Carole had given Alice so much over the years, and it had all begun with that letter and its incredible message. If I can do it, so can you, if you fight. But Carole had gone as well, dead almost three years now, and there lay Alice, despondent in a hospital bed.
Suddenly, all was commotion. Nurses barged into the room and surrounded the grief-stricken widow, Alice Marble, with red roses, three dozen of them. Splashes of vivid color surrounded her and she lay there, bewildered. Allie was handed a card. It read, If I can do it, so can you. Clark.
Epilogue: High-Energy Impact
On the evening of Thursday, November 8, 2007, a Cessna T182t single-engine aircraft designated as flight 2793 took off from North Las Vegas Airport at 7:05 P.M. on a dark, nearly moonless night. Two vastly experienced fliers sat at the controls, one a NASA pilot and the former Pacific Region Commander of the Civil Air Patrol and the other the Nevada Wing Commander of the Civil Air Patrol. Colonel Ed Lewis had served as the Aviation Safety Officer at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center located at Edwards Air Force Base and flown NASA’s DC-8 “flying laboratory” in addition to many other NASA science aircraft based at Dryden. Col. Lewis and co-pilot Dion DeCamp had accumulated almost 60,000 hours of flight time between them.
They flew southwest out of Vegas heading toward a science conference in Rosamond, California. November 8 featured fine weather for flying with winds of only 3 knots, so their flight plan called for visual flight rules—using references on the ground to guide them. Their aircraft was relatively new, with only 300 hours of air time, and was equipped with a sophisticated Garmin G1000 glass cockpit (an integrated flight instrument system composed of two LCD display units) and tracked by sophisticated radar in Vegas and at Daggett control center. Below them, the lights of modern Las Vegas sprawled as far as the eye could see, casinos as mighty as the Luxor and the Bellagio, shopping meccas, and sprouting housing developments stretching to the foothills of the mountains. Their plane flew over I-15, which paralleled the road that had once been Highway 91, and then over Arden and Blue Diamond Road on a night with just broken clouds at 8,000 and high clouds at 15,000.
Thirteen minutes after takeoff, Col. Ed Lewis’s aircraft slammed into the vertical cliff wall of Potosi Mountain and exploded in a fireball seen by residents across Las Vegas. The National Transportation Safety Board final statement about the accident of flight 2793, released in January 2009, sounded eerily familiar to anyone who knew about the crash of TWA Flight 3 so many years earlier:
The accident occurred during dark night, visual meteorological conditions, about 13 minutes into the night cross-country flight. No lighted roads or ground structures were present in the area to provide ground reference to terrain. One percent of the moon’s disk was illuminated. Over the last 6 minutes of the flight, recorded radar data indicated the airplane’s average groundspeed was 100 knots and its average rate of climb was 406 feet per minute; an average rate of climb of 600 fpm was required to clear terrain along the flight path. An examination of the accident site indicated that the airplane impacted rapidly rising terrain in a near level flight attitude before descending and coming to rest in a rock outcropping. The resultant high-energy impact forces, coupled with the extensive thermal damage, destroyed the airplane. A post-accident examination of the airframe’s structure and engine failed to reveal any pre-impact failures or malfunctions. The airplane was equipped with a Garmin G1000 Integrated Cockpit System, which incorporates a multifunction color display that is capable of displaying terrain elevation information when selected to the Terrain Proximity page. Due to the extensive impact and thermal damage that the component had sustained, it was not possible to determine if the pilot was using the display to receive topographic data during the airplane’s ascent.
Col. Lewis had been trained on the G1000, but the unit contained a warning that the system could not be relied upon for primary terrain avoidance. It remained the pilot’s responsibility to be aware of the terrain at all times. The NTSB determined that the crash was an example of what had become known as Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT), wherein a fully functioning plane under pilot control had flown into land or water. Since the plane “was receiving VFR flight-following services from the Las Vegas Terminal Radar Approach Control facility,” the radar controller on duty was partially responsible for failing to issue a “terrain-related safety alert, as required by a Federal Aviation Administration order.”
Wayne Williams, Morgan Gillette, Ed Lewis, and Dion DeCamp carried to the grave those last moments that had set their aircraft on a collision course with Potosi Mountain. Despite 25,000 hours of flight time, sophisticated, three-dimensional cockpit displays, and the most modern air traffic control support, Lewis had flown straight into the mountain. It was a simple conclusion for investigators who had no other explanation, just as it was back in 1942 when Flight 3 had impacted those same cliffs with the same fiery result.
In some ways the impact of Flight 3 with Potosi Mountain on January 16, 1942 was a crash heard around the world. Carole Lombard became the first Hollywood star to die in World War II and would be joined later by motion picture leading man Leslie Howard and bandleader Glenn Miller, both of whom, like Lombard, met their deaths on airplanes.
Flying was how Albert Belejchak had managed to escape a life broiling in the steel mills along the Monongahela River in smoke-choked Pittsburgh. Flying was how eight-year-old Charles Castle sought to escape the farm fields of Pawnee, Illinois, although he never did, and it turned out that the big adventure Charles had asked God for in 1930 was the biggest of his life. Castle died in Pawnee in 2002 at age 81.
Flying always did well by Burton Kennedy Voorhees, who had given away his seat assignment to help Fred Dittman realize a dream. Voorhees was typical of Barham, Browne, Crouch, Dittman, Donahue, Nelson, and Swenson—top-notch officers and pilots in the Ferrying Command who likely would have shot up through the ranks in the Army Air Corps. But they were gone and Voorhees went on. He lived to see his brother get married 16 days after the crash of Flight 3. He lived to become a major before 1942 ended. He lived to marry Cuyler Griffith Schwartz, daughter of a former Wyoming senator. He lived to become Lt. Col. Voorhees and take over the Air Transport Command at Consolidated Airfield in Tucson, where in autumn 1945 he coordinated the passage home of thousands of returning servicemen aboard DC-3s and their military counterpart, the C-47. He lived to enjoy a rich and full family life until his death in Sun City, Arizona, in 1984, and always haunting the corners of his mind was that moment in Albuquerque with Fred Dittman.
Lyle “Bull” Van Gordon, who blazed the trail that led to the downed airliner on the snowy morning of January 17, 1942, fathered two boys after daughter Nancy and left Goodsprings for Oregon in 1944. Lyle always regretted not taking his gridiron career on to college. He gave up on mining and spent his career working for the power company. A down-to-earth man, he would never discuss his role in the recovery of Flight 3 and when pressed would grumble, “I didn’t do anything.” Lyle died of cancer in 1978.
Fieldsie grieved for her lost friend Carole Lombard for the remaining 32 years of her life. In 1973 she stepped out her front door to pick up the morning paper in Palm Springs and was savagely beaten by a mugger. The incident defeated a fierce woman, and she died in October 1974.
Jill Winkler never came to grips with the loss of her Winkie, instead blocking the memories from her mind. She would go on to lose the home that Clark Gable helped her to build in Encino, across the street from Howard and Gail Strickling. Jill died in September 1994.
Margaret Tallichet, the young publicity girl at Paramount whom Lombard promoted for stardom, married director William Wyler in 1938 and bore him four children. William Wyler died in 1981 and Talli lived on to 1991 and always fondly remembered her mentor, fireball Carole Lombard, and the wacky publicity campaign of 1937 that led to a few starring roles in pictures—and one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages.
Alice Marble survived her 1944 suicide attempt and went o
n to become a tennis instructor like Teach Tennant. In fact, Tennant and Marble became rival teachers for many years until Teach’s death in 1963. Among Allie’s pupils was nine-year-old future NASA astronaut Sally Ride. “For two weeks I stood at the net, tossing her balls to volley,” said the plain-spoken and hard-drinking Marble, “and for two weeks she tried to hit me in the face. I told her parents to find another target.” Alice admitted that Teach “would have loved the fight” in Sally Ride.
Alice Marble wrote two books in her lifetime, and both included vivid descriptions of life with Carole Lombard. Tennis great Jack Kramer said in the 1980s that Allie was “the lady who most changed the style of play for women. She introduced the aggressive and athletic style that has led down to the female stars of today like Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf.” In fact, King had been Marble’s pupil in the early 1960s.
Said King, “Alice Marble was a picture of unrestrained athleticism. She is remembered as one of the greatest women to play the game because of her pioneering style in power tennis.” All of that had been made possible thanks to a whim by Carole Lombard to help a girl in a TB sanitorium. It was an act of kindness that rubbed off on Marble who, said Billie Jean, “always helped others.” Alice Marble died in 1990 at age 77, having taught tennis to new generations until the end of her life.
“If I can do it, so can you,” Clark had said to Allie, paraphrasing Missy Carole, but Clark Gable never recovered from the death of the woman he called Ma. His malaise continued and his career suffered. He aged badly, beginning that weekend in Las Vegas. He would keep the ranch that he had created with Ma and he would brood over every inch of it, holding tight to memories of places she had stood and things she had said and done in those spots.
At length, after his brief military career, Gable threw himself into life at the ranch and made it his own for the remainder of his lifetime. Jean ran it day-to-day and Clark reaped the benefits. He also became the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood and played the field long after the war ended. The fan magazines handicapped the Gable marriage sweepstakes and gave the inside track to longtime girlfriend Virginia Grey. Virginia had never married and, it was said, she insisted on waiting for Clark to ask.
He would marry two more times, but never to Virginia Grey. Maybe she was just too nice, too settled, and not enough of a handful. Instead he picked two spitfires he hoped would replicate Carole Lombard. Neither did. He married Sylvia Ashley, former showgirl whose affair with screen idol Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., made world headlines, but this particular spitfire broke the seal on Lombard’s bedroom and disposed of its contents. Clark divorced her soon after. His last wife, named Kay, pretended to be Carole for Clark’s benefit and used bad language and behaved like a tough broad. But she never had Ma’s big, warm heart and managed to alienate most of the people who had been in Gable’s life during his years with Lombard. Jean Garceau was dismissed, and eventually the old guard of friends fell away.
Time marched on for the places as well. The Gable ranch, where Carole and Clark spent two-and-a-half tumultuous years, saw its 20 acres sold off by Kay Gable and today the ranch house and Gable’s garage sit pressed in on all sides by other houses, garages, and swimming pools. The Cadle Tabernacle, where Carole Lombard drew 12,000 people on January 15, 1942, and led them in the singing of the National Anthem, succumbed to the wrecking ball at the end of 1968 to make way for a parking lot.
In a sense, time did not march on for Clark Gable, and it caused worry for his Hollywood friends. Steve Hayes remembered occasions with Ava Gardner, who was, if anything, earthier than Lombard, and a good deal darker: “When I had lunch or a drink with Ava, I would ask her how Gable was and had she seen him lately. She’d shrug those incredible creamy shoulders of hers and say either yes or no or ‘same old, same old,’ but then she’d always add something like, ‘That poor son of a bitch, my heart bleeds for him. I mean, here’s a great guy, a real sweetheart who’s maybe the biggest movie star of us all, Sugar, the fucking king for chrissake, and the poor bastard has nothing to look forward to.”
Clark left MGM on bad terms in 1954 and became an independent. His last hurrah was the Seven Arts feature The Misfits, directed by John Huston and co-starring Marilyn Monroe. It was shot in Nevada not far from Las Vegas and Potosi Mountain. It was said that Marilyn’s antics on the set of The Misfits—her tardiness and neuroses—contributed to the heart attack that felled the king on November 6, 1960, just past the end of production. It began with a sharp pain in his chest as he worked on his car by the garage at the ranch. Ten days later, after it seemed he would recover, Clark Gable died at Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. His funeral was held at the Church of the Recessional, Forest Lawn Glendale, where almost 19 years earlier he had been forced to say good-bye to Carole, Petey, and Otto. After the service, the body of the fallen king was driven down the hill to the Great Mausoleum. Despite having had two more wives, Clark Gable was laid to rest next to what was left of Carole Lombard, the woman who had loved him, challenged him, made him complete, and left him because of a desperate, uncharacteristic, and irrational need to secure her place in his heart. In a twist worthy of Hollywood, Lombard never learned that she meant everything to Gable. Everything. But he learned it and woke up every morning with this information and went to bed every night with it, for the 6,874 sunrises and sunsets remaining in what was, for him, a very long lifetime.
Fireball: The Story in Pictures
In 1928, while still making comedy short subjects for Mack Sennett, Carole Lombard, then 19, poses for a cheesecake photo at Pathe Studios in Hollywood. A strategically placed curl hides the scar on her left cheek.
An unretouched photo reveals two of Carole's facial scars, the one on her cheek and another above her lip. [Marina Gray Collection]
Carole Lombard and William Powell honeymoon in Hawaii; her eyes reveal the series of illnesses en route. [Marina Gray Collection]
Indicative of their relationship, Russ Columbo invades her space; Lombard stares off into space, at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. [Marina Gray Collection]
Screenwriter Robert Riskin offers Carole a change of pace—masculinity, humor, and no demand for commitment. [Marina Gray Collection]
Lombard sells the sizzle by posing for countless bathing suit shots in the 1930s.
Lombard and Gable walk away from the church after Jean Harlow’s funeral service at Forest Lawn Glendale in June 1937.
Carole and Clark don’t seem to be having much fun at the Santa Anita Racetrack in in 1938. According to Loretta Young, they were "real people" and had "highs and lows."
Alice Marble waits with Carole and Clark for a tennis match to begin in 1938. Marble's successful comeback, and even her stylish clothes, are courtesy of "Missy Carole."
Otto Winkler poses with Carole and Clark in Bel Air after the couple's elopement to Arizona in March 1939. [Nazoma Ball Collection]
An MGM photographer captures bliss at the Gable ranch in 1939.
By December 1941 strain is visible on the faces of the Gables during dinner out. Said one friend, “She probably screamed at him every six, eight weeks, and he was a good boy for a while.” Clark wore a portion of one of the diamond-and-ruby clips visible on Carole’s left shoulder in a locket around his neck after her death.
TWA’s schedule includes the transcontinental route taken by Flight 3. [LostFlights Archive Collection]
TWA air hostess Alice Getz sends home photos of the glamorous life flying around the country on DC-3s. [Doris Brieser Collection]
In 1940, a TWA DC-3 Sky Club is serviced.
Alice Getz shares a laugh with Captain Wayne Williams as they stand beside a DC-3. [Doris Brieser Collection]
The 1941 holiday card of Wayne and Ruby Williams depicts a DC-3 flying low over desert with mountains in the background. The plane startles a mounted cowboy. By chilling coincidence, the crash of TWA Flight 3 just a few weeks later will feature all these elements. [LostFlights Archive Collection]
Above l
eft: Near Amarillo, Texas, on January 15, 1942, Lois Miller Hamilton prepares for a trip to Long Beach, California, to visit her new husband, an Army Air Corps pilot. [LostFlights Archive Collection.] Above right: That same day, Mary Anna Johnson packs her belongings in Washington, D.C. at the end of a three-month training assignment. She is scheduled to fly cross-country to Burbank, California, on TWA’s Trip Number 3. [Savoie Family Collection]
Carole Lombard opens a recruiting office in downtown Indianapolis. [©2013 GoodKnight Books. All rights reserved.]
Carole delivers a speech outside the Indiana State Capitol, leads the crowd in a V for Victory cheer, and raises the American flag. Otto Winkler, third from left, enjoys the moment. [©2013 GoodKnight Books. All rights reserved.]
Inside the Capitol, Carole chatters away during a frantic hour of bond selling that raises $2 million, four times the goal. [©2013 GoodKnight Books. All rights reserved.]
Myron Davis works with Lombard to capture the excitement of the bond sale in a posed shot from above in the Capitol. [©2013 GoodKnight Books. All Rights Reserved.]
Carole leaves the Capitol with a police escort. [©2013 GoodKnight Books. All Rights Reserved.]
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