General Hollywood History

Love Match

Carole Lombard was a tennis bum. She hung out on tennis courts from 1934 on, used tennis to stay in shape, played for hours at a stretch, took pride in her skill, and through a twist of fate changed the history of tennis with an impact felt to this very day.

Lombard came to mind this past week as Mary and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Western & Southern Masters 1000 tennis tournament in southern Ohio. It’s a tournament that’s considered a “mini-major” and right below the four grand slams. It’s Mary’s chance to hobnob with her favorite player, Roger Federer, and since I started playing tennis at age 12, I’m right there with her getting sun-baked watching match after match.

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

Carole Lombard, Alice Marble, and Clark Gable courtside in 1938.

If anyone would appreciate the way tennis has evolved, it would be Carole Lombard. Readers of Fireball know the love she had for the game, as personified in her sponsorship of down-and-out young American player Alice Marble. Carole did all but drag Alice out of her sick bed in a Monrovia, California, tuberculosis sanitarium and will her back onto the court. At the start, Marble was 45 pounds overweight and lacked the strength to walk a flight of stairs, let alone play three sets of tennis. Within a couple of years Marble was winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Open after treatment by doctors that Carole recommended. Alice played her matches in clothes bought by Lombard, with Carole courtside at every opportunity. Carole got Marble nightclub gigs as a singer and tried to land her in the picture business.

Carole Lombard works on her net game in 1939.

In researching Fireball I had wondered if Carole and the girl she nicknamed “Allie” were really close, or if Lombard had merely stepped in, spent some time with the girl, and moved on as was the case when she launched the career of Margaret Tallichet. In truth, Lombard and Marble were very close indeed. Lyn Tornabene’s interview with Marble—housed in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Herrick Library—runs more than an hour and as Marble sips cocktails and smokes up a storm, she recounts her years as one of Lombard’s best friends and a member of the Peters inner circle. Tornabene was a strong interviewer and their conversation reveals Alice’s life with Carole, Petey, tennis coach Teach Tennant, tennis cronies Don Budge and Bobby Riggs, and of course Clark Gable—happy times that ended with the crash of Flight 3.

After Lombard’s death, Marble continued as a tennis pro and turned to teaching, with pupils that included the woman who changed the modern game, Billie Jean (Moffet) King. It was King who legitimized the women’s game, advocated for prize money comparable to the men, and inspired Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and succeeding generations. Ironically, it was also Billie Jean, Marble’s disciple, who defeated Carole’s old pal Bobby Riggs in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” in the Houston Astrodome. The heavily publicized, highly rated primetime match introduced legions to the sport, making it no stretch at all for me to walk around amongst the players and matches in progress and think of Carole Lombard and her influence on everything in sight. By saving the career (and perhaps the life) of forlorn Alice Marble, Carole did a whole lot of good for millions of tennis players and fans around the world, including Mary and me.

The modern game so influenced by Carole Lombard and Alice Marble–Ana Ivanovic of Serbia and Christina McHale of the United States play this past Wednesday near Cincinnati.

Party Girl

My friend the High NASA Official is reading Fireball at present. She said the other day, “I think I would have liked drinking with Carole Lombard.” Yes, Diane, I think you would have, because Lombard liked the sauce (scotch and soda) and Lombard was a very sociable, outgoing person with a genuine interest in other people.

There were many questions to answer in writing Fireball. One of them involved her party period that began in 1934 at the house on Hollywood Boulevard. For much of her time here, Lombard was planning and staging wacky parties for friends that ran the gamut from filmland’s elite to gaffers, carpenters, and production assistants on her pictures. She wasn’t big on entertaining during her marriage to William Powell, which ended in 1933, and certainly not during her years with Clark Gable, but during her run on Hollywood Boulevard, Lombard was known for her spectacular social events. It became imprinted upon the legend: Carole Lombard, thrower of crazy parties.

I think it was John Barrymore’s widow who told a story of how Carole, in formal attire at a formal gathering, suddenly jumped in somebody’s pool because she was “that kind of girl.” This documentary was made when so few of Lombard’s contemporaries remained alive that John Barrymore’s last wife became relevant, but her statement shows a lack of understanding of the subject. I’m here to tell you that if there was one thing Lombard was not, it was impetuous, or capricious, or anything of the kind. Everything Carole did, she did for a damn good reason.

In this official Paramount Pictures publicity photo taken in 1934, Carole stands in front of her rented Hollywood Boulevard home.

Which brings us to the parties. Carole rented the 3,000-square-foot, French provincial home at 7953 Hollywood Boulevard late in 1933 at a time when her career at Paramount was on the upswing. The house sits way down in the residential section of Hollywood Boulevard near Laurel Canyon and it’s tucked back off the thoroughfare and you wouldn’t give it a second thought and certainly wouldn’t imagine it to be connected with bigger-than-life Carole Lombard.

I’ve never been inside this place but I’ve stood outside and I’ve talked to neighbors. Looking at it, you wonder how she had room for the kind of ambitious entertaining that marked her years here. But this terrific video with its then-and-now views puts things in perspective. The Hollywood Boulevard house had land behind it, including an apartment on the terrace above where Madalynne Fields (dubbed “Fieldsie”), Carole’s best friend and secretary, resided. Carole’s guests could spread out inside and out for the parties of legend.

Anyone who knows me will tell you: I hate parties. I’ll do all I can to avoid one, so you won’t see me having the willies when I describe Lombard’s parties but just know—I’m having the willies.

Mixology, Lombard-style, in the Hollywood Boulevard house.

She threw a “Roman party” and invited guests to come in togas. She threw a “hillbilly party” complete with barnyard animals (think cows and roosters) and wait staff in coveralls. Look close in the video because there may still be hay and feathers stuck in the baseboards from that one. She threw the miscalculated “hospital party,” where guests were asked to change into hospital gowns at the door or at the very least cover their attire with hospital gowns. Wait staff appeared as nurses and orderlies; food was brought in on gurneys and served hospital-style on trays. All that happened in the house shown in the video.

It all seems “madcap” and “gay” in the old sense of the word, but in Fireball I refer to it as Calculated Mayhem. In the wake of her performances in Twentieth Century and Lady by Choice, and the popularity of the new style of picture catching fire, the “screwball comedy,” Carole set out to claim that territory in Hollywood’s landscape. The parties were a means to an end to position Carole Lombard as the type of personality just right for screwball. It was what they call today a brand strategy concocted by Carole and her two very shrewd advisors, Fieldsie and talent agent Myron Selznick.

The strategy worked. By 1935 Paramount was putting Lombard in Hands Across the Table and The Princess Comes Across; Universal was asking for her for her most famous screwball picture of all, My Man Godfrey, and David Selznick (Myron’s brother) could imagine only Lombard appearing in his screwball entry, Nothing Sacred. Lombard’s screwball run lasted a solid three years, but these pictures with their bizarre elements could easily misfire, and that’s what ended her hot streak—the truly wretched True Confession in 1937 and Fools for Scandal in 1938. She made four straight dramas in 1939 and 1940 and only appeared in a couple more comedies before she died, but after the crash of Flight 3, the snapshot description of Carole Lombard was the “queen of screwball.” It’s how I describe her in interviews, and how she’s remembered.

In 1936 she started seeing Gable, and the house on Hollywood Boulevard became a little too high profile for the lovers, so she ditched it for digs in far-flung Bel Air. But her glory years on the social scene as bachelorette and hostess were all spent here, in this unassuming little house at the edge of Tinseltown.

This was my first view of the Lombard party house as it looked in 1987 with vegetation run amok. Back then it looked haunted, and some say it is.

Pretty Damn Cool

What’s going to happen when I pass on to that great movie theater in the sky? (Or find myself cast into the fiery pits of hell?) Will you look back fondly on Robert Matzen as a writer who once entertained you with Fireball—and other great books I have yet to write? As a friend or acquaintance? A co-worker? I wonder if you’ll read my obituary and find something that makes you say, “That’s pretty damn cool.”

It’s ironic that the only time we stop to take stock of a life is when it’s over. There are exceptions of course, in the case of a “lifetime achievement award” or a snapshot-in-time memoir or biography, but usually, we honor people, pay attention, appreciate as they pass out of our world.

Martha Hyer at her sexiest in The Carpetbaggers.

While reading Martha Hyer’s obituary the other week I exclaimed, “That’s pretty damn cool!” Martha Hyer was a dependable-enough actress of the 1950s and 60s who worked with big stars in some A and B pictures, but overall her career was a near miss. I hadn’t a clue that Martha Hyer was an art collector who lived on an obscure stretch of Hollywood Boulevard. I thought Hollywood Boulevard ended at Laurel Canyon but son of a gun, it doesn’t. It snakes impossibly on through the hills—if you haven’t been there and driven in them, you can’t imagine those hills.

I had no idea that Martha Hyer epitomized Hollywood class in the early 1960s, with her posh home and its spectacular view of the L.A. basin and her stylish clothes and expensive art collection until I read about it in an article linked to her obituary. She was one of those stars I took for granted; a competent actress who succeeded mostly on her curvy blonde looks. Then I paid attention to Martha Hyer in an airing of The Carpetbaggers in a supporting part as a starlet-hopeful and was reminded how good-looking she was, and how winning she was, and now I knew about her swanky lifestyle as a bachelorette prior to her marriage to producer Hal Wallis. I thought to myself, what an interesting person! I should have contacted her and asked for an interview, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and now she’s gone.

The depth of the national reaction to the passing of James Garner surprised me. He’s another one who was roaming the earth when I was born and so I’ve never known life without James Garner as part of the popular landscape. I knew of Maverick, although Maverick was before my time. I knew that James Garner was groomed for stardom by Warner Bros. and shot to prominence during their heyday producing TV westerns. Then Jack Warner leveraged Garner’s popularity by lending him to the features unit to make Darby’s Rangers and other pictures. He was a very big star in 1960 and managed to remain relevant for the next 54 years so that when he left us, we had just seen him in something, somewhere.

I bought James Garner’s autobiography, The Garner Files, upon its release to get his take on Jack Warner. The straight shooter took aim at J.L. and plugged him right between the eyes: “Jack Warner treated everybody the same: lousy. He didn’t spare his wife, his son, or his mistress. He hated writers, he hated actors, and he was cruel to his employees.” Garner went on, “Warner was rude and crude—the most vulgar man I’ve ever met. He had terrible taste in most things and a filthy mouth. The first time Lois and I went to the Oscars, we sat at his table and listened to him tell one dirty joke after another. He actually thought they were funny. We got up and moved to another table. I told Bill Orr [WB exec and J.L.’s son in law]: ‘Don’t you ever . . . don’t you ever get me invited anywhere where he’s going to be.’”

Clint Walker (right) visits James Garner on the set of Maverick. Walker was just back on the Warner Bros. lot to star in his series Cheyenne after a long-running feud with J.L.

James Garner shot from the hip about others in The Garner Files as well, like Steve McQueen: “Like Brando, he could be a pain in the ass on the set. Unlike Brando, he wasn’t an actor. He was a movie star, a poser who cultivated the image of a macho man. Steve wasn’t a bad guy; I think he was just insecure.” And of another co-star in The Great Escape, Garner said, “Charlie Bronson was a pain in the ass, too. He used and abused people, and I didn’t like it.”

To me, James Garner’s insights on these actors, people we think we know, are precious. Actors didn’t always like one another, and it’s interesting to keep in mind what they were thinking as cameras rolled. We see the end result preserved on celluloid, which in some cases proves the talent of the individuals, overcoming their feelings or channeling those feelings into the character.

With Garner, there were no scandals to look back on. I recall that he had bypass surgery in the 1980s and wondered then if he would survive. But he did. I remembered when he took over 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenaged Daughter for John Ritter after that star’s sudden death by aortic aneurysm in 2003 and stabilized the sitcom’s devastated cast and crew. James Garner came in and took charge because that’s what the situation required. I wasn’t a fan of that show but I well recall watching the first Garner episode when his character walked on set and very publicly comforted the characters and the actors playing them. To hurting humans he lent strength; to actors worrying about their next paycheck he conveyed, We’ll get through this. It will be OK. That’s pretty damn cool. And with his help they survived, and James Garner carried 8 Simple Rules on his 75-year-old shoulders, completing the second season and then a third full season.

This scenario sat in my head unprocessed since Ritter’s death. It took the news of James Garner’s passing for me to stop and think about how admirable he had been in that circumstance. I can only hope that when I go, there’s something in my obit to say, “That’s pretty damn cool” about.

The cast of 8 Simple Rules. Said Garner, “I never used to like working with children. For a long time I thought they were unpredictable and, well, unprofessional. But Amy Davidson [far left], Kaley Cuoco [far right], and Martin Spanjers [second from right] were terrific. Who cares if they steal a scene? If any actor can steal a scene from me, they’re welcome to it.”

Scratch

Almost every day since the book’s release in January, somebody somewhere has commented on the extensive research in Fireball, and I’ve been gratified to learn that my dumpster dive into federal records accomplished its goal, as did long hours spent sifting through existing histories and biographies, newspapers, unpublished manuscripts and interviews, birth and death records, military archives, and conversations with participants and relatives of participants in the story. Oh, and a day spent eating dirt, getting stuck on cactus, and bouncing off boulders on Potosi Mountain. And other days spent walking in the footsteps of people in the narrative. When it was over I understood Carole Lombard and Clark Gable at the molecular level and also had learned about others critical to the story, from the stewardess on Flight 3 to the miner and ex-football star who led the charge up the mountain.

But that was then. It’s a good thing when you are the author of a book that gets positive reviews and that people really like. There’s gratification; there’s also pressure every time somebody says, read Fireball, loved it, big fan, what’s next? Well, thanks! And, uhhh, I dunno.

Oh, great, another mountain to climb. In case you are wondering, the Flight 3 crash site is along the ridge line, dead center from left to right, a few hundred feet below the crest.

It’s all organic, man. It comes from luck, or inspiration, or usually from a particular friend saying, “You know what would make a great idea for a book?” And that friend did it again two months ago, planting this seed in my brain. At first I think, no, that’s no good. It’s been done, or I can’t get at that story, or something similar, but then the damn seed starts to sprout and before long I’m believing that, yes, he’s right again. This is a story. I’m going to tell this story.

Friends, readers, I’m starting my next book. It’s a new day and a new ballgame. It’s not even the top of the first inning and the umpire isn’t about to shout, “Play ball!” [Reference to American baseball, global readers.] It’s not even time for spring training, really, because first comes determination of the theme of the book, what I’m writing to, what tone to set, how the narrative will sound, and even more basic to that, who are my characters? I’m in that nebulous period where I’m learning about the world I’m going to be inhabiting for a year or two. I’m reading existing works and visiting web sites. Just now I was reading a biography on the couch and Francois, my ten-week-old black kitten, jumped up on me and asked, “Whatcha readin’, Dad?” and before you know it, we were both asleep on the couch. So I can report that this phase is rather pleasant so far.

I’m not ready to announce what the book is going to be about, except to say it’s another World War II story with an aviation theme and part of it is set in Hollywood. (Tom, you’re a bright fellow. If you guess what the story is, please don’t blurt it out.) It’s nonfiction because to me the best stories are true stories where I say to myself as I unearth the facts, “You couldn’t make this stuff up.” Research is going to put me back in D.C. and back in Hollywood, but it’ll also require a trip to England and possibly to France and Germany and this time I’m going to have to be sifting through German records and lots of them. Sprechen sie Deutsch? My high school German teacher, Miss Diamond (who I had a crush on, but, don’t tell), would be the first to report, no, Robert does not speak German. That’s going to be a handicap to my enterprise because one thing I’m certain of is, this story is going to include a civilian’s-eye view of life on the ground in Germany during the latter phases of World War II. It’s one story line in what will no doubt be many story lines.

It’s daunting to be at this point in a book. Way down the road, I know I’m going to be holding three pounds of bouncing baby … hardcover, but in the meantime everything is squishy and Unknown. I have no idea where I’m heading. I don’t know how I’ll get there. I don’t know what I’ll discover along the way. Worst of all, I don’t know what makes my main character tick. I hate not knowing, and there’s so much mythology grown around this character that I already have a healthy dislike. Just like I had with Gable. I tell myself that it’s OK, the Gable thing worked out, and now he and I are friends and I pay my respects at his grave and everything.

Today’s confession is that I hate new people. My lifelong friend and former co-worker, Helene, would tell you that. Oh, Robert hates new people. Anytime somebody new came on staff at the company where we both worked, there was a period where I didn’t like them until I got a handle on them and then it was usually OK, except of course when it wasn’t. So now I’m at the stage where, based on everything I know so far, I don’t like this new person I’m going to write a book about. But when you’re in close quarters with someone for a long period, the ice gets broken somehow, and I’m counting on the fact that it’ll happen here. We even have some things in common, so what the hell am I worried about?

There, I’ve said it: I’m starting a new book. Monkey off my back. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, this autumn I’m back in the saddle pitching Fireball and so coming and going, it will be an interesting time. Keep your eye peeled for dispatches from the front, which will all be delivered here at this address a couple times a week.

The Crawford Touch

George Hurrell captured a portrait of 1942 Joan Crawford for the ‘Bride’ publicity campaign.

I had never taken the time to sit down and watch They All Kissed the Bride, the Columbia picture that Carole Lombard was supposed to make after her return from the bond tour to Indiana and the one she would never make because she didn’t return from the bond tour to Indiana. I’m not going to go into depth about They All Kissed the Bride because I want this column to be about more than movie reviews, and I’ve spent time on a number of movies already and there’s another film analysis in the queue.

What I’ll say is that They All Kissed the Bride is a picture that makes me sad to watch. Since it’s a Columbia Picture you don’t expect much going in because by 1942, Columbia was making comedies that were loud, silly, and for the most part starred down-on-their-luck actors.

The Joan Crawford of 1927 had already been Carole Lombard’s rival on Hollywood dance floors for two years.

It’s telling that this is a script Carole Lombard accepted. She was to play M.J. Drew, hard-as-nails boss of a powerful shipping corporation based in New York City. Hard as nails, that is, until she meets Melvyn Douglas, at which point she goes all weak in the knees and hates herself for it and can’t understand what’s happening to her. She thinks it must be her liver.

Screwball pictures often required convoluted plots to create appropriately uncomfortable situations and this one is no exception. The surprising thing for me in finally seeing Bride is: It would not have been a hit for Lombard. In fact, Joan Crawford is probably better in it than Lombard would have been, because Crawford of the square jaw and square shoulders comports herself like a cutthroat boss. She’s believable in the part.

The backstory of how she landed Bride is much more interesting than the picture itself. Soon after Lombard’s death aboard TWA Flight 3 just after World War II began for the United States, Joan Crawford was signed to take the lead in the picture then called He Kissed the Bride, and pledged to donate to four war-related charities, in Carole Lombard’s name, the entirety of her $115,000 salary. When Crawford’s agent took his usual percentage for lining up the deal on a picture made under these circumstances, Joan fired him.

These were fantastic gestures on Crawford’s part, and yet the intertwined lives of Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard had not been conducted on friendly terms going all the way back to the 1920s Coconut Grove nightclub, where they sweated against each other in dance competitions. Joan of MGM always had more clout in Hollywood than Carole of little brother Paramount. When Lombard landed Clark Gable, it was with the knowledge that Joan had been there four years earlier and sexually enchanted the big lug.

But at the dawn of 1942 Lombard and Crawford had something in common: They were both in career slides. The script for He Kissed the Bride proves it for both of them. It’s not a bad picture, but typical of the Columbia jobs, it jumps the shark halfway through and resorts to improbability, misperception, and pratfalls. You sit there thinking, “Joan’s better than this,” the same way you would have said, “Carole’s better than this.” Melvyn Douglas was better than this, too, but it was a living and the stars took these parts because it was work and hopefully better times lay ahead.

The turbulence of Carole’s career waters is confirmed if one looked ahead to what she had signed on for next. After working at Columbia she would be going back to Universal for My Girl Godfrey, a script so slight that it was finally released as a musical starring Deanna Durbin in 1943 after being retitled His Butler’s Sister. At this time Universal was making Ghost of Frankenstein and other B-level entertainment, and had Lombard lived, 1942 would probably have been seen as another mediocre year.

Yes, the most significant thing about He Kissed the Bride (which was retitled They All Kissed the Bride, a title that in context of the script makes no sense) is Joan Crawford’s gesture, which everyone in the industry greeted with, “That’s very Joan” because, despite her five-foot-two stature, Crawford did everything BIG. This is the same Joan Crawford who served as sexual surrogate for a destroyed Clark Gable in the months after Carole’s loss. She was there for him in her home anytime he needed, without strings, and provided some TLC, some physical relief, some moments reliving the days of their impetuous youth and wild sexual fling on the MGM lot.

It’s a shame that since the 1980s Crawford’s legacy has been reduced to grotesque makeup and child abuse. Joan’s better than this. In the barren chill of January 1942 it was Joan Crawford who stepped up and on those small, square shoulders helped relieve the burden of a devastated Hollywood that had just experienced the loss of its most beloved home-town girl.

Crawford, age 37, poses for another They All Kissed the Bride publicity still. Her career slide had been precipitous in the year prior to Lombard’s death, but Joan’s gestures to honor Carole and comfort Clark were instinctive, and heartfelt.

Jilted by Juliet

You remember when I was wringing my hands about whether to join the Twitter generation, and then it seemed like a practical business matter: If you want to be a popular author you should just try Twitter out and see what happens, especially if you’re going to be an author on tour and I’m considering some more tour dates. I’ve tweeted a few things in recent weeks, trying not to be obnoxious, and the other day I picked up a new follower: Olivia Hussey, she of the Zeffirelli version of Romeo & Juliet. How I remember being captivated by this girl, 16 when she made Romeo & Juliet, during a reissue screening of the picture when I was a mere lad. Actually I went two or three times, I think, and only because of a big-old crush on Olivia Hussey.

Olivia Hussey as I imagined her, dreaming of what Robert Matzen would tweet next.

Of course she’s done much more than Juliet with her life. She was the Virgin Mary in Jesus of Nazareth on TV, and played the villainous Alicia in one of my favorite mini-series of the Bicentennial era, The Bastard. She appeared in Death on the Nile with an all-star cast and lots of other TV and motion pictures, and played Mother Teresa in a critically acclaimed biopic.

So this famous performer was now following me on Twitter, meaning I should tweet something profound—but I had nothing. I slept on it, thinking something would come to me and the next morning I learned I had another follower: Lana Wood, Bond girl, sister of Natalie, and accomplished actress in her own right. Not to be redundant, but when I saw Lana as Plenty O’Toole in Diamonds Are Forever, well, I had to go back and see the picture again. Dad was very considerate to take me back for repeat showings of these movies. Or was Dad experiencing, shall we say, the same reaction? I hear tell that the apples don’t fall far from the tree.

Lana Wood, Bond girl, accomplished actress, thoughtful soul, and follower of Robert Matzen.

Truth be told, Lana had just appeared at a John Wayne event in Iowa where my friend Scott Eyman was also a headliner. So she and I had Scott in common. But at any rate, now, not one but two of the big crushes of my cinematic youth were following me on Twitter, and I still had nothing. I could practically hear my tweet’s voice cracking when I shouted out to the world that I had a new column available on my blog, or said I’d be appearing on the nationally syndicated radio show, TV Confidential. But I have to be honest: Joyce Carol Oates I’m not. Joyce Carol Oates has always got eight wise things to say on Twitter and I can’t even figure half of them out, while I sit here like a frog on a rock. I’m terrible at parties, too, but that’s beside the point.

Oh, Olivia. Why couldn’t we work it out?

During this period of gross indecision regarding wise things to say, or witty things, or controversial things, I lost Olivia Hussey. Suddenly my Juliet was no longer following me. I was left to wonder—did she suddenly realize she was following the wrong Robert Matzen? Was she intending to follow the videographer in Cleveland? Or maybe the polar opposite Robert Matzen in Germany who’s an extrovert, loves people, and plays soccer? Whatever the motivation for the end of my personal Twitter relationship with Olivia Hussey, it was over and I was crestfallen.

Now I hang onto the fact that Lana Wood remains faithful. I cling to the faint hope that one day soon I can justify that faith by broadcasting a tweet worthy of an original Bond girl and actress who worked with John Wayne in The Searchers and nearly stole the show. The clock is ticking oh so loudly as I sit here. Jilted. And with nothing.

I Love a Parade

In this case it’s a parade of good news about Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3. I learned yesterday that the ebook version of Fireball has been chosen by Amazon as part of its June Big Deal program. This means it’s discounted from $10.99 to $1.99 from June 13 – 28, potentially opening the book up to a legion of summer beach readers who might not take the plunge at Amazon’s regular price. Please spread the word as far and wide as you can about this opportunity to get Fireball at deep discount.

Now that the book has been out there for several months, fewer reviews are appearing, but here’s one from the most recent Vegas Seven magazine, which is distributed free all around Las Vegas and represents a terrific way to expose Fireball to an international audience.

My PR rep, Sarah Miniaci, with a copy of Fireball at Book Expo America.

Fireball also got nice exposure at Book Expo America thanks to the team at Smith Publicity, which featured Fireball in its display. My PR rep, Sarah Miniaci, spread the word at BEA, which is the largest annual gathering of book industry professionals and this year was held at the Javits Center in New York City. I have to take a moment and thank Sarah for months of hard work and expertise, which got the book in front of millions of people via broadcast television and radio, print articles and reviews, and vast internet exposure.

The last bit of good news for today is about my latest lecture and signing, which took place at Cinevent, the annual film convention held in Columbus, Ohio each Memorial Day weekend. The lecture drew the largest crowd yet and we sold a record number of books over three days. I want to thank Cinevent manager Steve Haynes for making time for me in the packed program and also for an outstanding level of support that pretty much guaranteed success.

The lectures always result in meeting great people. This time it was Bob King, publisher of Classic Images magazine. Bob invited me to do a Fireball-related article, which I’m getting started on today. I also met David L. Smith, author of the 2006 book, Hoosiers in Hollywood as well as the article “Carole Lombard: Profane Angel,” which appeared in the Summer 2001 issue of Films of the Golden Age magazine. Dave sent me a copy of the 2001 broadcast documentary, Carole Lombard: Hollywood’s Profane Angel, in which he appeared as an on-camera expert with, among others, Robert Stack, Robert Osborne, A.C. Lyles, Eddie Bracken, and William Wellman, Jr. Watching this 2001 documentary gave me an idea for my next column, so stay tuned for what I hope to be a good one.

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

Preaching to the choir of Hollywood film lovers at Cinevent.

A Little Don Juan

I find myself down of late. I started to spell out exactly why, but I’m a little too private for that, so let’s just leave it as, I’ve got the blues. I’ll admit that, in part, it has to do with Fireball, my baby and the book of my life to date, being out there in the world, all grown up. And there are some other things.

At times like this I find myself needing to reach for the touchstones of my life, the things that evoke strong memories of other times. One of these is Adventures of Don Juan, Errol Flynn’s Christmas 1948 masterpiece that many people haven’t ever seen. To many, there’s only one “Adventures of” picture connected to Errol Flynn, but they just don’t know.

Swedish-born Viveca Lindfors as Queen Margaret of Spain.

Adventures of Don Juan is a sassy picture that pokes fun at Flynn’s reputation, but it’s also the very sad story of the seventeenth century character Don Juan falling in love, really in love, after a lifetime spent wooing women and carousing. It’s a brilliant depiction of vulnerability and sacrifice, of a wanderer who finds something he’s been seeking—one great love—and must give it up for a greater good. It contains sequences that move me every time, interactions between Don Juan and the woman he falls in love with, who happens to be Queen Margaret of Spain.

They say Flynn had great chemistry with Olivia de Havilland. Wait, I said that, in the book Errol & Olivia. Sure they did. They were point/counterpoint: big, athletic, hedonist Errol and diminutive, depressed Livvie. They recognized a kinship from the first time they met—two young people who had endured brutal childhoods at the hand of tyrannical parents, and two beautiful people who made a beautiful couple onscreen and, sometimes, off.

But chemistry’s a funny thing. Errol and Olivia had it, but not to the degree that Errol had it onscreen with Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors, newly brought to the United States by the Warner Bros. under contract to make pictures, the first and biggest being Adventures of Don Juan. This lady had talent. She would go on to a great career as an acting teacher, and here she presents every inch a queen. Every single inch, in every frame in which she’s seen.

And then there are the scenes with Flynn.

In her memoirs, Lindfors—26 years old when shooting commenced—would say she liked Errol, she really did, and she could see that the weight of being a sex symbol was crushing him to death. Of course she was right; he was oppressed by the pressure, and production of Adventures of Don Juan was a year-long exercise in hell for all involved because Flynn spent a good deal of time off the deep end. Undiminished, however, is the fire between Flynn and Lindfors; such natural combustability in three particular sequences that it’s no wonder the climax of the picture involves a fire at the palace.

In the first, Don Juan shows Queen Margaret around his workplace, the fencing academy. We know via a previous scene that he’s fallen for her, but she doesn’t know. He describes the workplace with veiled references to his attraction; we see from her nonverbals that she’s attracted but fighting it, and with Max Steiner’s score behind them in this high-ceilinged set, we face more repressed passion than Hollywood had presented in all the film noir produced to that time.

Sequence 1, Don Juan is infatuated and the Queen is starting to soften.

The chemistry between the two stars is visible early on.

In the second sequence, he makes it clear that he has fallen in love with a mysterious someone, and as the queen, she commands him to talk about it. Steiner’s score again sets up a gut-wrenching moment: He confesses he is in love with her, his “paragon among women,” and for a flash, an instant, she is happy at this news, but then suspects that he’s just laying the ol’ Don Juan line on her and she’s furious. She orders him away, and he’s crushed.

In sequence 2, Don Juan confesses his love for his “paragon among women,” and she explodes in fury.

In the third, after Don Juan has gained credibility by thwarting the bad guy and proving himself a national hero, she comes to him and confesses her love. This hard, nationalist leader is now laid so bare, so tortured, ready to give up the throne to be with Don Juan. The scene between two vulnerable people is so intimate that I’m surprised it passed the 1948 censors. My friend Trudy and I have long marveled at the string of saliva between Flynn’s lips and Lindfors’, captured in 35mm Technicolor after their passionate, all-revealing first kiss. These two didn’t just enact a stage kiss; these two kissed like they meant it. You can’t fake a kiss like that. For all time we’ve got it on record. When she kisses him a second time in this sequence, it’s clear she’s not interested in the kind of buss learned in acting school. Come on, Errol, let’s sell this thing! And we can see that the boy was willing.

Sequence 3: Queen Margaret is ready to abdicate and run away with Don Juan, but he knows she can’t do that because “the people will suffer.”

Yes, I’m a little down and so I turned to one of my touchstones, Adventures of Don Juan, in part to wallow in a wistful and bittersweet picture, and in part to lift myself out of the blues (such a magnificent, Technicolor masterpiece from the tail end of Hollywood’s Golden Era).

What it leads me to is, what are your touchstones? What are the things you turn to when you’re down? Movies? Books? Music? Places? People? Why do you turn to them? Maybe we can form our own support group to get through a couple down days in this crazy thing called life. It’s the place where I am this evening, and I know I’m not the first person ever to be here, and I won’t be the last.

Mathematics

DOS…Oscar-winning visionary, mad genius, and ODing druggie.

I’ve had a couple of weeks now to digest the fact that America is not celebrating 75 years of the motion picture version of Gone With the Wind. I’ve tried to think of any cast members still with us beyond the indefatigable Olivia de Havilland, little Beau Wilkes, played by now-82-year-old Mickey Kuhn, and littler “Melanie’s Baby,” played by Patrick Curtis. Come to think of it, maybe OdeH is rubbing off on her celluloid kin since the Wilkeses are the only ones left among us. I asked you to help me put Gone With the Wind in perspective and the response was enlightening, and got me to thinking.

Let me run this past you: aside from spine-tingling stories of the sneak preview, David Selznick’s epic run on uppers that should have killed him but didn’t, the coast-to-coast search for Scarlett that ended by firelight in Culver City, and the notorious replacement of George Cukor with man’s man Vic Fleming (note to Vic and his pal Clark Gable: this is still a women’s picture despite the testosterone injection), the motion picture version of Gone With the Wind isn’t as great as the sum of its parts. In some respects it’s sort of…average.

Oh, man, I’m pretty sure my mom just rolled over in her grave. Sorry, Mom.

Gone With the Wind is the big, inspired vision of a filmmaker, but so is David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, James Cameron’s Titanic, and Peter Jackson’s trilogy of the Rings, and I attest that GWTW doesn’t measure higher than any of these later examples. It’s too fixated on the performance of a decent-at-best English stage actress affecting a Southern belle. Selznick and his three directors (counting Sam Wood) threw the picture her way because the country was then ripped through with Scarlett Fever, and there was no cure in sight.

Gable loved winning his statuette for It Happened One Night, then gave it away to a little boy after the death of Carole Lombard.

The epidemic is over, my friends. Miss Leigh is long gone, and her performance, despite the golden doorstop, plays today as antiquated as a sternwheeler. I always found Leslie Howard an embarrassing Ashley, embarrassing because his miscasting damns the picture’s credibility for future generations. For God’s sake where was Randy Scott when we needed him?

Over the years I’ve been surprised to see the shots taken at two-time Academy Award winner Olivia de H. for lack of acting range. For kicks you should peruse the reviews of her Broadway version of Romeo and Juliet in the early 1950s. Yikes! My point being that Livvie was an accomplished actress in her day, but considering that her day was 1939 and by 1951 she was passé, her performance as Melanie isn’t new-school enough to help keep the good ship GWTW afloat.

Then there is The Saving Grace of Gone With the Wind. Well, wait. All those craft Oscars went to people who were saving graces of Gone With the Wind: cinematographers Ernie Haller and Ray Rennahan, art director Lyle Wheeler, and the film’s heroic editors, Hal Kern and James Newcom. Sidney Howard probably helped to save the picture with all that screenplay he wrote, which was then rewritten by a couple dozen other writers and finally Selznick himself. Walter Plunkett’s costumes, Max Steiner’s music—fantastic craftspeople at work, no doubt.

But it’s Clark Gable’s picture to save and looking back from a modern perspective, he’s the best thing about it. In all his glorious insecurity and grousing and grumbling, his Rhett Butler was perfect in 1939 and it’s a bulls-eye 75 years later. I know a lot about Gable now, but I feel there’s more still to learn. I’m tempted to say that Gable rose to the occasion when he spent eight months playing Rhett, but I need to keep reminding myself that the part was fitted to him with great care, staying within the “Gable range,” which was sort of from A to B or maybe, on a good day, C. Parnell was still fresh on everybody’s minds and neither Selznick nor Mayer could survive Gone With the Wind becoming another Parnell.

I’ve never committed myself to MM’s novel, but I very much want to read it now. I know that the book version of Rhett is a good deal darker than the movie-star Rhett drawn up by that football team of screenwriters. What we get from Gable as depicted is a square-shouldered, worldly wise, wry-humored, and slightly tarnished knight in armor. Honorable enough to reclaim wedding rings and rakish enough to look comfortable in Belle Watling’s parlor. Between the Hays Office censors on one side and his MGM bodyguards on the other, Gable was safe as safe can be making Gone With the Wind. But who could have predicted that the greatest role of a not-so-great actor would hold water so well all these decades later?

I’m tempted to call this column, “Disillusioned,” because that’s what I realize I am about Gone With the Wind. All the fuss and bother of my boyhood, all the reverence paid to the picture as it floated for oh so long and oh so watertight on the memories of a couple of generations. Gone With the Wind is now a Technicolor time capsule of 1939 Hollywood, more interesting for what went on behind the cameras as what is captured in front of them. I wish it were otherwise. I wish it were a perfect 10 of a picture that could serve as THE shining example of Old Hollywood. Counting everything, the entire experience of Gone With the Wind, the people and the pre-World War II times, it probably still is. But just as a big stack of cans of celluloid, math has overtaken the movie of the Novel of the Old South, and it’s getting, for me at least, old.

OdeH: two Oscars in four years, but she would never get an award-quality role again.

So Red the River, in Black & White

Buy it, consume it, spread the word about it.

I want to continue the discussion of Gone With the Wind that we started this past week, but have to interrupt to report that I couldn’t be happier for my friend and colleague Scott Eyman for the success of his new book, John Wayne: The Life and Legend, released April 1 by Simon & Schuster. It hit the New York Times bestseller list at mid-month and is, as of this writing, #1 on the Amazon bestseller list for Movies/History & Criticism and #8 in Biographies. A writer can work a lifetime and never achieve success like this. Of course Scott has emerged as the preeminent Hollywood biographer and he’s done very well with his past books, particularly Lion of Hollywood, his Louis B. Mayer bio that was of such help in researching Fireball themes.

All this week Scott has been sitting with Robert Osborne in prime time on Turner Classic Movies introducing the best of John Wayne’s pictures and last night it was one of my favorites, Red River. Back when I was a silly, uneducated youngster, I was enthralled with Lonesome Dove, in part because of the vivid depiction of that cattle drive up to Montana. I had thought what a wonderful thing they dreamed up for television, not knowing that the epic cattle drive had long before been envisioned and executed by director Howard Hawks in black and white for Red River, and that Lonesome Dove was a pale, small-scale update.

I’ve taken John Wayne way too much for granted my whole life and felt free to skip some of his pictures, including The High and the Mighty, which I discussed here a couple months ago, and also Red River, which I only discovered in recent years. I didn’t know until last night, when Scott told us that Red River was actually produced in 1946 and sat around for a couple years, that it represents Montgomery Clift’s first screen work. I find Clift mesmerizing in this picture, young, lean, tough, handsome, and so damn capable with his new type of underplaying that would soon change Hollywood. I’ve never read a Clift bio, so I didn’t know how he learned to ride a horse like he does in Red River, as if born in the saddle. He has this thing where he hops up into the stirrup like some sort of trick rider. I know he became obsessed with bringing realism to his roles, as confirmed by Howard Hawks later.

John Wayne and Montgomery Clift

Speaking of Clift to Peter Bogdonovich, Hawks said, “He came down two weeks early and went out after breakfast with a cowboy, taking a lunch with them, and they rode all day long – up hills and down steep places, and through water and so on. And by the start of the picture he really rode well. You could tell that. And I taught him a little jump step to get into the saddle – he’d make a little hop into the stirrup. He worked – he really worked hard.” So that answers my question about the riding, and that hop. Clift was one rare specimen, and looked every bit the equal of John Wayne in the saddle after only two weeks of training.

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the peculiar way Howard Hawks handles dialogue, but since at least three Hawks pictures are on my favorites list, I don’t consider Hawksian quirks a deal breaker. You know, he has actors step on the lines of other actors, which can emulate realism when done right, but often his players aren’t quite up to it and come off instead as self-conscious. Hawks also has his women constantly saying their man’s name in the clinches. “You know what I’m talking about, Matthew, don’t you, Matthew?” All right already with the Matthews!

Last night, Eyman referred to Red River as something like “nine-tenths a classic,” and I agree with him. Here we have this spellbinding epic with noirish qualities, and suddenly, toward the end of the last reel, a Damon Runyon picture breaks out. Here we see the worst of Howard Hawks and his obsession with sassy dames, throwing figurative cold water on a perfectly set up, deadly confrontation between two beautifully written and played characters in Wayne’s Dunson and Clift’s Garth. Such a shame the way it ends. Two hours of buildup, the pace ratcheting up until there’s so much going on in every frame that you can’t take it all in. Then…that? As Scott put it, “Hawks blinked.” Eyman described how Mr. Dunson was supposed to die at fade out, but Hawks couldn’t bring himself to see it end that way. Instead, Joanne Dru’s Tess Millay, a character just recently introduced into the narrative, breaks up the big fight, and Wayne and Clift laugh and make up while sprawled there in the dust. It’s an all-wrong ending. It was all wrong in 1948 and it’s all wrong today.

Adding to the realism, Hawks chooses to show an arrow striking Joanne Dru in the shoulder, nailing her to the side of a wagon. She barely flinches, and Montgomery Clift reacts with bemusement rather than concern.

But Hawks was so damn good that I am forced to forgive him his trespasses. Tell me you don’t have a Hawks picture somewhere on your favorites list. Twentieth Century, maybe? Bringing Up Baby? His Girl Friday? Ball of Fire? Sergeant York? He did two of Bogart’s best pictures in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, and also two other favorites of mine, The Thing (from Another World) and Rio Bravo.

Cinematographer Russell Harlan and director Howard Hawks capture the sweep and grime of a cattle drive long before budget-friendly CG effects are around to help.

Another “so damn good” ingredient in Red River is the cinematography of Russell Harlan. When you see the way he frames up a cattle drive, with no CG effects and thousands of cattle and cowboys visible going back a quarter mile as Wayne and Clift play a scene in foreground, you think this must be the most gifted cameraman in Hollywood. But Harlan was a journeyman who cut his teeth on Hopalong Cassidy westerns and would move on after Red River to photograph Gun Crazy and Tarzan and the Slave Girl, proof once again that Hollywood was after all a factory chock-full of highly skilled cinematographers. No time to sit around dreaming of art. We must shoot! They’ll need this picture next month in Hoboken!

So thank you, Scott, for a very enjoyable Thursday night, and congratulations on the release of John Wayne: The Life and Legend. My goal this weekend is to go to my closest independent bookstore and buy a copy. In the meantime, may the awards and acclaim roll in.

The furious, hate-filled climax that is soon to be spoiled by Joanne Dru.