'The Flying Ace' Turns 100 and Brings a Forgotten Black Disabled Actor Back into Focus

Disabled actors are not new. In fact, they have existed since the birth of cinema, as proven by 'The Flying Ace' from 1926, which turns 100 this autumn.

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The history of disability discourse in films is often fraught with trauma and misrepresentation. Often, critics explain the lack of representation of disabled people on screen by citing a lack of actors, and when a disabled actor comes along, it's a new phenomenon. But disabled actors are not new. In fact, they've been around since the inception of cinema, as evidenced by 1926's The Flying Ace, which turns 100 this fall.

I remember [during] my first viewing, how is this guy riding a bike and using a cane as one of the pedals and pulling it up and down? Joseph Amodio, who works on writing assistive devices for the blind and visually impaired, said when he first saw the "flying ace". Related Stories Black American Film Festival expands to theatrical distribution with launch of ABFF97. The new "Sense and Sense" introduces a different and star-studded Marianne Dashwood in Esmé Creed-Miles.

"Flying Ace" seems revolutionary in many ways. Filmed by the little-known (to today's audiences) Norman Studios in Jacksonville, Florida, the 1926 silent film featured an all-black cast and was produced entirely outside the Hollywood studio system. It's an aviation mystery that follows Captain Billy Stokes (Lawrence Criner) and his assistant Peg (Steve Reynolds), who is missing a leg. Stokes and Pegg must solve the mystery of who stole $25,000 from the railroad payroll.

It's a quiet feature that prioritizes its black cast, none of whom are black, while giving them romance, adventure, and comedy. Unlike other films of that period, racial oppression is not the only reason for its existence. In fact, it is completely absent from the film. It's just a movie. Besides, it's less a Hollywood story than an American one. In a cinematic landscape that often fails to find the intersection of race and disability, "Flying Ace" did just that.

Disabled actors have appeared in older Hollywood films, but most were white. Cross-overs rarely appear in films of that era (let alone today). Steve "Peg" Reynolds isn't just a black man while watching Ace. or a disabled man he is a disabled black man. Someone who gets the chance to shine as a funny and intelligent character who happens to have a disability. Living in a world not made by your mind can make improvisation, adaptation and invention a part of everyday life. This film gives Reynolds a chance to use that genius and take it for granted. His stunt work shows a performer completely comfortable in his own skin amid one dangerous predicament after another. He has little time for what anyone might think of him. There is a job to do. And he does it with patience. Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about Reynolds' life today. He died in 1945. Of the six films he worked on over the course of his career, Flying Ace is the only one complete, according to IMDb and Library of Congress searches.

For Lawrence Carter-Long, director of engagements for ReelAbilities International, the chance for Reynolds to achieve stardom a second time was appealing. "I went down the rabbit hole and found out that the Library of Congress had restored it, and it's the only complete Steve Reynolds film left, and I'd been to the races," he said. Reynolds, a disabled black man with body differences, is given a character that is neither tragic nor inspiring. "The thing that really struck me after watching it is that Peg is nobody's fool," Carter Long said.

A recent Annenberg Inclusion study, in a sample of the 100 highest-grossing films of 2025, notes that only 6.9 percent of disabled characters on screen are black. Yet almost nothing is known about Reynolds' life, his other characteristics, or even whether he was married or had children. How did you get into stunt work? How did he become disabled? And what did audiences think of him in 1926? None of this is clear. Carter Long hopes the "Flying Ace" show will prompt historians to examine him and answer these questions. "Maybe some people will come out of the woodwork who can help us find some of these answers."

"'Ace' is a vital piece of black film history, and its 100th anniversary gives us a meaningful opportunity to bring that history back into active public conversation," said Dr. Novotny Lawrence, director of the Black Film Center and Archives at Indiana University. "Methods deepen the ways audiences encounter and understand that history." The IU Foundation's Black Philanthropy Circle also provided key resources for the project and supported BFCA co-sponsorship.

"Flying Ace" certainly feels like a movie that highlights the best of Hollywood history, or at least one that existed without the racism and ableism that marred everything. "Here we have this film that really shows how long ago the black community was represented, but I don't know who knew about it," said Alison Johnson, a professional voice actress and voiceover narrator. "People don't always realize that this connection exists now," says Diane Nutting, an accessibility and inclusion consultant who works with Smithsonian Folklife. I'm just thinking about this movie in terms of an all-black cast in 1926.

"The history of the film is the history of America. Black history is American history. The history of disability is the history of America. American music history is history, says ReelAbilities, and on its centennial, the organization is bringing the film back to the big screen in collaboration with the Smithsonian's Center for Folklore and Cultural Heritage as part of the "Culture, By, and For The People" initiative to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States.

The film is being performed as part of the ReelAbilities Rediscover project, which "invites audiences to re-encounter film, bringing together black film history, disability culture, archival preservation, live music, access and public dialogue."

"Flying Ace" is an opportunity to explore American history through multiple communities and traditions. "As we think about America 250, and we think about celebrating, it seems like a perfect fit for what we're doing in trying to tell America's story through culture and folklore," Nutting said.

Although the film was shot in the 1920s, everyone involved in the project wanted to make it accessible from both a contemporary and disabled perspective. According to ReelAbilities, "For a silent film, it's not the background music, it's how the story moves, breathes and reaches the audience." Grammy Award-winning blind musicians Matthew Whittaker and Robert Derek are creating a new, semi-improvised live score that responds to the film in real time, described as a "live interpretation" rather than a fixed score. It was facilitated by the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg School of Music, which "brings the live music and artistry of blind and visually impaired musicians to the center of the audience experience."

At the same time, film voiceovers were unique in that they required explanations of what was on screen, silent dialogue, and film credits, words written on screen to tell the story.

"It was the complete opposite of the standard experience of writing audio descriptions," said Amodio, who worked with Bridge Multimedia. "Not only was there no dialogue, but there was no ambient sound, and that's something I didn't expect. No doors were opening or closing. There was no wind blowing, or crickets outside to indicate that you were outside. The subway train didn't rush by to show that you were on the subway platform. So the key word for any voice description writer is that [and scenery] usually keep it short. Allison had to offer what she knows about vocal inflection, going up and down, and speeding up some things, saying certain phrases quickly and slowing down other things.

As Amodio, Johnson, and Carter-Long all claim, they hope people who are not visually impaired will explore the audio descriptions of this item, as well as the videos in general. "I will never watch a show again without an audio description track," Johnson said. "The audio description was so beautiful and lush, and it added so much to my perspective as a visual person."

After the film opens Oct. 7 at Indiana University, the team hopes to see the "Flying Ace" screening as a pilot for a much larger project that includes other features starring unknown disabled actors. It's also an opportunity to ask the audience who could be part of the film's history." "It's a collaboration that shows a lot of things that deserve to be at an event like the America 250, but are often overlooked," said Carter-Long.

From black historians to disability researchers, archivists to musicians, film is a universal medium through which people learn about the world and each other. Disability, for too long, has been left out of that conversation, let alone the intersection that comes from being people of color with disability. And the greater hope is that this screening will not be a one-off. Carter Long has several disability-focused films and stars that people have forgotten about. He hopes the series will help viewers "reclaim" them.

ReelAbilities Rediscover brings history, community, culture and access together to change the way audiences experience a film and recognize whose contributions matter. A century after Steve "Peg" Reynolds took to the screen, "Flying Ace" is finally back on screen more than once. It is given a wider framework. And hopefully it dispels the belief that, then and now, it was powerless. Actors don't exist. They've always been here.