The Great Waldo Pepper

The Great Waldo Pepper is a 1975 drama film directed, produced, and cowritten by George Roy Hill. Set during 19261931, the film stars Robert Redford as a disaffected World War I veteran pilot who missed the opportunity to fly in combat and his sense of dislocation postwar in the America of the early 1920s. The cast also includes Margot Kidder, Bo Svenson, Edward Herrmann and Susan Sarandon. The Great Waldo Pepper basically depicts barnstorming activity in the 1920s and the accidents that led to aviation regulations by the Air Commerce Act.

Antagonistic at first, Waldo and Axel become partners and try out various stunts. One of these stunts, a cartoaircraft transfer, goes wrong and Waldo is nearly killed after Axel is unable to climb high enough to clear a barn, slamming Waldo into it. Waldo then goes home to Kansas to be with onagain, offagain girlfriend Maude Kidder and her family. Maude, however, is not happy to see Waldo at first because every time she does, Waldo is injured in some way. Eventually, however, they make up and become lovers once again. Meanwhile, Maudes brother Ezra Ed Herrmann, a longtime friend of Waldos since boyhood, promises to build Waldo a highperformance monoplane as soon as he is well enough to fly it. Waldos goal is to become the first pilot in history to successfully perform an outside loop, and Ezra feels Waldo can do it with the monoplane.In the meantime, Waldo rejoins Axel. The two eventually get a job flying for a traveling flying circus owned by Doc Dillhoefer Philip Bruns. However, Dillhoefers Flying Circus is in a slump, as there is very little attendance at the shows. So in an effort to attract bigger crowds, Dillhoefer hires Mary Beth Susan Sarandon to act as the shows new sexual attraction, in which she would climb out on the wing of an aircraft in flight wearing shredded clothes, thus allowing the wind to blow them off. But while performing this new stunt for the first time, Mary Beth freezes up on the wing, afraid to return to the cockpit. As Waldo who did a planetoplane transfer in flight to climb aboard Mary Beths aircraft extends his hand to help Mary Beth back into the cockpit, she slips and falls off the wing to her death. As a result of Mary Beths death, Waldo, Axel, and Dillhoefer are temporarily grounded by an inspector of the newly formed Air Commerce division of the federal government, Newt Potts Geoffrey Lewis, a man from Waldos war past. ........

Source: Wikipedia