Of the two bikes featured in the 1969 counterculture movie, Easy Rider, it was Captain America that everyone remembers.
This wild machine became an instant icon when Peter Fonda rode it in on the big screen, while Dennis Hopper’s ‘Billy Bike’ was quickly relegated to second fiddle. Such is the fickle nature of Hollywood. But as time went on, the story of these bikes only got better.
Captain America at the Harley-Davidson Museum, Milwaukee
The 1962 FLH panheads were purchased, ironically, at a police auction for $500 apiece and transformed by two African-American bike builders: Clifford "Soney" Vaughs, who designed the bikes, and Ben Hardy, a prominent chopper-builder in Los Angeles, who worked on their construction.
Cliff ‘Soney’ Vaughs on his white chopper on Malibu Beach, 1971 [Elliot Gold photo]
“The bikes in Easy Rider”, says motorcycle author Paul d'Orleans, "did more to popularise choppers around the world than any other film or any other motorcycle. I mean, suddenly people were building choppers in Czechoslovakia, or Russia, or China, or Japan."
While everyone, including the film’s producers, have differing accounts about who did what, the facts surrounding their build are unchallenged.
Clifford "Soney" Vaughs passed away in 2016 and Ben Hardy in 1994 and for years, the pair’s participation in Easy Rider was obscured by misinformation put out by the film's producers and director. In fact, two documentaries about the production of Easy Rider — 1995's Born To Be Wild and 1999's Easy Rider: Shaking The Cage — never name the men who designed and built the choppers.
Despite the fact that Vaughs had helped newcomer filmmakers Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda buy the motorcycles to use in the film, then oversaw their construction and was hired as associate producer for the now legendary movie, his name was expunged from the official history.
Astonishingly, Vaughs only saw the film for the first time less than a year before he died.
Apart from being a talented and ultimately famous bike builder, Vaughs was an organiser for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and served in the US Marine Corps from 1953.
Visitors to the
History records one was destroyed in the final scene, while the three remaining ‘stunt doubles’ were stolen and never recovered.
The last supposed authenticated ‘Captain America’ sold in 2014 for US$1.35 million and was owned by Los Angeles Realtor and movie memorabilia collector Michael Eisenberg who had bought it from actor, Dan Haggerty, best known for his starring role as Grizzly Adams, but who also had a small part in Easy Rider.
Haggerty claimed to have built this "Captain America" from the wreckage of the fourth bike, used in the movie's dramatic finale - but there are those who question even this version, including Fonda himself.
