The Flying Ace

A fighter pilot home from the war turns railroad detective and goes after a stolen payroll, a missing employee, and a gang, with a fight on a water tower for the finish. The plane never leaves the ground; the flying is done in the cutting. Richard Norman's race pictures gave Black audiences a hero in a genre, and this is the one that survives whole. Laurence Criner, Kathryn Boyd as the aviatrix. Jacksonville, 1926, sixty-five minutes.