Remington Portable Typewriter Reaches for the Sky, its Table on its Back

From Typewriter Topics, July 1922. Reference to the baseboard of the Remington portable typewriter is explained in the item below, about journalist Bessie Beatty, who covered the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Beatty story ran above the Hannagan picture in this issue of Typewriter Topics. The "Jumper" plane should be "Junker".

Lieutenant Belvin Maynard, the "flying parson", wishes Eddie Rickenbacker
a successful flight. Pilot Eddie Stinson is on the left and engineer Theodore Lovington and press agent  Steve Hannagan on the right.

Hannagan, Lovington, Rickenbacker and Stinson.

June 7, 1922: Longest airplane flight is started. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, America's foremost fighting aviator, has started on his great airplane tour of the US accompanied by Steve Hannagan, a writer who will chronicle the trip. Rickenbacker will make an aerial industrial survey of the country, stopping at 64 of the most prominent cities. The start was made from Mitchell Field, Mineola, Long Island, in a Larsen JL-6 all-metal plane equipped with a 185 horsepower motor. The total mileage to be covered is expected to mark a new record for airplane travel, the trip to last about three months. 

Pioneering publicist Stephen Joseph Hannagan was Rickenbacker's press agent. Born in Fairfield, Indiana, on April 4, 1899, he began his working career as a correspondent for United Press. Although a writer, he loved the public relations field and created a national name for himself in that profession. He died on February 3, 1953. aged 52.

Stinson, Rickenbacker, Hannagan and Lovington.

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was born to Swiss parents in Columbus, Ohio, on October 8, 1890. He was a fighter ace in World War I and Medal of Honor recipient. With 26 aerial victories, he was America's most successful fighter ace in the war. He was also a race car driver and automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the longtime head of Eastern Air Lines. The Rickenbacker Motor Company was founded in 1920, selling technologically advanced cars incorporating innovations from automobile racing. The Rickenbacker came equipped with the first four-wheel brake system. Rickenbacker died on July 23, 1973 in Zürich, Switzerland. 

Apart from his big flight in 1922, Rickenbacker married Adelaide Frost Durant in Sound Beach, Connecticut. Rickenbacker and Adelaide are seen here with church rector T. B. Barney, Ethel Wilhelm (Adelaide's maid of honour),  Hannagan (Rickenbacker's best man) and Pastor Jacob Pister.

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Typewriter Topics, July 1922. "Lenine" is, of course, Lenin.

Bessie Beatty's 1920 passport photograph

Elizabeth Mary "Bessie" Beatty was born into a well-to-do Irish family in Los Angeles on January 27, 1886. After graduating from Occidental College she began working as a journalist for the Los Angeles Herald in 1904. She publishing a Who's Who in Nevada in 1907 and was signed by editor Fremont Older to join the San Francisco Bulletin. As a war correspondent for the Bulletin, Beatty filed a series of reports from Europe during World War I and spent eight months in Russia, where she witnessed the Great October Socialist Revolution, to which she devoted the book The Red Heart of Russia (1918).

In Russia, Beatty spent time with the notorious Women’s Battalion of Death.

On November 7, 1917, Beatty obtained a pass from the Military Revolutionary Committee and was one of the first civilians to enter the Winter Palace after the fall of the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

Bessie Beatty in the Russian trenches in 1917.

Beatty edited McCall's Magazine from 1918-1921 and was director of National Label Council to get Americans to read labels and buy American.

In 1926, Beatty married British actor William Sauter. The couple moved to Los Angeles, where Beatty wrote for MGM Studios and co-wrote a play, Jamboree, which appeared on Broadway in 1932. She remained a political activist and was also American secretary of the International P.E.N. Club. In 1940, she hosted a radio show on WOR New York.

By 1942, Beatty's show was the most popular women’s show on air in the US. She continued her radio work until her death on April 6, 1947, in New York. She was aged 61.