Stage Flying Legend Peter Foy Passes Away at 79Peter Foy, the English pioneer of modern theatrical flying techniques, died on Friday 18 February, aged 79. Foy had been involved with theatrical flying since the 1940s: in 1950, he travelled to New York to stage the flying for Peter Pan on Broadway, starring Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff: four years later, he worked on Mary Martin's musical version of Peter Pan, for which he developed a new system called the Inter-Related Pendulum, with great success. Flying by Foy soon became an acknowledged industry standard. Later, in 1962, Foy patented the Track on Track system, and later still the Inter-Reacting Compensator system, developed for touring productions of the Ice Capades. He also invented the Multi-Point Balance Harness for film actors, and introduced the first self-contained radio-controlled flying system at the Flower Expo in Japan in 1990. In 1990, the Health and Safety Codes Commission of the United States Institute of Theatre Technology (USITT) presented Foy with the International Entertainment Safety Award "for his singular, personal, and creative contributions to safeguard human life during a period of 50 years in the entertainment industry and elevating the task of flying people with rigging to an art form." A service for Foy is scheduled for Sunday, 27 February at 12:00 noon at the Palm Mortuary, 7600 S. Eastern Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89123. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Actors' Fund of America, 729 Seventh Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10019. 
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