EXCERPT GLADYS PINK TIGHTS

..."Not afraid of heights! Gladys stood on the wing, clinging to the strut with one arm, her other hand holding the rip cord. She’d had two days training with “Skeets” Elliot in his Spad XIII biplane, now she was two thousand feet up in her full Mazie Darnton costume, a tight fitting top with a short skirt that flared out over ruffled petticoats, all bunched up by the parachute straps between her legs, and of course she was wearing those pink tights. The wind whipped against her, and she held on as Skeets maneuvered the plane in a wide turn for their third pass, bright circus banner streaming behind."

..."

... "Mazie Darnton, “Queen of the air,” fearless aerialist for Mr. McKeen’s circus.

Well, Mazie might be fearless, but Gladys Walton’s heart was hammering. She found the ripcord again, gripped it. Below circus wagons, elephants, white horses, acrobats, clowns, a troop of performers in full three-ring regalia paraded into the little Massachusetts town on Universal’s back lot. Besides scores of extras playing the good townsfolk, a crowd of a hundred or so tourists had gathered to watch the shooting."

..."Maybe two hundred yards away now. The man on the roof scrambled to get his camera in position, aimed up at her, started rolling. The parachute was dropping her straight toward the church roof. A hundred yards. Gladys did not know what came over her then, the crowds, the circus, Mr. Eason looking up, stunned and grinning, the camera rolling. She spotted Mr. Thomas standing by her mother. Mamma waving to beat the band.

And suddenly she was Mazie Darnton, Queen of the Air. She stretched her arms out straight for a moment, then up, grabbing the parachute straps, and she pulled herself up like a gymnast, legs straight in those pink tights and black ballerina shoes, toes pointed, then she swung her body in a circle, legs back horizontal with the ground.

Fifty yards, twenty.

Twice she did the move, and at the last second she shifted and her feet brushed the roof. “Lean back, away from the drag, and pull hard on the straps,” Skeets had said, “so you don’t go head over heels.” With all her strength she leaned and pulled and fell back on her ruffled petticoats, bounced twice down the slope beside the church steeple and came to rest on the Reverend Jonathan Meek’s roof, not ten feet from Mr. Eason and the cameraman, the parachute making a canopy between the house and the church.

The crowd cheered and cheered.

“Keep shooting! Don’t stop!” Mr. Eason shouted. “Perrin, where’s Perrin?”

Then Jack Perrin appeared at the top of the ladder, adjusting his clergy collar, slipping on his black frock coat, and looking as stunned as any small town preacher would be if a beautiful young woman dropped out of the sky onto his roof.

Perrin scurried over to her, and although they weren’t supposed to shoot this scene until later, he kept in character. The Reverend Jonathan Meek gazing at Mazie sprawled in her circus costume, skirt and petticoats pulled up by the parachute straps, revealing even more of those shapely legs in pink tights."