Hubert Fauntleroy Julian

According to Ann Douglas, in 1923 Hubert Fauntleroy Julian parachuted into Harlem “wearing a devil’s costume, complete with horns and tail, and playing a saxophone. He was trying, he told reporters, ‘to make the world a more fundamental place to live,’” (Douglas, in Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, page 459).

Why isn’t there a movie about Julian, one of the earliest African-American aviators, (clearly) a showman, and eventually an international arms dealer? He went up in a plane for the first time with the Canadian flying ace Billy Bishop, according to one source. Above all else, though, his explanation of the reasoning for his stunt is so cheerfully good that I would be fascinated with him for that statement alone. There is no movie, though; the lone imdb credit dealing with Julian is for his producing credit on an Oscar Micheaux movie.