Fireball-Related

Shooting Star

Bruce R. Medici said some very nice things about Fireball in a recent comment. He also said, “Carole would have most likely enjoyed it, and perhaps she may have had some choice words about it too.” I wondered every so often as I was writing Fireball whether Miss Lombard would approve of what I was doing. I knew I had found the real person, that I was uncovering the soul of this woman and artist, and does anyone really want to be laid bare before the world?

My friend Steve had a strong reaction to the Carole he read about in Fireball. Steve had known Gable, as discussed here previously, and had heard time and again from Clark and all the other MGM players wonderful stories about this glorious, perfectly remembered, bigger-than-life personality, Carole Lombard. Said Steve in his critique of Fireball, “I was surprised to find out that she was so spoiled and willfully stubborn and strong-headed. To have bullied her way thru life as it appears is surprising to me. Yes, she was attractive and full of joy and fun and laughter. But if you read between the lines, she was also so determined to do as she pleased, that at times I didn’t like her and wondered why so many others liked her. It also killed her.”

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

Gable and Lombard are adored as American royalty wherever they go.

This is a bulletin to many: Carole Lombard lived a mortal existence and had shortcomings and frailties like we all do. She never wanted for money because she came from it, and so “spoiled” is a fair term. She did what she wanted with her life and if necessary could lean back on her heels and put up her dukes with any man who wanted a fight, including Hollywood moguls. She also most decidedly did put her own insecurity and self-interest ahead of the feelings of her traveling companions that last night in Indianapolis, with fatal results. So “willfully stubborn” certainly fits. Carole did bully Wink and Petey onto the fancy Sky Club that had taxied into the Indianapolis Municipal Airport. And she did it because of a very human, irrational, insecure, unLombard-like reaction to Lana Turner, a girl more than 10 years younger, petite, gorgeous, needy, and husband hunting. Ma was an intuitive creature, and could sense that Pa was hearing this siren’s song and liking the tones. She felt his distraction like she had never felt it in the chorines and bit players that had queued up previously for 15 or 30 minutes of the King’s time.

It was imperfect of Carole Lombard to react this way and force her mother and Otto Winkler onto a plane after promising both repeatedly that they would not have to fly on the bond tour. She strong-armed Petey onto the plane even though Petey knew the numerology was all wrong and she begged her daughter not to get onto the plane. Imagine, your mother begs you. And poor Otto had dreamt he would die if he got on a plane on this trip. It gives me chills even now to write that sentence.

Luckily, Carole found a writer who is also an apologist for human frailties. I don’t hold her stubbornness against her. I don’t hold Gable’s roving eye and “swordsman” tendencies against him. How could we do either? How dare we do either? It’s easy for us to sit here all these years later and tsk-tsk as we turn the pages and say how we would not have done these things and conveniently look past our own imperfect lives and the things we’ve done less than optimally. It wasn’t easy to be a Hollywood star. They worked six out of seven days a week at the whim of their studios and were forced into the limelight almost every night of the week. Imagine everywhere you go you’re assailed for autographs and people tear at your clothes. The first hour would be awesome; after that, not at all. Imagine you have total power over everyone you meet. How would it warp you? Not at all? Forgive me if I have my doubts. So, yeah, Carole Lombard threw her weight around and got on that plane and then in Albuquerque she refused to give up her three seat assignments even though the law required it. That’s willfully stubborn and a half! In her own mind there were compelling reasons why she needed to do what she did, just as there were compelling reasons why Clark needed the attention of every female in sight.

Hollywood-struck Hoosiers press in on Carole in Indianapolis the day before she will die.

I told Carole Lombard’s story without passing judgment on Carole Lombard and knowing her as I do, she wouldn’t give me as much as a “You can kiss my ass” about it. Somewhere on the other side of that cliff she ran into is an understanding that the train would have been better. There’s remorse over the fate of Petey and Wink and sorrow at letting her brothers and friends down, people she wanted to continue to see and love and cherish and support. Sorrow at deserting Clark and the ranch. Lessons always come at a price, and brother the price she paid. The price all these characters in Fireball paid for getting mixed up with dynamic, charge-straight-ahead Carole Lombard. Sure she was imperfect, but on balance no one ever quite got over her loss, not her husband or closest girlfriends or the grips on the pictures she made or anyone in between. All they would ever allow when they remembered the girl who lit up the sky as she streaked across it and then hit a granite cliff at 7,700 feet was, “That was Carole for you.” Human? Hell yes. Which is what made this a story, and why people can’t get enough of it.

At the Crossroads

When you enter the state of Indiana on President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System, you see a sign that says, “Welcome to Indiana, Crossroads of America.” Further probing into the state reveals that Indianapolis is also known as the Crossroads of America, so you’re really at the crossroads when you reach Indiana’s capital city. On Sunday I spoke at a quaint bookstore on Mass Ave in downtown Indianapolis called Indy Reads Books talking about Fireball and on Monday morning I appeared on CBS affiliate WISH-TV’s Indy Style talking more Fireball in general and Carole Lombard’s last day of life in particular. For Lombard it was a blur of a winter’s day with appearances from downtown at the Capitol Building to the tony northern suburbs.

Indianapolis is laid out crazily around a downtown circle much as Pierre Charles L’Enfant designed Washington DC, with diagonal streets laid over a city grid, and the diagonals intersecting in roundabouts here and there. I guess it’s no coincidence since L’Enfant disciple Alexander Ralston co-designed the street pattern of Indianapolis. It’s easy to argue that these guys were geniuses…or that these guys were just plain nuts. Indy’s got six-way intersections and more pedestrians that you can shake a stick at. Jaywalking seems to be a sport in Indianapolis, and some streets have bike lanes but all streets seem to have bicyclists—who don’t always behave predictably. Downtown motorists had better be on their toes all the time because fancy driving doesn’t just happen on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; it happens all over Ralston’s complicated downtown system.

But I digress. I asserted on Indy radio, TV, and in person that Carole Lombard enjoyed two especially stellar days in a stellar life: her March 29, 1939 elopement with Clark Gable to Arizona, and her January 15, 1942 day selling war bonds in Indianapolis. Carole had to love everything about her time in Indy, where thousands of people treated her like a queen from the first instant to the last in a slate of appearances that ran like clockwork.

Getting started at Indy Reads Books.

An excellent Indianapolis Star feature by Will Higgins that heralded my lecture looked exclusively at the local angle on Lombard’s Indy trip, which was orchestrated by local businessman J. Dwight Peterson. I had seen the name in my research but didn’t call him out in Fireball, so Higgins’ article dovetails nicely with the narrative. I quickly learned in my Indy Reads lecture just how much the locals claim Lombard and how magical her day in town has remained over the decades. Attendees were very much into it, and included a rare father-daughter combo with the young lady maybe 13 and not too enthusiastic at the beginning, but the story is irresistible and before long she perked right up. I also met longtime Lombard-Gable fan Patricia Kennedy, who filled me in on some local particulars about the Lombard visit. It was a wonderful give and take of information—my national view and their local view, and I learned some things that will certainly make a future edition of Fireball.

My TV segment the next morning on Indy Style was more magic, as host Andi Hauser found herself engrossed in a copy of Fireball while prepping, and when I offered the exclusive Myron Davis Indianapolis photos as roll-ins with the segment, Brian, the director, snapped them up. How’s the saying go—Print anything you want about me; just spell my name right? I found out afterward that they spelled my name wrong in the super, and if you click the link it’s hideously misspelled still, but only because TV people live in a world where everything happens fast and the next thing is important and the thing that already happened isn’t. The meeting before airtime was maybe three minutes and the host, producer, and director asked brief questions and I knew to give brief answers because of the general state of hurry. But they treated me and Fireball very well, so Robert Matzum it is!

With Andi Hauser on CBS Channel 8’s Indy Style.

Afterward Mary and I sped down to the Capitol for a private tour of the Lombard hotspots, using Davis’s photos for visual reference. Jennifer Hodges and Rose Wernicke of the Tour Office helped us triangulate where Carole stood and handed out war bond receipts imprinted with her photo, personal message, and signature. It was near the office of Indiana Governor Henry Schricker, which made sense in terms of logistics. But Lombard and party were tucked away in a corner behind a makeshift wooden counter, outside a doorway. I asked Jennifer why that would have been. She thought a moment. “That’s the governor’s business office, so they would have been able to take her out that way afterward, down the stairs and outside without having to go out through the crowd.” Like I say: clockwork.

http://wishtv.com/2014/03/31/author-robert-matzum-fireball-carole-lombard-the-mystery-of-flight-3/

The 2014 view inside the Indiana State Capitol Building showing a glimpse of the same spot in 1942. The building was refurbished in the 1980s, so some of the appointments have changed–but not much.

Outside the building Mary and I easily found the spot where Carole stood on a makeshift platform for her speech that was covered by all the newsreel companies and by national radio. It was at the bottom of the steps near the east entrance, with the facade of the building unchanged today from what the Davis photos showed in 1942.

Our tour of Indianapolis was a clear success, and I can only hope the stop in Las Vegas next week goes as well. It will include some TV early in the week, followed by a lecture and signing on Saturday, April 12, at the Sahara West Library, with Potosi Mountain in full view. I know from writing the story how special Nevadans are; I’m hoping to meet some whose parents or grandparents participated in the search and recovery in 1942. Or maybe there are a couple hardy first responders still with us who can teach me a thing or two like the people of Indianapolis did just yesterday.

Carole Lombard delivers a speech outside the Indiana Capitol Building in 1942.

The same spot today.

Scarface Comes Across

I have a question in the category of “How the hell did they do that?” I’ve got a couple of appearances coming up in Indianapolis, this Sunday at Indy Reads Books on Massachusetts Avenue at 3:30 P.M., and Monday morning on Indy Style at 9 A.M. on WISH-TV. (Come out and see me!) In preparing for these appearances I’ve been studying the Myron Davis photos of Carole Lombard selling war bonds at the Indiana State House the day before she died. Davis took several shots of Lombard, one after another as she handed out receipts for bond sales. He was using his Speed Graphic camera, the most famous press camera of its day, with Kodak film, and the detail of these shots is incredible.

It was while studying the digital files that had been processed at 800 dpi from the original Kodak negatives that I realized, in some of the shots, you can see one of the scars on Carole Lombard’s face. It’s common knowledge that Carole’s face was sliced up by windshield glass in a freak car crash just after she turned 17. She had nearly bled to death that night, cut to the cheekbone on one side, upper lip nearly severed, and deep cuts close to the left eye. She had been put back together by a cosmetic surgeon, but the wounds were so egregious that for a long time afterward, she was despondent and wanted to die.

Detail of one of the Myron Davis photos shows the boomerang-shaped scar beside Carole Lombard’s left eye.

Here I was looking at the candid bond shots taken by Myron Davis, and I started to be aware of the scar by her left eye. It runs up beside the eye in the shape of a little boomerang, broad and milky as scars can be, and a good inch long. There are others that are visible now and again in photos, the big one on her cheekbone and another dimply scar beside her mouth. What astonishes me is that I can see the eye socket scar in these Davis photos, but you don’t notice them in motion pictures of the day. Granted she worked with hand-picked directors of photography who knew how to photograph their way around the scars but still, given all the physical comedy she did, all the closeups, where are the scars?

So that’s my “How the hell did they do that?” question of today. This was 60 years before the invention of computer software that would obliterate such imperfections in motion pictures performers, frame by frame. Somehow in the 1930s they did it with lighting that smoothed out the skin, and angles that hid the damage. And there was a lot of damage, as is evident by the shots taken in Indianapolis.

The same scar is visible in this screen capture from 1939, as is the scar on her cheek.

One of the first things people who met Carole Lombard face to face must have remarked to themselves was, “Whoa! Look at the scars!” Bogey had that scar on his lip, a souvenir of World War I. You’ll see a divot here and divot there on other stars too, and there are the painfully obvious examples of Montgomery Clift and Van Johnson, their boyish good looks butchered in car crashes worse than Lombard’s. But for a glamorous leading lady of the 1930s to be sporting facial scars and not caring, not letting them get in the way of a thriving career, allowing cameras to get in so very close—that’s something. Carole’s pal Alice Marble said, when asked about the scars, that they only accentuated her beauty, and I can see that. They were character lines, visible in life and once in a while on film. It’s interesting that scars are not what people saw when they looked at Carole Lombard. They saw something genuine that transcended flawless skin. Granted the girl had help from camera and lighting geniuses. She also had guts, and a personality that made sense of an occasional railroad track on her face. I just wonder if she would be given a chance today, when the press and style gurus are so quick to judge and label a woman as hideous for the slightest deviation from some standard of beauty that they themselves could never attain. I think Carole Lombard would have a quick two words for such people, and I think you know what those two words would be.

Presenting Clark Gable

I knew going into the writing of Fireball that understanding and presenting the real Clark Gable was going to be tough. Some people said this guy was electric in a one-to-one conversation; others said he was boring. How do you get inside the head of a bigger-than-life personality with a public persona crafted and maintained by the publicity department of MGM, the most powerful Golden Era Hollywood movie studio?

I read what there was. Gable biographer Lyn Tornabene helped on two fronts: her 1976 book Long Live the King provided key information about “Billy” Gable’s childhood and upbringing. Tornabene’s gesture of donating all her research materials to the Academy Library placed a great deal of previously unseen and unheard material at my fingertips, and I sifted through it like a geologist, discovering gem after gem. I talked to those few still around who knew Gable.

Fireball: Carole Lombard in Hollywood by Robert Matzen

Clark Gable before.

What emerged were two Clark Gables: there was the self-centered, spoiled-movie-star Gable that existed up until January 16, 1942, and the Gable that survived the crash of Flight 3 and the loss of Carole Lombard, Carole’s mother “Petey,” and Clark’s own best friend, press man Otto Winkler. Imagine for a moment the trauma of that event, especially since he felt partly responsible for actions that led his wife to feel compelled to rush home.

I was interviewed recently by Dick Dinman for his radio show that’s heard via podcast on TCM.com, among other places. Dick asked about my presentation of Gable and related a story about David Niven, whose wife died in a horrible accident. Dinman said that Gable went out of his way to console Niven, and Dick said that this episode was in no way consistent with my depiction of a self-centered movie star. BUT, I responded, it was perfectly consistent with the empathetic Clark Gable, the survivor of Flight 3 and that horrible weekend in Las Vegas.Did I capture the real Clark Gable? Proof came just this week from someone who would know, Hollywood novelist, screenwriter, and actor Steve Hayes, a friend of Gable and intimate of both Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Steve read Fireball and here are his comments, in part:

“Gable’s character was well laid out and his many facets as a personality have been captured. Since I only knew him after her death, I’ve had to rely on others (Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, etc.) to understand how he was before Carole died. I knew this wasn’t Rhett Butler I was talking to, a man whose charm and sex appeal and charisma were absolutely irresistible. But until Franchot Tone and Walter Pidgeon and others I’ve just mentioned told me how he was in real life before Carole’s death, I really had no way of judging how huge this change was.“I found Alan Ladd, whom I knew after working for 11 weeks on Botany Bay, and then occasionally bumping into him at Paramount and being invited to swim at his Holmby Hills home, equally sad inward, as if carrying a personal tragedy. I don’t know what his sadness was—I know he loved June Allyson and couldn’t break loose of Sue Carol—but it certainly wasn’t of the magnitude of Gable’s loss. But there was a definite similarity between them regarding a strange inner sadness.

Clark Gable after.

“Your portrayal of him is dead on. Anyone who met Gable always remembered how immaculate he was—clothes and toiletry, nails, shaven, etc.—and for a boy from the oil fields of Ohio, he’d certainly come a long, long way. He could still laugh, mostly it seemed at himself—I recall having lunch [at MGM] with Pidgeon, Tone and some other actor, and in came Gable, and he looked lost—in his own studio! But he brightened up when he saw us (not me, them) and readily joined our table. Everyone in the commissary turned and stared—and I have to admit it was one of the high moments of my life to be part of that group at that moment. Hell, The King had joined us!

“I don’t think that he really cared much about his life after Carole died. He was pretty much an alcoholic and chain smoker—as so many other stars were—and it’s symptomatic of the era. He once said about Flynn, “Well, he’s killing himself with cigarettes and booze—like most of us are.” Yet he was so wonderfully tolerant of Marilyn Monroe in The Misfits, constantly excusing her bad behavior in front of the others. So inwardly, he was a gentle giant, and a genuinely nice guy. Which is how I will always remember him.”

The always-immaculate Gable, seen at the Encino ranch in 1947. It was the place he felt closest to the one he called “Ma” and “Mrs. G.”

Raked by the Spotlight

Wow, the last 36 hours have been interesting. My publicist asked me in a phone meeting if I wanted to write a piece tying Fireball to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. My first inclination was, of course I don’t. In no way do I want to exploit so obvious a tragedy, but some hours passed and she queried me again, prompting me with an article about unsolved air mysteries.

I banged out 500 words in 17 minutes and sent it off; in no time at all she told me Fox News had asked for an exclusive on my op-ed. And so was born my first national byline. Within minutes I was asked for radio interviews by Fox national radio and Voice of Russia, and then Relevant Radio in Minnesota. A national op-ed and three significant radio interviews resulted from the gut feeling of my publicist that my expertise connected with research into the 1942 crash of TWA Flight 3 in Nevada could be informative and maybe even important to this global story.

Sean Hannity saw the op-ed and asked me to appear with him on Fox TV today, but then the story shifted from air disaster to air what-the-hell? prior to my 6:30 P.M. interview slot at the studio in downtown Pittsburgh, and I was “pushed” to an indeterminate point in the future.

In the radio interviews of the past 24 hours, I have been asked interesting, thoughtful questions about air transportation in general because the current mystery is do deep, so engrossing, that humans struggle to grasp it. Sure there’s historical context related to TWA Flight 3: commercial air transportation still isn’t an exact science, and in a void of information, wild speculation fills that void, and pilots are highly trained and worthy of the benefit of the doubt, and most important, until we know otherwise, we keep hoping for a miracle.

Then I’m asked about Fireball, and I’m reminded how incredible this 1942 air mystery is, how enduring, and all of a sudden seasoned radio professionals are stunned, mesmerized, asking for more and more about something that’s 72 years old.

All I want to do is keep spreading the Fireball message: so many angles, so many people to honor—from those on the plane to first responders to investigators; so much relevance to the audience of 2014 for a story that originated before the middle of the last century.

No, we haven’t yet figured out air travel. Yes, fragile humans continue to strap themselves into tubes and wings and launch themselves into the upper atmosphere and rely on other humans to see them safely down again. I continue to watch with the rest of the world as this latest aviation mystery unfolds, and marvel at the ongoing mysteries of flight.

The Name Game

Hockey players nickname everybody. Locally, the National Hockey League Pittsburgh Penguins have a “Kuny,” a “Scuds,” a “Duper,” a “Tanger,” and a “Borts.” They do this at rinks all around the world. I’ve found no evidence that Carole Lombard ever played professional hockey, but hockey players would admire her penchant for nicknaming everyone, including her own mother. In fact, alternate names run so rampant in Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 that a reader I met in L.A. in January, Ruth Peeples, asked for the creation of a scorecard to keep all the nicknamed people in Carole’s life straight.

Since it’s impractical to drive around inserting a cheat sheet in every copy of the book in stores and warehouses, let’s take a moment and run them down here.

Carole’s mother was Elizabeth Peters, and you’d think that “Mom” would suffice, or “Mother,” but to Carole she was “Petey” or “Tots,” and mostly I used Petey in the book with an occasional Tots thrown in when looking at Elizabeth Peters from the perspective of her famous daughter. In unpublished interviews kept at the Academy Library, Alice Marble refers to Mrs. Peters entirely as “Petey,” including when Marble recounts conversations in which Carole referenced her mother…always as Petey.

Carole and Bucket

Carole knew her brother Fred as “Fritz” and her brother Stuart as “Tootey.” There wasn’t much Carole could do with close friend Dixie Pantages because Dixie already fit the bill, but her other best galpal, Madalynne Fields, became “Fieldsie” to Carole and then to everyone else in Hollywood. Jean Garceau, secretary to Clark and Carole Gable, was just “Jeanie,” but Loretta Francelle, the hairdresser who worked on all Carole’s pictures, was, picturesquely, “Bucket.” The people in Lombard’s universe knew they had arrived if they picked up a nickname, and I have to wonder if it was Carole who dubbed close friend Cesar Romero “Butch” because this one certainly has a Lombardesque ring to it.

Carole and Butch

When Carole took up tennis, her teacher, Elinor Tennant, became “Teach” first on the courts of Hollywood and then all over the world. Carole’s protégé Alice Marble, the TB-hospital refugee whom Carole sponsored to worldwide tennis stardom, including U.S. and Wimbledon championships, became “Allie.” Then Margaret Tallichet, whom Lombard sponsored for a career in pictures, became “Tallie.”

Carole and Teach

Carole’s men had nicknames too. You’d think “Bill” would suffice for first husband William Powell, but just to note their age difference of 17 years, Carole called him “Pops” or “Popsie,” and every once in a while, “Junior.” Her tempestuous year with crooner Russ Columbo saw each referring to the other as “Pookie,” and when Clark Gable came along and became husband number two, Carole didn’t go with the obvious “Clark” or even “King,” as in King of Hollywood. She called him “Pa” or “Pappy” or sometimes what Spencer Tracy called him, “Moose.” In turn, Gable referred to Carole as “Ma” or “Mrs. G.”

Carole and Pops

So this is for you, Ruth, a glossary of Carole Lombard’s nicknames for friends, family, and lovers. This is in no way comprehensive and I invite additions.

…not to be confused with Carole and Pappy

Allie – Alice Marble, tennis star
Bucket – Loretta Francelle, Carole’s hairdresser
Fieldsie – Madalynne Fields, Carole’s friend, housemate, confidante, and secretary
Fritz – Frederick Peters II, Carole’s eldest brother
Jeanie – Jean Garceau, secretary to the Gables
Junior – William Powell (alternate to “Pops” and “Popsie”)
Moose – Clark Gable (alternate to “Pa”)
Pa or Pappy – Clark Gable
Petey – Elizabeth Peters, Carole’s mother
Pookie – Russ Columbo
Pops or Popsie – William Powell
Tallie – Margaret Tallichet, Paramount PR girl who became a leading lady
Teach – Elinor Tennant, Carole’s tennis instructor
Tootey – Stuart Peters, Carole’s elder brother
Tots or Totsie – Elizabeth Peters, Carole’s mother (alternate to “Petey”)

Riding the Wave

This past Tuesday I did a local Fireball lecture/book signing on Pittsburgh’s North Side and then introduced a showing of the 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey with William Powell and Carole Lombard. It’s been a while since I visited 1011 Fifth Ave. and Tuesday marked the first time I’ve ever seen Godfrey in a public setting.

Pittsburgh is the home of William Powell, or to be precise, William Powell hails from Allegheny City, which was once Pittsburgh’s sister city before being gobbled up via hostile takeover in 1908. But that’s another story. And my ancestors hail from Allegheny City after coming off the boat from Germany in 1844, but that’s yet a third story. For now let’s stick to the fact that Powell met the world as a bouncing baby boy in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and spent his childhood there and some of his best pictures are being shown publicly in a series running two months in a church on the very streets he once walked. I was invited to introduce My Man Godfrey because of Fireball, a book about Carole Lombard that covers her brief and turbulent marriage to Mr. Powell and their close friendship that endured to her death. In fact, the couple had been divorced for more than two years when Universal offered Powell My Man Godfrey, and he said he would take the part only if his ex-wife was offered the co-starring role.

Map of Allegheny City, home of actor William Powell and site of a showing of Carole Lombard's My Man Godfrey.

Allegheny City was once Pittsburgh’s elegant sister. The showing took place roughly at the T in City.

The pro-Powell crowd was into My Man Godfrey, which is a loud, sometimes frenetically paced picture. In a nutshell, the zany Bullock family of Fifth Avenue, New York City, has way more dollars than sense and lives extravagantly, frivolously, and foolishly among Big Apple’s elite. On a whim daughter Irene rescues a “forgotten man” named Godfrey off the city dump and gives him a job as their butler not knowing he is a Bostonian from old money who had fled a bad relationship by deciding to live among honest bums by the East River. Or maybe it’s the Hudson.

Carole Lombard and William Powell in My Man Godfrey.

Carole Lombard and William Powell pose for a My Man Godfrey publicity photo. Both acknowledged that they made excellent friends and terrible spouses.

Familiar character actors populate the sets. Gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette plays the head of the household, a reasonable man who processes things in practical fashion but is no match for his shrill wife Angelica, scheming older daughter Cornelia (Gail Patrick), and capricious younger daughter Irene. Alice Brady plays the wife as if she’s off her Prozac. Brady was a fine actress and stage veteran, but the other night it occurred to me that a little of Angelica goes a long way.

Carole Lombard and other cast members of My Man Godfrey, a motion picture described in Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 by Robert Matzen

Mischa Auer as Carlo takes the spotlight in this scene also showing Lombard as Irene, Alice Brady as Angelica, and Gail Patrick as Cornelia.

I was curious about the reaction of my companions, including my friend Eric, who had never seen a Lombard picture, to Carole and her performance. He was quite taken, commenting on the subtlety of her playing and command of the screen even when confined to the background. Lombard would call Irene “the most difficult part I ever played. Because Irene was a complicated and, believe it or not, essentially a tragic person.”

My Man Godfrey is really Powell’s vehicle and he gets most of the attention, with Carole hemmed in by Irene’s pining for Godfrey through half the run time. She’s really part of an ensemble cast that assures Powell his picture will work. These players keep the plot moving along as they toss off classic one liners that stand the test of time. Strength of cast is measured by the sweep of Oscar nominations in all four acting categories—Powell, Lombard, Brady, and Mischa Auer as “Mother’s protégé,” the freeloading concert pianist Carlo. Director Gregory LaCava was also Academy Award-nominated for My Man Godfrey, as were screenwriters Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind.

Scene from My Man Godfrey, which is featured in Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 by Robert Matzen

Godfrey is oblivious to the fact that both Irene and Molly the household maid (portrayed by Jean Dixon) are in love with him.

I can only imagine how many William Powell and Carole Lombard fans were born of stumbling into this picture halfway through on the late show or TCM. The household at 1011 Fifth Avenue (which was the name of the novella by Eric Hatch on which the screenplay was based) is a charming and friendly place and if you watch any 30 seconds of this film you’ll be re-upping for 30 more until you’re hooked.

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

Publicity photo of the screwball queen, Carole Lombard.

I’m amazed by the light in people’s eyes when they learn that Fireball is all about Lombard. This actress, gone 72 years now, continues to haunt popular culture to a degree I never expected. If you Google Fireball and Carole Lombard you come up with pages and pages of hits, largely because people are out there responding to the book and chattering afresh about the queen of screwball. I pinch myself frequently that no writer had done a fresh take on her in almost 40 years, and I get the feeling we’ve only scratched the surface of what might be a significant Lombard resurgence ahead.

Crossing Over

When the idea of Fireball came to my attention, the seed planted in my head by pal John McElwee, and I started investigating elements of the story, I couldn’t believe that some writer hadn’t already turned it into a book. The more I looked at the event, the more angles I found, so many in fact that when I talked to writer Scott Eyman about the idea, he sat there stunned and murmured, “That’s commercial. That’s commercial.”

Considering that Scott had written the bestseller Lion of Hollywood about Louis B. Mayer among many other successful biographies, and experienced the publishing landscape from a lofty perch, that reaction affected me. I realized then that I was writing something that had the potential to cross over into the mainstream. It’s one thing to write a niche book about Errol Flynn’s house, a book you know will appeal primarily to Flynn’s fans and secondarily to Hollywood buffs in general and perhaps fans of Rick Nelson, the last owner of the house. It’s something else to find a concept with the potential to jump niches and find a broader audience.

But in establishing the parameters of the Lombard story, I felt I had something akin to A Cast of Killers, Sidney Kirkpatrick’s account of the 1922 murder of silent-film director William Desmond Taylor. After its 1986 release, A Cast of Killers reached an audience far broader than those interested in old Hollywood. It’s been 25 years since I read it, but I remember I couldn’t stop turning the pages of a spooky mystery that felt so authentic I could smell the must of an aging Mary Miles Minter’s home. I aspired to take the readers of Fireball to a similar place where the pages had minds of their own and demanded to keep on turning as the complex story unfolded.

And Fireball is complex. It’s a juicy dual biography of two juicy people, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. It’s about Hollywood’s glamorous golden age in the time of My Man Godfrey and Gone With the Wind. It’s about scandal for what Gable did with Lana Turner and what Carole felt compelled to do in response. It’s about 21 other people—all the souls aboard Flight 3 with Lombard as it lifts off one last time in Las Vegas on a course for Burbank, California. It’s about lives interrupted on the ground in Vegas when a fireball suddenly appears on the southwestern horizon and about heroism as brave men rush to the spot of the fireball in hopes of finding survivors of what they know to be a plane crash. It’s a true crime story as victims are plotted and the scene is scoured for evidence. It’s a mystery as investigators try to determine how in the world TWA’s most experienced pilot controlling its most reliable aircraft on a clear night could fly straight into a mountainside. It’s about aviation now in adolescence after a childhood spent barnstorming, and of how they still can’t quite figure out how to make air transportation run. It’s the story of a world war newly begun for the United States, of sacrifice for the cause, of a great call to action. Perhaps most of all it’s romance—a king, a queen, a love lost.

I had the equivalent of a basket of parts and looked at the basket and wondered how to make this story work. Should I tell it as straight biography? Carole Lombard’s life from birth to death, from stem to stern, from 1908 to 1942? I couldn’t imagine it that way because lives are experienced chronologically, but stories are not. This needed to be a story, like A Cast of Killers. One scene kept playing in my mind, on an endless loop: Night in the flat basin of desert. Cold, lonely, quiet night. A plane flies overhead. I hear it more than see it. Then I spot running lights. The plane flies right over me and off into the distance, and the growl of its engines spreads out and echoes and then goes away.

Carole Lombard Flight 3 crash site, Potosi Mountain, Nevada

Flight 3 slammed into Potosi just below the ridge line at right center, in the saddle of the mountain.

A plane flies over. No big deal, right? We all experience planes flying over at all hours. But Flight 3 flying over? That’s a hook. That, I realized, was where the narrative of Fireball had to begin. The plane flies over, people who witness it go back to the task of the moment, and a little later a fireball is seen on Potosi Mountain in the distance. If the chapter ends there, tell me you don’t have to turn the page.

Then and only then, with the forward push established, could I flash back to start telling the story of Carole Lombard’s life and how she got to be on that plane and in that fireball. Flash back to a portion of her life. Flash forward to those moments on the ground in Las Vegas. Back. Forth. I knew this was risky because the reader would be jarred every time, practically a fender bender each time it happened. But it’s a jarring story anyway for so many reasons, so why not go with it? So I did.

One of the first reviews of the galleys was from Library Journal and I awaited it the way a political candidate awaits the votes. Guess what: the LJ reviewer made it a point to hate this construction above all the other things that annoyed him about Fireball. He didn’t damn it with praise, faint or otherwise, he just damned it. And then he recommended that Fireball be added to library collections. Go figure.

I won’t lie; his criticisms stung, and I had to wonder if I had miscalculated. He also said I “did the writerly thing” and presumed to know what was going on in people’s heads. I took umbrage at that one because I did know what was going on in people’s heads. I had researched this thing so thoroughly and found so much detail that I didn’t have to make up what people were thinking, saying, and doing. I had it in 2,000 pages of official testimony about the crash. Plus I had dug up so much on Lombard and Gable that I knew their characters inside and out and from every other angle.

There were a few other pans of Fireball, but just a few. Praise for the book poured in from the start, from the time it hit NetGalley in September, and by now I’m feeling vindicated by the positive comments in reviews and by those I’ve heard in person at book events. I don’t prompt people to talk about the story construction; they can’t help but tell me they love the way the story unfolds and often it’s the first thing they have to say about the book. I guess the lesson is, trust your gut. If it feels right, go with it.

I knew as I was writing Fireball that it was the book of my lifetime, to date at least. I dreamed about the characters, received break after break, met great, helpful people, and Fireball became an inferno in my computer. That doesn’t happen many times in a writer’s career. Will it cross over? It shows signs, but since GoodKnight Books isn’t Simon & Schuster, the headwinds remain strong, and only time will tell.

Fear of Flying

I didn’t expect to be writing another column about Mary Johnson Savoie, the girl who lived, but she passed on Thursday night, two weeks shy of her 95^th birthday. To refresh your memory, Mary is a survivor of TWA Flight 3, the DC-3 that crashed on January 16, 1942 killing 22 people, including Carole Lombard. No, Mary didn’t walk away from the crash. She was bumped from the flight during a refueling stop and a serviceman with priority status took her seat. The serviceman died; Mary did not.

A local California newspaper reporter wrote on January 17, 1942, “Today, Carole Lombard, idol of millions, is dead, and little Mary Anna Johnson of Benicia, whom millions do not know, is still alive. In a little New Mexico city called Albuquerque, Fate held out its hand—and then waved back Mary Johnson.”

How Mary Johnson did live. Survivor’s guilt? She felt sorry for those who perished, but chose to look on the bright side, summing up decades later, “I’ve always been lucky.”

Fear of Flying? That would be natural after such a close brush with death. Not Mary. She loved to fly before the crash and loved to fly after it. “I took a plane to San Francisco the next day,” she said with a shrug. “No problem.” Then she added, “Some people might have taken the train, but trains have crashes too.”

In an era where women aspired to find a good man and settle down, Mary graduated from college and became a working girl. After the war, she told me, grudgingly it seemed, she “met a Cajun” and that was it for her career. Lee Savoie snagged the girl who lived, and they were married for a while and had a son. But the marriage didn’t take and they divorced—and remained close friends for the remainder of Mary’s life. Mary had a lot of friends and a wonderful family, and they represent the finest group of people I have ever met.

Mary’s friend Pamela Weir said of her back in December: “Mary has a spirit of adventure. She finds adventure in everyday life, always. It could be going to lunch, but there’s always adventure. She creates it or she finds it.” In fact, Mary loved the experience of helping with Fireball, and being a part of the narrative, and holding a copy in her hands. She found working with me to be yet another adventure.

Marie Earp is the one who connected me with Mary’s family, allowing her story to be included in Fireball. Said Marie, “Mary is and always was lovely, daring, exciting, and chock full of life. I think she did it all at one time or another. Carole Lombard was ‘another Mary’ in my book.”

Marie makes a great point: Mary and Carole were peas of a pod and shared many traits. Both were attractive, energetic, humorous, met life head-on, took each day as it came, loved hard, and surrounded themselves with people of high quality. I can’t say whether Mary lived life recklessly like Carole did because I only met Mary near the end of her life. Then again, if you get to almost 95, it means you made a great number of right decisions and no fatal ones.

In the photo above, Mary (in plaid skirt) clowns in Lombard fashion with an aeronautics researcher reluctant to return a research document he had borrowed from the NACA library at Moffett Field, California.

For this column I tracked down Mary’s own encapsulation of a long, successful life as related to me. “I can sum it up in a sentence,” said Mary. “I rode a camel to the pyramids of Egypt; I rode an elephant in India; I rode the Bullet Train in Japan; and I walked the Great Wall of China.”

Mary’s story reveals what was lost with the crash of Flight 3. Of the 22 people killed, 20 were under 40 years of age and most were in their 20s, as was Mary. These people were highly accomplished and on their way to destinations far beyond Burbank, where the DC-3 was scheduled to land. But, as Carole herself said on a number of occasions, “When your number’s up, your number’s up.” Twenty-two died on that remote mountaintop, while Fate granted Mary another 72 years and 1 month.

I’m not going to say that the world is a poorer place because Mary Johnson Savoie has left it. In fact, the world is a far better place for Mary having been here. Mary’s story lives on in Fireball and her spirit lives on in those fortunate enough to call her “Mom” or “Grandma” or “friend.” Boy, am I lucky to have been a friend, even if only for a little while.

The Girl Who Lived

I have done a lot of public speaking in support of Fireball, most recently this past Sunday at Way Public Library in Perrysburg, Ohio, just south of Toledo. I looked out on a large and enthusiastic crowd, especially for a snowy Sunday afternoon in the middle of the worst winter anyone can remember.

In case you don’t know, Fireball is the irresistible story of Carole Lombard’s hurly-burly life and the circumstances that led to her last fatal trip aboard TWA Flight 3 along with 21 other souls, which ended in catastrophe just west of Las Vegas on January 16, 1942. Reviewers are calling Fireball a thriller, a page turner, a heartbreaker, and a book that’ll make you cry. It really is. I didn’t realize it myself until I reviewed the audiobook and heard the story performed by national voice talent Tavia Gilbert.

But there are some smiles in Fireball too. On Sunday in Perrysburg I told the crowd that I had found a survivor of Flight 3, a woman who had flown cross-country with Carole Lombard on January 16 and lived to tell the tale. You should have seen their faces. Mouths hung open. There were even some gasps. I always liken this survivor to hundred-year-old Rose Dawson whose memories form the basis for the plot of Titanic. Mary Johnson is my Rose Dawson, and at age 94 the unknown survivor of a catastrophe.

Mary was, of all things, a young aviation researcher working for the feds and NACA (the precursor to NASA) at Moffett Airfield, California. She had been on assignment in Washington, DC, and was heading for home that fateful day. To show you what a small world we live in, I worked in the same wind tunnel (the 7×11 wind tunnel) at Moffett Field in 2007 and 2008 during my NASA years that Mary had worked in during World War II.

Mary was in her seat on Flight 3 when Carole Lombard, Elizabeth Peters (Carole’s mom), and Otto Winkler (Clark Gable’s publicist) boarded in Indianapolis. Mary then flew all the way to Albuquerque sitting two rows behind Carole, enduring stops in St. Louis, Kansas City, Wichita, and Amarillo. These weren’t fun stops either. There were weather and cargo delays for the plane and Miss Carole Lombard was anything but happy.

In Albuquerque a big clot of Army Air Corps personnel needed to fly west and all seven civilians on Flight 3 were ordered off the plane to make room for these priority passengers. Mary Johnson and three others gave up their seats; Carole Lombard refused to surrender her three tickets, so she stayed on the plane, and Mary Johnson’s dream of seeing Clark Gable up ahead in Burbank ended in what was the worst moment of her young life. Then the unthinkable happened and, said Mary Johnson, “Suddenly Clark Gable didn’t seem that important.”

I caught up with Mary Johnson Savoie near the end of the Fireball project. She’s right up there with the most interesting people I’ve ever met—smart, funny, and possessing vivid memories of that winter’s day. Just a couple of weeks prior to seeing Carole, Mary had been at the White House where she laid eyes on FDR and Winston Churchill, and after living through the crash of Flight 3 she went on to a rich full live with a husband and kids and became a world traveler. Hers is one of the central storylines in Fireball and yet another of a hundred layers of irony in its pages.

For me it was the biggest kick in the world to hand deliver a copy of the book to Mary this past December, and it was clear to me by the wonderful people surrounding her that Mary is a wonderful person herself and glows with an attitude that embraces life. She has been known to say, “I’ve always been lucky,” but isn’t luck really about the decisions a person makes that sets the stage for magic to happen?

Right now, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Mary is having some health challenges, and I hope you will take a moment to send some positive energy her way. The world needs Mary Johnson Savoie to be up and around and setting an example for all of us to follow, keeping it positive, showing us how to set the stage for good things to happen, and in general making the most of every single day because we just don’t know how many there’ll be.