Book Review: Fireball

I just finished reading a book about actress Carole Lombard and the 1942 Nevada plane crash that cost her life and the lives of 21 other people, Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3. The book was published about a year ago.

It's a good biography, although almost all of the information about Carole Lombard is old news, including the rumor that she took the plane after completing her war bond tour instead of the train because she was worried about husband Clark Gable's supposed flirtation with a co-star named Lana Turner. That rumor has been around forever, and Turner, to her credit, refused to dignify it. As an aside, that's the problem with many biographies of show business people: The major characters are dead, so unscrupulous authors have a tendency to repeat rumors, or, as in the case of the infamous Kenneth Anger of Hollywood Babylon fame, literally make shit up, relatives and libel laws be damned. You kind of have to take many of these books with a grain of salt.

The main value of the book is the discussion and description of the circumstances surrounding the plane crash itself. I don't believe any other book has gone into this kind of detail about it. For that reason, I recommend it.

I do have a few complaints, however. There is sloppiness with the editing and with some of the facts. I found a number of typographical errors which never should have made it into print. What really irritates me is the continued misspelling in the book of McCarrAn Field--it's NOT McCarrEn Field. How hard is it to look up the correct spelling? The field, now one of the busier airports in the country, was named after Senator Pat McCarran. There is no excuse for that typo. The author is at times careless with his facts. For example, The Misfits filming was in the Reno-Dayton area of northern Nevada, which is well over 400 miles from the site of the Flight 3 crash. Matzen asserts in his book the filming was "not far" from Mount Potosi. Four or five hundred miles is not anywhere near close to the site of the crash. It is things like this that create questions on how much of this book can be trusted.

Perhaps if a paperback version of this book comes out some of these egregious mistakes will be corrected. I am not holding my breath.

Personal Stuff

There's really nothing worth a damn to write about, so I have been taking it easy from blogging since the election. The weather has also been good for a change, so I am taking advantage of it.

I am desperately trying to catch up on watching DVDs. I finished watching the 1976 flick, Gable and Lombard, which really should have had the disclaimer at the beginning of the film, "Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental." Certain specific events DID actually happen, but my God, there were lots and lots of inaccuracies. Red Buttons played Gable's publicist, and at the end of the film, he's there soothing Gable (played by Mr. Barbra Streisand, who actually gave a halfway decent performance), but in reality the publicist, Otto Winkler, died in the plane crash with Lombard and her mother, Elizabeth Peters. The film also tried to make it look like Gable and Lombard hated each other on sight when they first met, but in actuality, they met four or five years before they became an item, on the set of No Man of Her Own, and they got along great. There as no romance then because they were both married to other people. It is true Gable's divorce from second wife Ria Langham presented some problems for the couple when they did finally become an item, but, unlike the film, they NEVER hid their relationship. It was an open secret. The two of them dated and later lived together for three years before they married in 1939 in Kingman, Arizona.

The worst inaccuracy in the film was Gable was depicted as already having been in the military when Lombard died, but that was completely fabricated. Gable enlisted some months AFTERWARDS; he was so grief stricken this was doubtless a way for him to cope with it. It's possible he didn't care whether he lived or died. By all accounts, he was never the same again after Lombard died. After returning from the service, Gable acted self-destructive, especially with the drinking. It was only after he dated and married fifth wife Kay Spreckels that he actually found life worth living again. Had the truth actually been shown, it would have been a better and more poignant film.

It also would have been better if the filmmakers had found a different actress to play Lombard. Jill Clayburgh was okay with what she was given, but she looked absolutely nothing like Lombard. By comparison, Clayburgh, who was and is an attractive woman, was downright plain and therefore not very convincing in the part. Lombard was known as one of the great beauties of her era; her classic features and refined appearance belied the tomboy that existed in reality. That's one of the reasons people loved her so much; she was such a contrast to what people would have expected. There was a reason she was nicknamed "The Profane Angel."

This article about Gable was written shortly after Lombard died.

Anyway, that's been my day. The news is too stinking depressing to blog about.

Carole Lombard [Updated]

Ft. Wayne, Indiana, has been marking the birthday of one of its most famous natives, actress Carole Lombard, who was born on this date exactly 100 years ago.

Her birthplace has been converted into a bed & breakfast.

The Washington Times has a nice piece about her life and career.

My guess as to where her career would have gone had she lived is she would have no doubt continued to star in screwball comedies, expanded her range in other types of films, and would have made the transition to television, provided Clark Gable would have let her (he rejected television appearances as he was of the old school about movie stars making appearances on the small screen). Think Lucille Ball, and you would have had Carole Lombard in a similar series.

This clip is rather poignant, for this newsreel has footage of Lombard's last appearance in Indianapolis before her fatal flight:



I don't know how people get away with posting entire films on YouTube and other file sharing sites, but somehow they do. This is the first part of one of Lombard's most famous films, My Man Godfrey, which she co-starred with ex-husband William Powell (link):



Update: UK's The Guardian has a look at her, but I don't feel Lombard has been neglected at all. She was at least the equal to the actresses mentioned in the article and probably better. Her acting style was extremely modern.

Angelina Jolie comparable to Lombard? Oh, please. Not even close.

Miscellaneous

Next week, on October 6, will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of screen great Carole Lombard, one of my all-time favorite performers. Her hometown paper, the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel, makes mention of the upcoming anniversary.

As everybody knows, on January 16, 1942, Lombard was killed, along with her mother and 20 other people, in a plane crash at Mt. Potosi just outside Las Vegas. I found this interesting little report about Goodsprings, Nevada, and the Lombard accident.

For Fun

here is a YouTube of the great Carole Lombard "singing" with Fred MacMurray accompanying her. Of course he COULD play musical instruments and sing; Carole Lombard couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag if she tried. Husband Clark Gable did better in "Puttin' on the Ritz":




She was almost as bad as Lucille Ball in that timeless turkey, Mame (1974):



Ball at least admitted she couldn't sing:



I don't want to neglect Lee Marvin's classic "I Was Born Under a Wandering Star" from the movie Paint Your Wagon (1969):

Money is Way Tight,

but I did get a DVD of the 1932 film, No Man of Her Own, starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. I was watching the film on my computer. I have seen it before (I had it on VHS), and while it wasn't any masterpiece, it was fun nonetheless to see the two great stars in their only film together. Of course there wasn't anything going on between them at the time; they were married to other people. Gable and Lombard's romance wouldn't start until 1936.

They had great chemistry together in this film. It is a shame they didn't appear together in any more films. Lombard played a small-town librarian while Gable played a big-time card shark/con man. He came to a small town from New York to take the heat off himself, but he ended up meeting and falling in love with Lombard. He tried to keep her in the dark on what he really did for a living when they both married and went back to New York, but she found out anyway. It all worked out in the end: Gable was going to reform, and Lombard was going to keep him.

In some of Lombard's early films, it's hard to tell it is even her until she starts talking. In this film, she was very recognizable. She was very petite and very pretty, and while there are some hints of her comedic talent for which she became legendary, she was more low-key here. It wasn't until the 1934's Twentieth Century, where she was paired with the great John Barrymore, did she come into her own.

This year marks the centennial of Lombard's birth. When she died in a plane crash near Vegas on January 16, 1942, Gable was shattered beyond words. He was never the same. He enlisted in the military for a couple of years, went back to making films, married a couple more times, and died just after filming ended on The Misfits in northern Nevada. When he died, he was interred next to Lombard at Forest Lawn (Glendale). What is interesting is his widow, Kay Spreckels Gable, carried out his wishes to be laid to rest next to Lombard, and Kay is interred in a crypt in the row just below Gable.

Not many widows would do that. It says a lot about what kind of person Kay was.