Month: July 2017

Turnover

If you happened to be at the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California, this past weekend, I want to be in touch with you because I wonder if you heard a kuh-thump sound. That would have been Carole Lombard turning over in her grave, because at the Heritage auction house in Dallas, Texas, a movie poster from one of her films auctioned today for $107,550. The reason she turned would have done the old flip-a-roo is that the poster represented Supernatural, her least favorite picture in a career spanning almost 80 screen appearances over 20 years.

As some of you may know, I’ve been involved with movie posters since high school, and to me there’s nothing so evocative as the smell of a stack of old lobby cards or other carefully aged, 80-year-old paper. I saw the Supernatural one sheet on a wall in Hollywood somewhere around 1985—the one that sold for $107K may have been the same copy for all I know. I believed it would go high because it’s rare (only a few survived) and scarce (many people want the few that exist) and stunning to look at. Lombard’s mesmerizing eyes follow you from all angles—it’s one of those posters, the spooky kind, as CL clutches a glowing crystal ball in her hands.

Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 by Robert Matzen

Roma Courtney, now possessed by the spirit of Ruth Rogen, who recently went to the chair for murder.

As recounted in Fireball, Supernatural is Carole’s only horror film, made in 1933 by the Halperin Brothers¾Victor, who directed, and Edward, who produced. Their reputation on poverty row preceded them to Paramount Pictures, where Lombard was then under contract and forced to make this tale of a dead murderess whose spirit drifts around possessing people, including at one point Roma Courtney as portrayed by our gal. The Halperins had just hit pay dirt creating one of Bela Lugosi’s signature features, White Zombie, great-great-great granddaddy of today’s endless stream of derivatives, including a series I just can’t stand called The Walking Dead.

Give me Supernatural any day. It’s a tons-of-fun sexy pre-code feature that moves at a mile a minute. The cast is solid led by Carole, Randolph Scott, H.B. Warner (relevant to today’s general viewer for It’s a Wonderful Life and Sunset Boulevard, although he goes way back in the silents), and Vivienne Osborne as the crazed, dead-then-undead killer. Everyone takes the proceedings oh so seriously, where today with something like this there’d be lots of winks and nods at the camera. Why Lombard was so exasperated making Supernatural I really don’t understand, because she was way into all things paranormal, cavorted with psychics and palmists, and should have seen the benefits of making a picture that was truly different from what was frankly a lot of crap that Paramount kept putting her in—mindless melodramas that induce migraines today. But exasperated she was, to such an extent that at one point during production she threw her arms open wide and screamed to the heavens, “Who do I have to screw to get off this picture?!”

Well, Carole, Supernatural lives on. Brother does it. Your mug made the cover of the Heritage auction catalog and the fact that the Supernatural one sheet, complete with your staring eyes and a pair of glowing, shadowy brow ridges that would make any gorilla proud, will hit the news in collecting circles for the fact that this poster cracked a hundred-grand and comfortably so. You might as well grin and bear it, baby. You have made the news in 2017.

Kuh-thump.

The Chain

The mountain that called to me.

In the course of my career, I’ve been inspired many times to create, almost always by looking at an aspect of history and wondering why. Where it gets interesting is when what I’ve created inspires others in something of a chain reaction.

Knowing that the wreckage of a DC-3 still littered a remote Nevada mountainside, that you can see the site of the crash from every part of Las Vegas, had been pulling me toward that spot for years. Finally I yielded to the siren’s call and got the shock of my life when after a four-hour ascent, 22 dead people whispered in my ear. Suddenly I was inspired to tell many stories instead of just that of Carole Lombard—and I think it was these souls who had been calling to me all along.

I guess inspiration is a baton that’s passed from person to person. Reading Fireball served as inspiration for Las Vegas-based artist Kim Reale. First, I have to show you an incredible photograph—Kim displaying superpowers during her ice-skating career. The last time I saw her, she surprised me with a piece of giclée art of a most ethereal Carole Lombard that now hangs on my wall. “The book filled me with such empathy and compassion, I created a painting from it,” said Kim. “I felt Carole’s spirit rising from the horrific plane crash ascending to the heavens above with a dreamlike sadness of what might have been.” I’m pretty sure that prints of this painting–the word ‘haunting’ comes to mind–are available through Kim’s website.

Fireball reader Brian Lee Anderson had to learn more about Carole Lombard after finishing the book, and his quest led him to such rare finds as a previously unknown audio recording of her Cadle Tabernacle speech in Indianapolis the evening before she died. Brian also climbed to the crash site with FAA investigator Michael McComb and planted flowers at that desolate spot. I asked Brian to describe the role of Fireball in his life. “Your book jump-started all things Carole for me and my mom,” he responded. “I have always been a fan of Carole but in the fall of 2013 I took my mother on vacation to the beach for a week and we talked a lot and she told me the story of exactly how much her mother, Rosalie, was a fan [of Carole’s] and that she went to Indianapolis to meet her and how Carole’s death affected her. It all triggered my quest for more information. After we got home from the beach, I found your book on Amazon and ordered two copies, and Fireball answered so many of our questions and led to my finding the speech and trekking up Mt Potosi.”

Brian Anderson in the Nevada desert and about to climb to the crash site in April 2017.

Knowing that Jimmy Stewart took his wartime secrets to the grave inspired the writing of Mission. I saw only the challenge of getting at this long-hidden story, which turned out to be one of courage and dedication, of overcoming fear and fighting the good fight. I’ve done several dozen interviews promoting the book since its release, including a recent one with Daniel McCracken, a podcast journalist for a website called the 10^th District. As we chatted before the interview began, Dan revealed that reading Mission had inspired him to pursue his pilot’s license. “Reading Mission was the initial push that drove me to research the training programs offered in Chicago,” said Dan. “I’ve read other aviation books but was never drawn to anything like Jimmy in Mission. His courage and humbleness was so endearing and the timeline you constructed helped me envision myself in his world. My training is going well now and the moments of discouragement are balanced by my new instinct to look back on how difficult being a pilot was during the war and at the dawn of aviation.”

It’s funny; each of these people found a unique means of self-expression from the printed page and a way to take the stories to places I never imagined. Brian not only added to the historical record but brought the beauty of flowers to a scene of grim disaster. Kim captured the sweet soul and transcendent energy of Carole Lombard through paints. And Dan now has the ability to soar above the clouds and experience, as Jim Stewart once said, “more than liberation…the ultimate experience of being in control.”

Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe by Robert Matzen

In the foreground: pilot Daniel McCracken. In the background: the wild blue yonder.

Who will take the baton next, for instance finding inspiration in a flower-shrouded mountainside, or in Brian’s research finds about Carole Lombard (thanks to his work, the entire speech Carole gave in Indianapolis can be found in the trade paperback edition of Fireball)? Who will stare at Kim’s painting of Carole and write a song or another book? Where will Dan’s career as a pilot take him, and who will he inspire to become a pilot in the future? All I know is, once the energy begins to push in a forward direction, the chain reactions seem to continue, and I can’t wait to find what comes next in the Lombard and Stewart stories.

Prominent spot for a precious piece of art.

What a Dame

Errol & Olivia: Ego & Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood by Robert Matzen

I don’t think any photo ever better captured Livvie than this one taken in 1942. Beautiful, brooding, determined and remote, she was then at war with Jack Warner. Ultimately, she would win.

“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” The character Helena uses this description of her friend Hermia in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not coincidentally, the description fits Olivia de Havilland, who portrayed Hermia in the 1935 Warner Bros. film adaptation of the play.

I first corresponded with Miss de Havilland in 1978 and have been in and out of touch with her ever since, although off for several years now. I fell head over heels for her as Maid Marian in The Adventures of Robin Hood as many a male has and have been smitten ever since. I’m also her most recent biographer with my book, Errol & Olivia: Ego & Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood (GoodKnight Books, 2010), which is to say I know something of the little and fierce human known as OdeH, who turns 101 today as I sit here and write this.

Happy Birthday, Miss de Havilland!

An Oscar in each mighty little fist. Take that, Jack Warner.

She is indeed little if five-three soaking wet qualifies as little. In my book it does. She is indeed fierce for having thrived in Hollywood for 20 solid years after not really wanting to become a film actress in the first place. She sort of backed into her career but then played by her own rules, earned two Academy Awards (for To Each His Own and The Heiress), and should have won two others (for Gone With the Wind and The Snake Pit). She was, simply put, a tremendous, underappreciated Hollywood home run hitter. A real slugger while in her prime.

You’d have to remind me of a time when OdeH ever grandstanded for publicity. And I mean ever, from 1935 to present day. It wasn’t her style to do that. She was and I’m sure remains a sober, serious, even brooding introvert, measured always in actions and delivery. A pro’s pro as an actor, a stand-up human, and a two-fisted brawler when backed into a corner.

During World War II, more than 70 years ago now, OdeH and Jack L. Warner went to court over the rights of studios and actors. Warner was then one of the two or three most powerful men in a town that respected only power. He was also a loud, uncouth bully and the “little girl” as she was known to the Warner front office kicked his ass in court. There’s no other way to put it. Warner lost and de Havilland won and “freed the slaves,” breaking the back of the studio contract system. Freedom from Warner Bros. led to those Oscars because prior to leaving Burbank, she wasn’t being assigned to Academy Award-caliber pictures. Courtroom combatant Jack Warner has been under the sod nearly 40 years while courtroom combatant Olivia de Havilland (born an English subject) just received, within the past two weeks, appointment by the Queen of England as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In other words, never underestimate the little girl. Seventy-two years after defeating a Hollywood mogul, the fierce one is back in court, this time with a suit against Ryan Murphy Productions for their portrayal of “Olivia de Havilland” in the FX TV series Feud, which is based on real people and real events.

Said the attorneys for Dame OdeH in The Los Angeles Times, “Miss de Havilland was not asked by FX for permission to use her name and identity and was not compensated for such use.”

What bothers her more is what bothered me about Feud’s depiction of de Havilland by Catherine Zeta-Jones: “…the FX series puts words in the mouth of Miss de Havilland which are inaccurate and contrary to the reputation she has built over an 80-year professional life, specifically refusing to engage in gossip mongering about other actors in order to generate media attention for herself.”

The Zeta-Jones presentation doesn’t ring true; at least not in the episodes I saw, and in fairness I didn’t see all 18. My accusation against Ryan Murphy Productions is that they didn’t bother to research the real de Havilland or they wouldn’t have presented her as an insincere, trivial, gossiping, clichéd “movie star.” She deserves so much more credit than that and by God, she’s about to claim it in court because though she be but little, Olivia de Havilland, our birthday girl, is the fiercest of Dames.