Photo courtesy Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport A bell is all that remains of Sky Harbor’s wedding chapel.

Early backers of Sky Harbor had to sucker in new crowds with fly-through weddings, and dozens of couples – including some Hollywood A-listers – said ‘I do.’


Like any city, Phoenix has never shied away from promotional gimmicks, and in the 1930s it hit upon a doozy: a marriage chapel at the airport that provided quickie fly-in weddings for the Hollywood set.

At the time, a quirk in California law required couples to hold off marrying for three days after they applied for a license, so Phoenix figured it could lure celebrity lovebirds. Like a desperate bride-in-waiting, the city proposed, and dozens of couples said, “I do.”

They didn’t exactly attract the A-list crowd boosters had hoped for, but the gimmick drew some well-known names along with the desired publicity.

Today, all that remains of the chapel is its bell. Hanging in a reconstructed tower, the bell has a prominent spot on the patio of the Left Seat restaurant overlooking Sky Harbor International Airport’s north runway. There’s been one modern-day wedding on the patio in recent years, and scores of diners have taken pictures of the bell.

Owners Karen and Ron Zamenski inherited the bell when they took over the restaurant five years ago, but they’ve had to piece together the history themselves through old news clippings and in-the-know customers.

“We’ve just learned along the way, with the storytelling,” Karen says. “Everyone is very curious about the history but nobody knows the true history.”

Historical records are hard to come by, and news accounts sometimes give conflicting information. But what’s clear is that, at the time, this still-small city was eager to latch onto air travel and promote itself nationally.

Boosters and business leaders were already pros at selling the city, the self-proclaimed “Valley of the Sun” and “New Winter Playground.” A promotional booklet mailed nationwide in the early 1930s read, “Here one may know the joy of living with air, day and night, dry, pure and stimulating like champagne, just cool enough to be pleasant and sun kissed practically every day.”

By 1935, the city was ready for a big-league promotion: buying an airport. Sky Harbor was in private hands, and the city purchased it for $100,000, according to Desert Wings, a history of the airport. Sky Harbor was considered a modern facility with its terminal building, hangar and lighted field. It was also seen as a key location on a vital transcontinental air route.

The city celebrated the airport purchase with flying demonstrations that drew the governor and 10,000 onlookers, and it also hosted a gala that night at Downtown’s Westward Ho Hotel. Soon after, boosters began plotting how to put Sky Harbor on the national radar.

A chance fly-in by a California couple who couldn’t wait to wed launched the chapel idea, the book says. It’s not clear today exactly who the couple was, but Academy Award nominee Sylvia Sidney and Random House publisher Bennett Cerf flew into Phoenix for a day in October 1935 just to get married.

A news clipping reported that the bride came from Hollywood and the groom from New York. They chose a ceremony at the Westward Ho Hotel over one in California where, the bride was quoted as saying, “We’d have to wait three days.”

The Chamber of Commerce in Phoenix led the effort to build a chapel resembling a Spanish Mission (some reports give credit to the Jaycees). With a budget of just $15, workers rounded up adobe bricks that were being used to construct a fairground wall and built a simple open-air chapel with an imposing bell tower.

The story of the chapel’s bell remains a bit of a mystery. One story goes that American Airlines bought it from a second-hand store on Grand Avenue; another says a Catholic organization donated a church bell that at the time was 100 years old.

Airport officials arranged to have the Maricopa County clerk issue marriage licenses at a moment’s notice. Participating married couples would also get their names engraved on a copper plaque. By 1937, the chapel was ready for business and the boosters revved up the marketing machine.

“Step Right Up and Say ‘I Do,’” reads one undated news clipping. “Sky Harbor Phoenix spreads its welcome mat for aerial elopers… the chapel is expected to be the scene of many weddings, and its construction already has won publicity for Phoenix in many parts of the nation.”

Among the fly-in couples was radio singer Donald Novis and former Broadway showgirl Dorothy Bradshaw, who married in January 1938. News reports show that the Hollywood couple was greeted by a crowd of 100, including chamber and government officials, reporters and curious spectators. A “Spanish orchestra played lively tunes” – the orchestra was likely a mariachi band – and the wedding ceremony was broadcast over the radio.

A police escort whisked the happy couple to a hotel and they later returned home on an American Airlines flight.

About 40 couples married at the chapel between 1937 and the early 1940s. The copper plaque listing newlyweds disappeared long ago, so no one knows how many celebrities tied the knot there. But the general sense is that the city’s plan flopped.

“All they hoped for never really materialized, ” says Arv Schultz, an aviation historian and former publisher of Arizona Flyways magazine.

Historical records indicate the chapel was demolished in the early or mid-1940s. Schultz suspects that city officials tore down the chapel because of the war effort, which thrust Sky Harbor into its critical new role as a site for pilot training and more commercial air travel. The bell was moved to a new terminal, and eventually moved to the site of the Left Seat restaurant.

Today, owner Karen Zamenski gladly welcomes “aerial elopers” to her patio. But, she advises, “If you’re going to get married at the bell, you’re going to have planes and helicopters. You’re going to have skids [sounds] and rubber smells, jet fuel smells. It won’t be a quiet… but it will be different.”