CHELMSFORD got "film star" treatment 102 years ago when Britain's best known aviator of the day thrilled spectators by landing his bi-plane on the lawns of Hylands House to claim his wealthy American bride.
Playboy aviator Claude Grahame-White rocked the park long before the Boys Toys event thanks to his firm friendship with fellow yachtsman Sir Daniel Gooch who owned Hylands House Estate at the time.
Grahame-White was a roaring twenties combination of the Great Gatsby – Scott Fitzgerald's fictional magnate of the same era – and Virgin Airline boss, entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson.
Sir Daniel offered his estate's church at Widford and the lawn of the fabulous mansion for Grahame-White's glitzy marriage to New York socialite Dorothy Caldwell Taylor.
The story of their high society wedding has fascinated former Hylands' staffer and one-time city road safety chief Doug Killick, who staged an exhibition at the house two years ago to commemorate the event's centenary.
Doug said: "Grahame-White was the equivalent of a film star full of glamour and daring in his day.
"He was flying just five years after the Wright brothers and was the first pilot to do so in the dark.
"In fact he was so anxious to learn to fly in 1909 that he would not wait for his trainer to arrive at the Bleriot school in France.
"He took off but did not realise the plane was tethered to a fence and that took off too but luckily with no dire consequences."
By 1911, Grahame-White had learned to fly competently and had founded his own aviation company at what is now RAF Hendon aircraft museum.
He had by then earned a playboy reputation for taking wealthy young American women for flights at $100 a minute, worth the equivalent of $2,000 today.
While in the States picking up huge flying prizes of more than $1.5 million in today's money, he even landed one of his planes outside the White House in Washington DC.
Then Grahame-White took a cruise on the Titanic's sister ship Olympic where he had a whirlwind romance with the beautiful slender Dorothy.
Her father assigned $12 million to Grahame-White as the marriage settlement and they took the chance to marry at Hylands with aircraft at the very heart of the huge occasion, attracting tens of thousands of people over two days.
Lady Gooch decided to have her summer fete on the day before the marriage with a flying circus as the big attraction led by Essex flyer, Benny Hucks, the first man in England to fly upside down and to loop the loop.
Thousands took advantage of special cheap third class GER rail tickets to pour into the well-publicised fete.
The weather was "not favourable" said the Chronicle at the time and Grahame-White was stuck at Harlow because of high winds. The rest of the fliers could not even leave Hendon.
But the expectant thousands hung on all day until at 7pm Sir Daniel received telephone messages that the planes were on their way at last.
The Essex Chronicle wrote: "His thrilling arrival relieved all the disappointment of a long and weary vigil and when the light faded he even flew by searchlight, enchanting spectators."
The next day five planes were set to land on the lawn at Hylands.
Hundreds lined the streets to Widford Church in expectation, not for the bride, but for the air show.
The marriage is the subject of an early news clip at www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/533
The happy couple both loved flying although their love for each waned and they divorced within four years.
But this was not before Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper magnate paid for a sky-blue aircraft with gold-plated struts for the glamorous couple to visit 121 English towns in 1912, promoting flight and the warning "Wake Up England" to expose German war preparations.
In 1911 Grahame-White established a flying school at Hendon, which quickly became Hendon Aerodrome.
Hendon Aerodrome later became RAF Hendon but after flying ceased there in the 1960s it was largely redeveloped as a housing estate named Grahame Park in tribute to Grahame-White.
Mr Killick said: "Although he had put it about a bit before he was married, White wanted to settle and have children but Dorothy would have none of it.
"After the divorce she had a marriage of convenience with an Italian Count with no money. She got the title Contessa Di Frasso and no ties. He got the cash he needed."
She became the "Countess of Hollywood", a gossip columnist's dream with sexual liaisons with George Raft, the actor-gangster; Gary Cooper, the High Noon Star; and Bugsy Segal, the career mobster who was assassinated in 1947.
Her Champagne lifestyle ended on New Year's Eve 1954 when, shortly after partying with German sex-symbol Marlene Dietrich in Las Vegas, she was found dead on the train heading for Los Angeles. She was 64.
Grahame-White continued his love of aviation with his new wife, music hall star Ethel Levey.
The Levey marriage lasted until 1939 by which time, after a clash with the government over compensation for the Great War use of Hendon, Grahame-White dropped flying and concentrated on real estate in the US and UK.
His fortune grew again and he eventually moved to Nice in his old age, where he died in 1959, aged 79.
His third and last marriage was to English chorus girl Phoebe Lee, who outlived him, dying in 1964 and leaving their substantial fortune to the RAF Hendon Museum.
Mr Killick said: "It's a fascinating tale and the fabulous wealth of Dorothy's family continues.
"Her relative, the late Bertrand Taylor, a D-Day veteran involved in the New York Stock Exchange, came to Hylands by chance about four years ago.
"I explained everything I knew and he invited us to dinner.
"He said my wife and I should meet him and his wife at Liverpool Street.
"We were taken to the Ritz. We had a private dining room and a waiter each. It was sumptuous.
"At the end he suddenly said 'Oh I forgot the tip' and counted out £200.
"The meal must have cost a small fortune in my terms but it seemed like pocket money to him.
"Like Grahame-White and Dorothy Taylor he inhabited a different world from the rest of us."
