If you go
What: Local public appearance of David McCullough, author of "The Wright Brothers."
Where: Kettering Middle School, 3000 Glenngarry Drive.
Tickets/info: Call Books & Co., (937) 429-2169.
Source: Simon & Schuster.
Tom Hanks’ production company and HBO have acquired the film rights to a new book on the Wright Brothers, linking an award-winning star and longtime friend of the Dayton area to the story of Dayton’s most famous sons.
David McCullough’s book, “The Wright Brothers,” is scheduled to be available on May 5, publisher Simon & Schuster said. Multiple media reports began appearing late Wednesday on HBO and Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman acquiring the rights to the book.
In a phone interview with the Dayton Daily News on Thursday, McCullough welcomed the news of Hanks’ intention to help tell the story of the Wrights and their invention of the airplane.
It’s a story well worth telling, he said.
“What we ought to know about are the courage and the brilliant ingenuity of those two Americans, the Wright Brothers, and how they changed the world, how they changed history,” McCullough said.
Hanks and Goetzman also produced the HBO mini-series adaptation of another McCullough book, “John Adams.”
“I think from a Dayton perspective to have two iconic and successful Americans, in David McCullough and Tom Hanks, working on the Wright Brothers’ story, it just doesn’t get any better,” said Amanda Wright Lane, great-grandniece to the Wright Brothers. “It’s really fantastic.”
‘It’s terrific news’
There have been no announcements about filming in the Dayton area, but no one in Dayton is ignoring the obvious historical ties. The Wright Brothers grew up and worked in West Dayton and perfected controlled flight of powered aircraft on nearby Huffman Prairie, today part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
“We’ve got the movie props and the real thing,” said Tim Gaffney, spokesman for the National Aviation Heritage Alliance and himself an author on the Wrights. “And of course, Tom Hanks is familiar with the (Dayton) area.”
Local observers said Thursday they had not heard from HBO or Playtone. FilmDayton Executive Director Shelly Hulce said she had called Playtone but had not heard anything. Neither McCullough nor Wright Lane could add to reports of HBO’s involvement.
But McCullough believes the Wrights’ story merits memorable filmmaking.
“I think if ever there was a story that has immense visual possibilities for a film, it’s this one,” the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author said. “And one of the huge advantages is the collection of photographs at Wright State University. Because they (the Wrights) photographed everything. And some of their photographs, the original glass plate negatives, they’re as sharp and clear and strong visually as something taken yesterday.”
“It’s terrific news,” said W. Stuart McDowell, a friend of Hanks and chair and artistic director of Wright State’s Department of Theatre, Dance & Motion Pictures. “No one can produce this better than Playtone.”
Hanks himself has a well-known and enduring connection to Wright State and Dayton. He and Wright Lane are leading the largest fund-raising campaign in the university’s history, the $150 million “Rise, Shine” campaign.
Hanks performed at WSU as a young actor. Erik Bork, a WSU graduate, helped Hanks produce two Emmy Award-winning television miniseries — “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Band of Brothers.” And the actor has started a scholarship fund at the university, produced videos in support of the school and provided memorabilia and time to help the school raise money for its performing arts program, WSU has said.
Up-close with artifacts
McCullough said that in researching his book he more than once visited Wright State’s historical Wright Brothers archives and local museums as well as any Dayton sites that had Wright memorabilia.
The brothers painstakingly took notes and photographs of their work, McCullough said.
“There’s no question whatsoever that the Wright Brothers were the first human beings to achieve flight in a motor-powered airplane,” he added. “They deserve all the credit they have received and then some.”
Brady Kress, Dayton History chief executive, said McCullough visited not just WSU archives but Dayton History’s facilities and collection of artifacts as well, looking at the Wright family Bible and the 1905 Wright Flyer III, which remains the most original of the Wright airplanes still in existence.
“He was just tickled about getting up close” to those artifacts, Kress said.
Dawne Dewey, head of special collections and archives at WSU, said McCullough visited the archives at the campus Paul Laurence Dunbar Library and spoke with the staff, seeking their perspectives in a daylong visit. His researcher also visited the collection of Wright Brothers material several times.
“David was in the archives looking for photographs to illustrate his book,” Dewey said. “He mined our photo collection on the Wright Brothers pretty extensively.”
McCullough’s book is being released at a time when the Wrights’ pre-eminence as the true pioneers of piloted flight have been challenged by claims elsewhere. In June 2013, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed a bill that named Bridgeport resident and immigrant, Gustave Whitehead, as the first person to pilot a powered airplane.
“It’s all perfect timing that it’s happening right now,” Kress said. “Nothing better than a Tom Hanks production to set the record straight.”
“I think that’s what’s really important to us,” Gaffney said. “We’re hoping they see it as a Dayton story and not simply as a North Carolina story. North Carolina is part of it. But a small part.”
“I discussed this with the most eminent scholars of aviation at the Smithsonian Institution,” McCullough added. “I’ve studied what there is know about it myself. And the problem with that whole Whitehead claim is that there’s no evidence.”
McCullough is scheduled to be at the Kettering Middle School, 3000 Glengarry Drive, in a ticketed event sponsored by Books & Co., at 7 p.m., June 8, a Simon & Schuster publicist said Thursday.
A newspaper article penned as the account of a witness claimed Whitehead made a powered flight in Connecticut in August 1901, before the Wright Brothers’ historic first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. on Dec. 17, 1903.
The states of Ohio and North Carolina have rebutted those claims, pointing out there is no known photographic evidence of a Whitehead flight on the claimed date.
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