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4 unusual facts about Happy Bottom Riding Club


Happy Bottom Riding Club

A made-for-TV movie aired on the CBS TV network, Pancho Barnes (1988), starring Valerie Bertinelli as Pancho, featured a fictionalized version of Barnes' life and events relating to The Happy Bottom Riding Club.

Pancho's life was chronicled in an Emmy-winning 2009 documentary film for PBS station KOCE-TV, entitled The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club.

A tradition was started when Chuck Yeager, who became friends with Pancho during Mexican hunting and fishing expeditions, broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 and Pancho gave him a free steak dinner.

Lauren Kessler

She is also author of Washington Post best-seller Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era, a biography of Elizabeth Bentley, and the Los Angeles Times best-seller and Oregon Book Award finalist The Happy Bottom Riding Club, a biography of aviator Florence Pancho Barnes.



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