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Published32 minutes ago
In 1982, a truck driver made headlines when he tied 42 helium balloons to a garden chair and flew over part of Los Angeles. A new stage musical reclaims him as a hero, although questions remain over his story’s tragic ending.
In the aftermath of his unconventional voyage, Larry Walters assured the American public he wasn’t actually a crackpot who had risked life and limb with a hare-brained scheme that was dreamed up on a whim.
No – taking flight had been a lifelong ambition, he told interviewers afterwards.
But he had been rejected by the US Air Force because of bad eyesight, so carried out years of careful research to make his dream come true in his own peculiarly homespun way.
When he came back down to Earth – somehow unscathed after floating in the chair across the approach to LAX airport and landing in power lines – Walters’ escapade caused a minor sensation.
In an interview on David Letterman’s TV show, he tried to explain how serious his plan had been – but his references to his “craft” and “ground crew” failed to quell the laughter from the audience.
The craft was an ordinary piece of garden furniture, and the ground crew were a few friends and his fiancée in her small back yard.
“When people were laughing at him, he said, ‘I knew what I was doing’,” says Jack Godfrey, who has written the musical about the man nicknamed Lawnchair Larry.
“He says multiple times in the interview, which is something that really sticks with me and is in the show, ‘I knew what I was doing’.
“Even though he does acknowledge the absurdity of some of the things, I think he’s saying, it might have seemed ridiculous, but if you really look at every step of the plan, everything was organised and carefully arranged and it wasn’t just a careless thing.
“He was a pilot, not just a guy sitting in a chair. He was actually a pilot – in his head.”
Indeed, Walters did have everything planned out. He had calculated how many balloons he needed, attached 13 plastic jugs of water to his chair as ballast, and took an air pistol to burst the balloons to control his descent.
However, not everything went according to plan.
Aircraft sightings
Larry ended up soaring much higher than expected, losing a pair of glasses overboard as he shot up to 16,000ft (4,880m). Two commercial aircraft reported sightings to air traffic control.
After shooting out seven balloons, he accidentally dropped the gun before the remaining balloons started to deflate and he landed unharmed after about 45 minutes.
Larry’s initial fame may not have lasted much longer than his flight, but his exploits have continued to hold an unlikely fascination for four decades.
He has inspired numerous cluster ballooning copycats and a 2003 film starring Rhys Ifans, while the balloon idea was taken to new heights in Pixar’s 2009 movie Up.
He has now made it across the Atlantic thanks to the musical 42 Balloons, which opens at the Lowry theatre in Salford, Greater Manchester, on Thursday.
“There’s something about the story that I really connected with,” its writer and composer says.
Seeing someone achieve an apparently far-fetched life goal is inspiring, Godfrey explains. The 31-year-old wrote the show while working part-time as a teacher and harbouring his own more sedate ambition.