Chip Hanuer is very much alive
I'm referring to the DVD special features when Jim said he remembered the death of Chip Hanuer. I would guess that he meant Bill Muncey or Dean Chenoweth who are also legendary drivers.
shareRight you are!! Chip is alive and well here in Seattle. He did the colour comentary at the Chevrolet Cup at Seafair back in August for KIRO TV 7.
If Jim was talking about drivers in the time frame of the movie, Chip didn't start driving unlimiteds until 1976, when he drove the Dyonosis (SP?) (aka the Tad Dean's Body Shop). Although I haven't seen the DVD yet, I'm assuming he was talking about Tommy "Tucker" Fults. He drove the Pay 'N Pak's Lil Buzzard and was killed when he was thrown out of the boat while trying to qualify it in San Diego, when they hosted the 1970 Gold Cup.
Coincedence or not, in the movie, they had featured a driver, Buddy Johnson, who drove and died when driving the Atlas Van Lines. I don't recall a Buddy Johnson and that boat, the Atlas Van Lines, in the movie was actually the "Buzzard".
I'm assuming the Buddy Johnson character, was trying to portray Fults, but his surviving family didn't give their consent to use his name.
Good observation! I think that I barely remember Fults. Jim was not talking about any particular time frame but about his growing up in the area. Buddy Johnson may be a fictional character. I think that I may need to do some research. Thank you for your reply!!
shareExcerpt from the movie review on abrahydroplanes.com:
"Some matters of historical fact are glossed over for dramatic effect. But this is a movie not a documentary. And as a movie, it succeeds on its own terms' Granted, there is a lot of fictionalizing. But the characters ring true. I knew all of the real people portrayed in the script. And I can visualize the real people saying and doing many of the things that they say and do in the movie.
The sub-plot involving Jim McCormick's relationship with a young driver, played by actor Richard Lee Jackson, is an obvious reference to McCormick's real life friendship with George "Skipp" Walther. Skipp was fatally injured at Miami Marine Stadium in 1974 while testing the RED MAN hydroplane, which McCormick owned.
The film footage that represents the crash involving Jackson's character (fictionalized as "Buddy Johnson") is actually taken from KING-TV film of the 1962 MISS SEATTLE TOO disintegration on Seattle's Lake Washington."
By Fred Farley, ABRA Unlimited Historian
Whew! Thanks for that. I would've remembered hearing if Chip Hanauer died.
~May peace rain down from Heaven~