Ben Lyon landed at Tucson in an unidentified Stinson, Monday, January 23, 1933 at 3:30 PM. He carried Ralph Johnson as sole passenger. Johnson, after Eddie Stinson, was the premier sales agent for Stinson aircraft. Based at Clover Field, Santa Monica, CA they were eastbound to Detroit, MI. According to site visitor John Underwood, this Stinson is probably a model R, NC12139 (not a Register airplane).

Image, below, courtesy of Tim Kalina, was taken about two years before Lyon's visit to Tucson. The airplane is unidentified (it is not the Stinson).

Ben Lyon (L) and Bebe Daniels (R), April 23, 1931, Agua Caliente

Below, the caption on the back of the image above.

Image Caption, April 23, 1931

Born February 6, 1901, Ben Lyon was a film actor who starred as an aviator in Howard Hughes' "Hell's Angels". A brief biography is here. A little more detail is found here. He is not represented by a biographical file at the National Air & Space Museum. He died - March 22, 1979.

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UPLOADED: 07/31/08 REVISED: