OUR MILITARY WERE NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING WWII. THE PICTURE OF THE FAMOUS MOVIE STAR , MRS CAROLE LOMBARD, IN FRONT OF A LARGE AUDIENCE WHERE SHE SOLD OVER $2 MILLION IN DEFENSE BONDS THAT EVENING IN INDIANA IS THE LAST PICTURE OF MRS LOMBARD THAT WAS TAKEN OF HER ALIVE. When the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941, the famous movie star Carole Lombard traveled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally with her mother, Bess Peters, and Clark Gables press agent, Otto Winkler. Lombard was able to raise over $2 million in defense bonds in a single evening. Her party had initially been scheduled to return to Los Angeles by train, but Lombard was anxious to reach home more quickly and wanted to fly by a scheduled airline. Her mother and Winkler were both afraid of flying and insisted they follow their original travel plans. Lombard suggested they flip a coin; they agreed and Lombard won the toss. In the early morning hours of January 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother, and Winkler boarded a Transcontinental and Western Air Douglas DST aircraft to return to California. After refueling in Las Vegas, TWA Flight 3 took off at 7:07 p.m. and approximately 13 minutes later, crashed into Double Up Peak near the 8,300-foot level of Potosi Mountain, 32 statute miles southwest of Las Vegas. All 22 aboard, Lombard and her mother included, plus 15 army servicemen, were killed instantly. Gable was flown to Las Vegas after learning of the tragedy to claim the bodies of his wife, mother-in-law, and Winkler, who aside from being his press agent had been a close friend. Lombards funeral was held on January 21 at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. She was interred beside her mother under the name of Carole Lombard Gable. Despite remarrying twice following her death, Gable chose to be interred beside Lombard when he died in 1960. At the time of her death, Lombard had been scheduled to star in the film They All Kissed the Bride; when production started, her role was given to Joan Crawford. Crawford donated all of her salary for the film to the Red Cross, which had helped extensively in the recovery of bodies from the air crash. Shortly after Lombards death, Gable, who was inconsolable and devastated by his loss, joined the United States Army Air Forces. Lombard had asked him to do that numerous times after the United States had entered World War II. After officer training, Gable headed a six-man motion picture unit attached to a B-17 bomb group in England to film aerial gunners in combat, flying five missions himself. In December 1943, the United States Maritime Commission announced that a Liberty ship named after Carole Lombard would be launched. Gable attended the launch of the SS Carole Lombard on January 15, 1944, the two-year anniversary of Lombards record-breaking war bond drive. The ship was involved in rescuing hundreds of survivors from sunken ships in the Pacific and returning them to safety.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 01:30:14 +0000
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