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42 Balloons: New musical follows man who flew over LA in a garden chair
19 hours ago
By Ian Youngs,
Entertainment & arts reporter

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Getty Images Larry Walters (left) and Alan King on the ABC TV special America's
Funniest Foul-Ups in 1984Getty Images
"Lawnchair" Larry Walters (left) with TV host Alan King on America's Funniest Foul-
Ups in 1984
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.

Josh Bird Charlie McCullagh and Evelyn Hoskins in 42 BalloonsJosh Bird

Charlie McCullagh and Evelyn Hoskins play Larry and fiancée Carol in 42 Balloons
"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.

Getty Images Disney/Pixar's "UP' Premiere on May 16, 2009 at the El Capitan Theatre
in Hollywood, California.Getty Images
The story may sound familiar to those who have seen Pixar's movie Up (premiere
picture from 2009)
"I had just moved to London and I had this big dream of becoming a writer and I had
people in my life who were doubting me - in a way that is quite natural. My family
and friends are all supportive, but I don't come from a theatre background.

"So when I discovered the story about this guy who had a dream and people doubted
him or he had obstacles in his way... I thought, that's such an inspirational story
of someone who is going to overcome the odds and make his dream come true by
whatever means necessary.

"[It's] a real underdog story that I really connected with at the time because I
thought, this guy's just like me. There's something about it that really inspired
me.

"And I thought, maybe this is something that other people will connect with. It
feels like a universal story, the idea of having a dream."

By writing about Larry's dream, Godfrey has gone some way to achieving his own, and
is now a rising star of musical theatre.
42 Balloons, his first professional show, has had notable backing. Producers Andy
and Wendy Barnes also discovered hit show Six, while the Lowry gave early support
to Operation Mincemeat - which has just won the Olivier Award for best new musical.

Godfrey is also preparing for his second professional show, called Babies, which
will open at London's Other Palace theatre at the end of May.

Josh Bird The cast in rehearsals for 42 BalloonsJosh Bird

The cast in rehearsals for 42 Balloons
Meanwhile, someone else to have been inspired by Lawnchair Larry is Mark Barry, who
started investigating the story and eventually came to act as his family's
spokesman.

He set out to correct some of the misconceptions about Larry.

"I really felt like people thought he was a kind of a lunatic, and I wanted to let
people know that this was not Larry," he says. "This guy was us. The only
difference was he pursued his dream.

"He was a dreamer who fulfilled his dreams, unlike most of us, who just sit in our
chair. He actually pursued it."

Barry, a pilot and simulator engineer from Arizona, tracked down the actual
lawnchair, which Larry had given to a child from the neighbourhood where he landed.
The chair is now in the US National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, DC.

Barry isn't involved in the musical, although the chair's rediscovery is part of
the plot. As is Larry's death at the age of 44 in 1993, 11 years after his flight.

At the time, his mother told US media that he shot himself in the heart after
hiking to his favourite spot in the Angeles National Forest. It was widely accepted
to have been a suicide. That's the storyline in the show.

New evidence?
However, his mother later told the New Yorker there were suspicious circumstances.
There were drug smugglers in the area, and Larry was found with the gun in his
right hand, whereas he was left-handed, she said. In the same article, Larry's
sister dismissed the suggestion of foul play.

Barry now claims to have uncovered evidence that Larry's death was not suicide -
but doesn't want to give further details until he's finished writing a book about
Larry's life and death.

So, part of Larry's story may still be left to told.

Whatever the truth, he seems destined to go down in history as a heroic maverick of

everyday American life.

Larry told the LA Times: "I didn't think that by fulfilling my goal in life, my
dream, that would create such a stir - and make people laugh."

42 Balloons is at The Lowry in Salford until 19 May.

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