’s girlfriend Betty Lou and sidekick, Skeeter.

Tommy was also the star of a Universal feature, Tailspin Tommy & the Great Air Mystery, with Clark Williams in the title role. But it was with Monogram Pictures that the character experienced his greatest cinematic success, with four features starring John Trent, Marjorie Reynolds and Milburn Stone. The strip and most of its multimedia ended in 1942. United Feature tried a short-lived Tailspin Tommy comic book, which began and ended in 1946.