Fireball

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At 5 00 A.M on January 16, 1942, actress Carole Lombard, Hollywood s Queen of Screwball and the wife of the king of the movies, Clark Gable, stepped onto a Transcontinental Western Airlines DC 3, designated as Flight 3 in Indianapolis, Indiana with her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and MGM publicity man Otto Winkler Lombard had just completed the first sale of war bonds and stamps in the nation following its entry into World War II Exhausted from five days on the road, Carole intended to return to her husband and Encino, California home and by the fastest means possible Fourteen hours later, Flight 3 lay a flaming pile of debris strewn across the side of Potosi Mountain, Nevada.Fireball provides a fresh look at Carole Lombard s life, with plenty of focus on her list of lovers that included Howard Hughes and Clark Gable, and presents a first ever examination of the events that led to that final flight and her death The book also provides a day by day look at the struggles of Clark Gable and Lombard s family, friends, and fans, to cope with the tragedy Lombard became the first Hollywood star to sacrifice her life in World War II The War Department offered Gable a funeral service with full military honors but he refused it knowing that his wife would not approve of such spectacle.But Fireball goes much further and explores the lives of the 21 others on the plane, including 15 members of the U.S Army Air Corps, and addresses one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II On a clear night full of stars, with TWA s most experienced pilot at the controls of a 10 month old aircraft under the power of two fully functioning engines, why did Flight 3 crash into that Nevada mountainside Author Robert Matzen digs deep into never before explored corners of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences Library to offer fresh new perspectives on Carole Lombard, the Queen of Screwball He also explored 2,000 pages of federal government and TWA records on the crash and spoke to friends of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable as well as crash experts and family members of the passengers on Flight 3 to tell not one but 22 heartbreaking stories, one for each of the souls aboard the doomed airliner.The gripping page turner Fireball presents the story of the people on the plane, the friends and families left behind, and the heroic first responders who struggled up a mountain hoping to perform a miracle rescue From the first page to the last, Fireball tells a story of accomplishment, bravery, sacrifice, and loss. Free Read Kindle ePUB Fireball author Robert Matzen – kino-fada.fr After completing this book, I m not sure if I would categorize it as a biography of Carole Lombard or a historical look at a tragic event that took place in an era when commercial air travel was in its infancy.The author does a commendable job of setting the scene of late 1930s and early 40s Hollywood and introducing us to the various players who attracted movie goers willing to spend a dime to escape in the celluloid, bigger than life pictures and contract players of the time I confess that After completing this book, I m not su...I began to read this with some trepidation I didn t want these two to lose their luster I also didn t want to cry over them, but I was resigned to that when one of a loving couple is going to crash into a mountain in the course of a book, tears are going to happen In the end, was the Great Love Affair between Gable and Lombard everything fond fans say it was I don t know Probably not Two words Lana Turner Would they have been divorced in a few years Maybe But it doesn t really matt I began to read this with some trepidation I didn t want these two to lose their luster I also didn t want to cry over them, but I was resigned to that when one of a loving couple is going to crash into a mountain in the course of a book, tears are going to happen In the end, was...Carole Lombard was one of those rare people in perpetually catty Hollywood who seems not have left behind anyone who could say a bad word about her Her boundless energy, generous heart, delicious sense of humor, down to earth sexiness, and general exuberance have endeared her to generations of fans so that she is still lovingly rememberedthan 70 years after her shocking, tragic death I cannot remember how I ever discovered Carole Lombard perhaps in My Man Godfrey but I...This book is part biography and part the story of a tragic accident, in which actress Carole Lombard and twenty one other people lost their lives Much of the wreckage of TWA Flight 3, the commercial airliner which crashed on the evening of January 16th, 1942, is still strewn across the side of Mount Potosi in Nevada The author actually climbed to the crash site and it took him four and a half hours to ascend the steep mountain slope It can only be imagined how hard it was to mount a rescue mi This book is part biography and part the story of a tragic accident, in which actress Carole Lombard and twenty one other people lost their lives Much of the wreckage of TWA Flight 3, the commercial airliner which crashed on the evening of January 16th, 1942, is still strewn across the side of Mount Potosi in Nevada The author actually climbed to the crash site and it took him four and a half hours to ascend the steep mountain slope It can only be imagined how hard it was to mount a rescue mission on that dark night, so long ago However, despite so much time passing, the author does a wonderful job in recreati...OK, I devoured this in a day, given the intersection of my love of vintage Hollywood, calamities, and WWII Matzen does a great job with research, but I m giving him four stars instead of five because of his unfortunate reliance on what he called extrapolation, or the insertion of his thoughts into the unknowable, interior lives of Gable, Lombard, and others I don t understand this intrusion because it weakens his book His chapters on the crash and its investigation are stronger than the Hol OK, I devoured this in a day, given the intersection of my love of vintage Hollywood, calamities, and WWII Matzen does a great job with research, but I m giving him four stars instead of five because of his unfortunate reliance on what he called extrapolation, or the insertion of his thoughts into the unknowable, interior lives of Gable, Lombard, and others I don t understand this intrusion because it weakens his book His chapters on the crash and its investigation are str...This is a very informative book about one of Hollywood s best loved stars, the Dream romance of Hollywood royalty, and the tragedy of a plane crash that has long served as fodder for conspiracy theorists The danger of such a book is that it may be nothing but a bare bones rehashing of details but, put your mind to rest FIREBALL is very much worth the read and is mostly engaging Mostly engaging Okay, that does deserve an explanation The writer chose a stylistic approach that I found t This is a very informative book about one of Hollywood s best loved stars, the Dream romance of Hollywood royalty, and the tragedy of a plane crash that has long served as fodder for conspiracy theorists The danger of such a book is that it may be nothing but a bare bones rehashing of details but, put your mind to rest FIREBALL is very much worth the read and is mostly engaging Mostly engaging Okay, that does deserve an explanation The writer chose a stylistic approach that I found to be quite distracting Instead of presenting his narrative in timeline fashion, he jumps back and forth from the events leading up to the infamous crash to details of Carole Lombard s life I could understand this b...This certainly was a page turner I had no problem with the switch between the Lombard biography and the events leading up to the crash I found the biography of Lombard to be bio lite easy to skim and clearly cribbed from the sources The meat of the research went into the files on the crash and the aftermath, recovery and final investigation, this was very good I like that he gave names and stories of the other victims of this accident, Lombard was the big name, but there were others on boa This certainly was a page turner I had no problem with the switch between the Lombard biography and the events leading up to the crash I found the biography of Lombard to be bio lite easy to skim and clearly cribbed from the sources The meat of the research went into the files on the crash and the aftermath, recovery and final investigation, this was very good I like that he gave names and stories of the other victims of this accident, Lombard was the big name, but there were others on board That was nice, it completed the story.Where the author completely lost me had to do with either ridiculously easy errors in the text to correct such as the oft repeated Robert Stack Academy Award Winner, no he was a nominee The...The further I got into this book the less I liked it The first part is a fairly shallow biography of Carole Lombard, with brief flash forwards to the plane crash that took her life Around midway through, the focus of the book shifts entirely to the crash itself and the investigation into its possible causes I would have preferred that the book spendtime on Lombard s life and less on her death, but what annoyed me about the book was the style of the writing.Author Robert Matzen so freque The further I got i...The author suggests at the start of the book that he has discovered something about the plane crash that killed Carole Lombard We are led to believe it is, perhaps, something sinister because Orson Welles once said at lunch to Henry Jaglom, the plane was shot down, and those who know, know Really that s a revelation With no evidence to support it it s just a man talking at lunch Also Matzen uses the word surreal at least a dozen times and always incorrectly.In fact, Matzen has absolute The author suggests at the start of the book that he has discovered something about the plane crash that killed Carole Lombard We are led to believe it is, perhaps, something sinister because Orson Welles once said at lunch to Henry Jaglom, the plane was shot down, and those who know, know Really that s a revelation With no evidence to support it it s just a man talking at lunch Also Matzen uses the word surreal at least a dozen times and always incorrectly.In fact, Matzen has absolutely nothing new to add to reams of paper spent on the death of Lombard He has TWA s review of the accident, and he climbed the mountain himself Do I care The information on Carole Lombard would be much bet...GNab I received a free electronic copy of this biography from Netgalley, Robert Matzen, and GoodKnight Publishing in exchange for an honest review Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.This biography covering the last few years of the life and of the death of Carole Lombard, and the effect of the tragedy of Flight 3 on both Hollywood and the families of the other victims of that plane crash on January 16, 1942 This is an thorough follow up on the Air Transport Command, Army Air For GNab I received a free electronic copy of this biography from Netgalley, Robert Matzen, and GoodKnight Publishing in exchange for an honest review Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.This biography covering the last few years of the life and of the death of Carole Lombard, and the effect of the tragedy of Flight 3 on both Hollywo...

Fireball
  • English
  • 18 December 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 400 pages
  • 0988502518
  • Robert Matzen
  • Fireball