Tuesday, Aug. 5, 1997 | 10:46 a.m.
Their list of credits is enumerable and, to say the very least, eclectic.
From "Funny Girl" to "The Flying Nun" and "Phantom of the Opera" to "Spinal Tap," the Foy family has given flight to many of Broadway and Hollywood's biggest stars: Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Carol Channing.
Their Las Vegas-based company, Flying by Foy, has spent the past 55 years working above-the-scenes on theatrical, movie and television productions, ballets, operas and even rock concerts.
If it floats, soars or levitates, chances are the Foys and their crew of 14 technicians are behind it.
Their work can currently be seen in 300 productions around the globe. Upcoming projects include "The Lion King," opening on Broadway this month, and "Imagine," a new production show opening at the Luxor hotel-casino this fall.
"Anything to do with flying, they're probably the top ones" in the business, says Terry Lovern, production manager at the Stardust hotel-casino, where Flying by Foy equipment was used in the former "Lido de Paris" and a previous incarnation of the "Enter The Night" production shows.
But for all of the company's projects, patriarch Peter Foy will likely go down in show business history as the wind beneath Peter Pan's make-believe wings.
The native of Great Britain is Flying by Foy's founder and chief executive officer. The former child actor and writer hails from a performing family: He first flew in 1940 during a stage production of "Where the Rainbow Ends."
(Or did he dangle? "The wire got caught around a light," he recalls.)
An aerial legacy
Foy learned the art of flying while working with the late Joe Kirby, considered to be England's grandfather of modern theatrical flying. (One of the oldest theatrical effects, flying dates back to ancient Greece.)
"I had this idea of using flying like it had never been used before," he says.
His legacy with the pirate-battling Pan began in '48, when he flew characters in productions of the classic tale in England.
Two years later, he was hired to work on the New York stage show featuring actress Jean Arthur in the title role and Boris Karloff as Captain Hook.
Foy is, however, most often associated with his work on the legendary "Peter" production starring Mary Martin, which debuted on Broadway in 1954, and made TV history the following year when it was broadcast live on NBC.
"Which was something else," the 72-year-old recalls. There was no tape back in those days. "You couldn't edit, so it was a very nerve-racking experience."
From 1974-80, his son Garry, who is also Flying by Foy's chief operations officer, flew actress Sandy Duncan during her "Peter" portrayal. Ten years later, the company flew former gymnast Cathy Rigby off to Never Never Land.
In all, the Foys have had their handiwork featured in more than 3,000 "Peter Pan" productions, and they continue to assist on some 150 performances of it annually.
For a long while, Foy says, "Whenever I was going to do flying for anybody or someone recommended me (for a job), they'd say, 'He did 'Peter Pan,' like it was the only thing I did."
Hardly.
High-flying resume
The company has also created flying sequences for "Ice Capades," the original "Lido de Paris" in France, and collaborated with both the Metropolitan and Royal Operas.
They sent Barbra Streisand soaring in "Funny Girl" (which got Foy a mention in her autobiography), floated Sean Connery for his appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman," and flew Garth Brooks, David Bowie and Paula Abdul during their concert tours.
Locally, they've worked with nearly every theater and dance company in town, including Nevada Dance Theatre, for which they flew characters in their '94 ballet version of "Dracula," which returns to the Judy Bayley Theatre this fall.
Flying is "a great feeling," says Gilles Reichert, who portrayed the fabled vampire in the previous production.
But it isn't as easy as it looks. "You have to think of the (dance) techniques, you have to think of rhythm," says Reichert, also a principle dancer in "Jubilee" at Bally's. "You have to coordinate with the people who are on the floor helping you ... and with all of that, you have to be graceful."
Flying "really is a technique in itself," says Jill Eathorne Bahr, resident choreographer of the Charleston (South Carolina) Ballet Theatre, who will return as NDT's guest choreographer on "Dracula."
"I wanted my Dracula to be able to flip and turn while flying," she says. "I knew (Flying by Foy) was the company we needed to work with. They have such an understanding of the craft they invented."
Among the Foys' most lauded work was the 1966 sci-fi flick "Fantastic Voyage" starring Raquel Welch, which won an Academy Award for special visual effects.
The movie, about a team of shrunken scientists' submarine journey into the bloodstream, features a scene where the actors appear to be swimming. But really, they were flying on Foy-built apparatus.
"I'm really proud of 'Fantastic Voyage,' " Foy says, "because people know what swimming looks like, and it fooled them."
So how did they do it?
"It's fairy dust. Haven't you seen 'Peter Pan?' " Foy quips.
Dancing on air
Seriously though, there's much more to flying than hoisting a person up and tugging on ropes. Years ago, he coined the term "aereography" to better define the family business.
"It's like choreography, only it's transferring all of your dance moves" into mid-air. "You're actually creating a visual effect."
The company's southeast Las Vegas facility is where they build the steel rigging equipment and custom-make the leather harnesses that flyers wear.
They still have Martin's harness. It's stored near those worn by Roseanne during her recent performance as the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz" on Broadway, comedian Chris Farley in "Beverly Hills Ninja" and shock jock Howard Stern in "Private Parts."
Convincing Stern to strap on the gear and complete the flick's short flying scene took some doing, though.
"He'd had a terrible flying experience" on the MTV Music Awards, Foy says. So when it came time to recreate the scene for the movie, "he wasn't going to fly. But they brought us in there and we spoke to him and he ended up loving it."
Quelling celebrities' fears is the easy part of the job.
What's tough, Foy says, is conceiving ideas for and then "aereographing" flight sequences for the productions they're assigned. (Just like choreographers, Flying by Foy is paid a royalty for the construction and use of its equipment and services.)
"First of all, you have to know your medium," he says. "If you're doing shows with dance, you have to know dance."
Same goes for ice skating. Prior to first working with "Ice Capades" in '52, Foy had only flown people on stage. "I learned to skate," he says.
"We have an advantage, too," 41-year-old Garry Foy says, "because if we're doing (a production of) 'The Little Mermaid' for Disney or whoever, not that many people have actually seen mermaids, so we can make them swim" however they wish.
His father adds: "When (show producers) say to me, 'All you have to do is lift the person up on wire and we can do everything else,' I say, 'That's not what I do.' If we can't contribute to it (creatively) ... our attitude is, 'Well, you can do it yourself.'
"We're the only ones who really know what we do. People have seen flying .... (but) there are very few who have mastered it."
Systemized flying
Even fewer can operate the dozen or so flying systems -- all manually, remote control or computer-driven -- that the Foys have patented over the years. So they send technicians out to each production to teach stagehands how they work.
"There are some systems we have that I think only five people in the world can work. It really requires a lot of skill," Foy says.
Technology comes in handy under unusual circumstances, like the time they flew 24 people at once for a televised show promoting the release of Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
But often, Foy contends, the best effects are made the old-fashioned way: By having two technicians -- one to do the lifting, the other doing the traveling -- working the steel cables backstage.
"Most of the cleverest stuff we've done has been manual because it's much more effective," he says. "Off-stage, you have to anticipate that (performer's) movement and what they're going to do next. It's very difficult to do that computerized."
Of course, it's not always smooth sailing. Foy recalls a major flub that occurred while they were flying Liberace at the Las Vegas Hilton.
For seven years, Mr. Showmanship used a brief flight over his famed piano as his curtain call. But one night, "he didn't wait for the person to lift him up. He was dragged across the stage to the piano.
"Afterwards," Foy says, "he came up to me and said, 'That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?,' and I said, 'No, Lee, it wasn't.' He said, 'It won't happen again, will it?' and that was it. No getting mad or anything."
Safety is, of course, a primary concern with the Foys, who in all their years of flying can only recall a few flying accidents, none of them serious.
"You've got one person flying each person who is up there and they're watching them like a hawk," Foy says. "We couldn't persuade all of these stars to do it otherwise."
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