Chris Enss's Blog - Posts Tagged "theatre"
Entertaining Women
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. This month the curtain goes up on women entertainers who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, the immensely talented star of Peter Pan and The Lost Child, Maude Adams.
“I wish you could have seen Maudie that night. She was simply wriggling with excitement. It was all I could do to keep her in her dressing-room until the cue came for her to go on…. Just before the curtain went up I made her repeat her first-act lines to me. She had learned them like a parrot, to be sure, but she spoke them like a true little actress.”
Annie Adams’s comments about her daughter Maude’s first full performance at the age of 5 in November, 1877 at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco.
The Palmer Theatre House in New York was jammed to the doors by a curious clientele all there to see the new actress working opposite the most celebrated actor of the day, John Drew. It was October 3, 1892 when the stunning, elfin-like Maude Adams took to the stage in the play “The Masked Ball.” At the end of the evening Drew would be congratulated on his admirable acting job, but Maude would score a hit that would be greater than his entire career. Her performance was so successful the applause lasted for a full two minutes after she made her exit. She was on her way to becoming a star and local newspapers predicted her talent would be talked about for years to come.
“Her performance (in the Masked Ball) was a revelation. There is one scene in the second act where in order to punish her husband for some ante nuptial remarks of his she has to pretend that she is drunk. It was just touch and go whether the scene ruined the play or not. It would have been hard to devise a more crucial test for an actress of even the wildest experience and the greatest skill. In order to carry off this scene successfully it was necessary for the wife to appear to be drunk and yet be a gentlewoman at the same time. Miss Adams achieved this feat. If Miss Adams had done nothing else throughout the entire play than that one scene it would have stamped her as a comedienne of the first order forever.” The New York Daily News – October 4, 1892
Maude Adams’s stage career began at the tender age of nine months. The play was called “The Lost Child” and the baby that was playing the lead became fussy and could not continue in the show after the first act. Maude’s mother, Annie, who was the female lead in the production, suggested her daughter take the child’s place. Maude was so good that the other baby received her two weeks notice immediately after the play ended. For the remainder of that season all the infant roles were played by little Miss Maude.
To learn more about Maude Adams and the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
For a chance to win a copy of Entertaining Women enter here now.
Ladies and gentlemen, the immensely talented star of Peter Pan and The Lost Child, Maude Adams.
“I wish you could have seen Maudie that night. She was simply wriggling with excitement. It was all I could do to keep her in her dressing-room until the cue came for her to go on…. Just before the curtain went up I made her repeat her first-act lines to me. She had learned them like a parrot, to be sure, but she spoke them like a true little actress.”
Annie Adams’s comments about her daughter Maude’s first full performance at the age of 5 in November, 1877 at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco.
The Palmer Theatre House in New York was jammed to the doors by a curious clientele all there to see the new actress working opposite the most celebrated actor of the day, John Drew. It was October 3, 1892 when the stunning, elfin-like Maude Adams took to the stage in the play “The Masked Ball.” At the end of the evening Drew would be congratulated on his admirable acting job, but Maude would score a hit that would be greater than his entire career. Her performance was so successful the applause lasted for a full two minutes after she made her exit. She was on her way to becoming a star and local newspapers predicted her talent would be talked about for years to come.
“Her performance (in the Masked Ball) was a revelation. There is one scene in the second act where in order to punish her husband for some ante nuptial remarks of his she has to pretend that she is drunk. It was just touch and go whether the scene ruined the play or not. It would have been hard to devise a more crucial test for an actress of even the wildest experience and the greatest skill. In order to carry off this scene successfully it was necessary for the wife to appear to be drunk and yet be a gentlewoman at the same time. Miss Adams achieved this feat. If Miss Adams had done nothing else throughout the entire play than that one scene it would have stamped her as a comedienne of the first order forever.” The New York Daily News – October 4, 1892
Maude Adams’s stage career began at the tender age of nine months. The play was called “The Lost Child” and the baby that was playing the lead became fussy and could not continue in the show after the first act. Maude’s mother, Annie, who was the female lead in the production, suggested her daughter take the child’s place. Maude was so good that the other baby received her two weeks notice immediately after the play ended. For the remainder of that season all the infant roles were played by little Miss Maude.
To learn more about Maude Adams and the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
For a chance to win a copy of Entertaining Women enter here now.
The Self-Made Star
Enter to win a copy of the book
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
“I intend to play westward, and to appear in the town in which I was born—Sacramento.”
Mary Anderson’s comments to a reporter at the San Francisco Call, 1886
The angry hawk clenched its talons on the heavy leather gauntlet, stabbing the delicate wrist beneath. Wings bated, the half-wild bird glared fiercely into the large gray eyes of his captor. Mary Anderson stared back with steely determination. This unruly bird would be tamed, she resolved, and would become a living prop for her performance of the Countess in Sheridan Knowles’s comedy, Love. A stuffed bird would not provide the realism she intended, and what Mary Anderson intended usually came to be. Mary wrote in her memoirs:
There is a fine hawking scene in one of the acts, which would have been spoiled by a stuffed falcon, however beautifully hooded and gyved he might have been; for to speak such words as: “How nature fashion’d him for his bold trade, /Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad, /His wings of glorious spread to mow the air, /And breast of might to use them’ to an inanimate bird, would have been absurd.
Always absolutely serious about her profession, Mary procured a half-wild bird and set to work on bending its spirit to her will. The training, she explained, started with taking the hawk from a cage and feeding it raw meat “hoping thus to gain his affections.” She wore heavy gloves and goggles to protect her eyes. The hawk was not easily convinced of her motives, and “painful scratches and tears were the only result.”
She was advised to keep the bird from sleeping until its spirit broke, but she refused to take that course. Persevering with the original plan, Mary continued to feed and handle the hawk until it eventually learned to sit on her shoulder while she recited her lines, then fly to her wrist as she continued; then, at the signal from her hand, the bird would flap away as she concluded with a line about a glorious, dauntless bird. The dauntless hawk and Mary Anderson were birds of a feather.
Born July 28, 1859, at a hotel in Sacramento, California, Mary’s earliest years were unsettled. Her mother, Antonia Leugers, had eloped with Charles Henry Anderson, a young Englishman intent on finding his fortune in America. It was a love match not approved by Antonia’s parents. The young couple arrived in Sacramento in time for Mary’s birth but too late to scoop up a fortune from the nearest stream. The easy pickings of the 1849 Gold Rush were gone.
To learn more about Mary Anderson and about the other talented performers of the
Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
“I intend to play westward, and to appear in the town in which I was born—Sacramento.”
Mary Anderson’s comments to a reporter at the San Francisco Call, 1886
The angry hawk clenched its talons on the heavy leather gauntlet, stabbing the delicate wrist beneath. Wings bated, the half-wild bird glared fiercely into the large gray eyes of his captor. Mary Anderson stared back with steely determination. This unruly bird would be tamed, she resolved, and would become a living prop for her performance of the Countess in Sheridan Knowles’s comedy, Love. A stuffed bird would not provide the realism she intended, and what Mary Anderson intended usually came to be. Mary wrote in her memoirs:
There is a fine hawking scene in one of the acts, which would have been spoiled by a stuffed falcon, however beautifully hooded and gyved he might have been; for to speak such words as: “How nature fashion’d him for his bold trade, /Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad, /His wings of glorious spread to mow the air, /And breast of might to use them’ to an inanimate bird, would have been absurd.
Always absolutely serious about her profession, Mary procured a half-wild bird and set to work on bending its spirit to her will. The training, she explained, started with taking the hawk from a cage and feeding it raw meat “hoping thus to gain his affections.” She wore heavy gloves and goggles to protect her eyes. The hawk was not easily convinced of her motives, and “painful scratches and tears were the only result.”
She was advised to keep the bird from sleeping until its spirit broke, but she refused to take that course. Persevering with the original plan, Mary continued to feed and handle the hawk until it eventually learned to sit on her shoulder while she recited her lines, then fly to her wrist as she continued; then, at the signal from her hand, the bird would flap away as she concluded with a line about a glorious, dauntless bird. The dauntless hawk and Mary Anderson were birds of a feather.
Born July 28, 1859, at a hotel in Sacramento, California, Mary’s earliest years were unsettled. Her mother, Antonia Leugers, had eloped with Charles Henry Anderson, a young Englishman intent on finding his fortune in America. It was a love match not approved by Antonia’s parents. The young couple arrived in Sacramento in time for Mary’s birth but too late to scoop up a fortune from the nearest stream. The easy pickings of the 1849 Gold Rush were gone.
To learn more about Mary Anderson and about the other talented performers of the
Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
The Pioneer Manager
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sara Kirby Stark, the Pioneer Manager
Sarah Kirby threw down the newspaper and paced across the room, only to turn and race back to the crumpled pages. She picked them up, smoothed them out, and once again read the diatribe against her penned by John Hambleton. Sarah was stricken with grief at the suicide of Hambleton’s wife. That the actor should blame her for his wife’s untimely death and publish his accusations in the San Francisco newspapers increased her distress. Her fingers whitened, and the edges of the page crumpled as she saw herself likened to a snake squeezing the life from its victim. Hambleton wrote of his dead wife’s devotion:
For six years of struggling hardship through poverty and sickness she was at my side night and day, with the same watchful attention as a mother to an infant, until, with the last two months a change had taken place, like a black cloud over shadowing the bright sun. She gradually lost all affection for me, riveting her attention on a female
friend who, like a fascinating serpent, attracted her prey until within her coils. In silence I observed this at first, and deemed it trifling, until I saw the plot thicken.
Sarah crushed the flimsy copy of the Evening Picayune again. She must counter this ugly story or lose her reputation in the city. Not for this had she struggled to attain a pinnacle of success as both an actress and a theater manager. As a manager of a company of actors—one of very few women managers—bad publicity could cost her everything.
A genuine pioneer of theater in California, Sarah Kirby had made her debut in Boston but arrived in the brawling new territory within a year of the first rush of Argonauts heading for the sparkling, gold-laced streams of the Sierra. Rowe’s Amphitheater in San Francisco saw her first performance as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons.
Two months later she appeared at the Tehama Theater, which she had opened and comanaged in Sacramento. By August 1850, she was a full-fledged manager, producing plays at a theater in Stockton, and in September she was back at the Tehama in Sacramento.
To learn more about how Sara Kirby Stark’s career began and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sara Kirby Stark, the Pioneer Manager
Sarah Kirby threw down the newspaper and paced across the room, only to turn and race back to the crumpled pages. She picked them up, smoothed them out, and once again read the diatribe against her penned by John Hambleton. Sarah was stricken with grief at the suicide of Hambleton’s wife. That the actor should blame her for his wife’s untimely death and publish his accusations in the San Francisco newspapers increased her distress. Her fingers whitened, and the edges of the page crumpled as she saw herself likened to a snake squeezing the life from its victim. Hambleton wrote of his dead wife’s devotion:
For six years of struggling hardship through poverty and sickness she was at my side night and day, with the same watchful attention as a mother to an infant, until, with the last two months a change had taken place, like a black cloud over shadowing the bright sun. She gradually lost all affection for me, riveting her attention on a female
friend who, like a fascinating serpent, attracted her prey until within her coils. In silence I observed this at first, and deemed it trifling, until I saw the plot thicken.
Sarah crushed the flimsy copy of the Evening Picayune again. She must counter this ugly story or lose her reputation in the city. Not for this had she struggled to attain a pinnacle of success as both an actress and a theater manager. As a manager of a company of actors—one of very few women managers—bad publicity could cost her everything.
A genuine pioneer of theater in California, Sarah Kirby had made her debut in Boston but arrived in the brawling new territory within a year of the first rush of Argonauts heading for the sparkling, gold-laced streams of the Sierra. Rowe’s Amphitheater in San Francisco saw her first performance as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons.
Two months later she appeared at the Tehama Theater, which she had opened and comanaged in Sacramento. By August 1850, she was a full-fledged manager, producing plays at a theater in Stockton, and in September she was back at the Tehama in Sacramento.
To learn more about how Sara Kirby Stark’s career began and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
America's Greatest Beauty
Enter to win a copy of
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Lillian Russell,
America’s Greatest Beauty
It was not so much the late Lillian Russell’s great dramatic ability or her clear, well-trained voice as her personality and physical beauty that made her the most famous musical comedy star of her day and acclaimed for more than a generation as “America’s Greatest Beauty.” And after she had ceased to sing and act for the public the compelling charms that had lifted her to the stage’s topmost pinnacle persisted and made her up to the very day of her death one of the most admired of women.
Other women marveled to see how Lillian Russell, as she neared sixty years of age, still retained the clear complexion, soft skin, unwrinkled face, youthful expression and all the vivacity of earlier life.
How did she achieve this modern miracles? What was the secret of her unfading beauty.
Lillian Russell made no secret of some of the measures and means she employed to retain her extraordinary good looks, but she did not tell the whole story. She did not say that in addition to the baths, cold creams, cosmetics, exercise and wholesome living she made liberal use of common sense, self-control, persistence, energy and cheerfulness-factors neglected by many women who faithfully follow her other formulas.
She employed the combination of mental qualities and drug store and beauty parlor accessories not only during her whole stage career, but long after the time when most women realize that they are growing old and believing that they have become passé and unattractive, make no effort to improve their appearance. At sixty Lillian Russell was even more careful of her appearance her face and figure, than she was at twenty or thirty.
To learn more about
Lillian Russell’s career and her beauty regiments, read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Lillian Russell,
America’s Greatest Beauty
It was not so much the late Lillian Russell’s great dramatic ability or her clear, well-trained voice as her personality and physical beauty that made her the most famous musical comedy star of her day and acclaimed for more than a generation as “America’s Greatest Beauty.” And after she had ceased to sing and act for the public the compelling charms that had lifted her to the stage’s topmost pinnacle persisted and made her up to the very day of her death one of the most admired of women.
Other women marveled to see how Lillian Russell, as she neared sixty years of age, still retained the clear complexion, soft skin, unwrinkled face, youthful expression and all the vivacity of earlier life.
How did she achieve this modern miracles? What was the secret of her unfading beauty.
Lillian Russell made no secret of some of the measures and means she employed to retain her extraordinary good looks, but she did not tell the whole story. She did not say that in addition to the baths, cold creams, cosmetics, exercise and wholesome living she made liberal use of common sense, self-control, persistence, energy and cheerfulness-factors neglected by many women who faithfully follow her other formulas.
She employed the combination of mental qualities and drug store and beauty parlor accessories not only during her whole stage career, but long after the time when most women realize that they are growing old and believing that they have become passé and unattractive, make no effort to improve their appearance. At sixty Lillian Russell was even more careful of her appearance her face and figure, than she was at twenty or thirty.
To learn more about
Lillian Russell’s career and her beauty regiments, read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Pink Tights and Cracked-Voice
Enter to win a copy of
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Madame Adelina Patti,
The President’s Opera Star
The first actress to appear in Virginia City was Antoinette Adams, variously described as six feet tall, long-necked, Roman-nosed, cracked-voiced, and a faded blonde. Although her audience of miners were cruelly disappointed in what they saw and heard, they listened patiently through her first rendition. At the first pause in her performance, a burly miner stood up and ordered the audience to give three cheers for “Aunty.”
The cheers resounded, and Antoinette sang again. Once more the miners applauded her, then one man rose to suggest they give her enough money to retire from her profession. A shower of silver cascaded upon the stage, the audience rowdily saluting her retirement. After that, every time Antoinette opened her mouth to sing, the miners cheered her so lustily she could not be heard; they also hurled more silver at her feet. At last the actress surrendered, ordered the curtains pulled. When she gathered the silver up, it filled two money sacks. But Antoinette could take a hint; she left town the next day.
To learn more about
Antoinette Adam’s not so illustrious career and her performances across the Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Winners will be announced on February 28, 2016
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.
Ladies and gentlemen, Madame Adelina Patti,
The President’s Opera Star
The first actress to appear in Virginia City was Antoinette Adams, variously described as six feet tall, long-necked, Roman-nosed, cracked-voiced, and a faded blonde. Although her audience of miners were cruelly disappointed in what they saw and heard, they listened patiently through her first rendition. At the first pause in her performance, a burly miner stood up and ordered the audience to give three cheers for “Aunty.”
The cheers resounded, and Antoinette sang again. Once more the miners applauded her, then one man rose to suggest they give her enough money to retire from her profession. A shower of silver cascaded upon the stage, the audience rowdily saluting her retirement. After that, every time Antoinette opened her mouth to sing, the miners cheered her so lustily she could not be heard; they also hurled more silver at her feet. At last the actress surrendered, ordered the curtains pulled. When she gathered the silver up, it filled two money sacks. But Antoinette could take a hint; she left town the next day.
To learn more about
Antoinette Adam’s not so illustrious career and her performances across the Old West read
Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the
Old West.
Dear Mr. Gable,
Last chance to enter to win a copy of
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
When movie star Carole Lombard died suddenly at the age of 33, some said it was the end of an era-not just of her hilarious brand of screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century but off-screen , too, where her raucous and profane wit made her one of the most fun people in Hollywood. She was the type of star little girls dreamed of becoming: not only was she beautiful and glamorous, she was also married to Clark Gable, creating one of the most sensational love matches in Hollywood’s golden days.
The pair were so well liked that it made perfect sense for them to be asked to headline the first war-bond drive after Pearl Harbor. The campaign would peak in Indianapolis, in Lombard’s home state, so she decided to go anyway after Gable declined and took along her mother instead. On one night, January 15, 1942, Lombard helped raised more than $2 million, four times what organizers hoped for. Afterward, Lombard was eager to get back to California, so she instructed her agent to book them on an airplane flight instead of the train. Lombard’s mother was most reluctant. She had never flown before and her numerologist had told her that January 16 was an unlucky day for flying.
Lombard flipped a coin, an after the star called tails and won, the two women and the press agent took off at 4 a.m., Friday, January 16, on a flight that included several stops and was to take seventeen hours. One stop Friday afternoon was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where several military officers wanted to board and displace civilian passengers. Four passengers got off the plane, but Lombard, pointing out that she had just raised $2 million for the war effort, convinced the pilot to add three seats and let her and her companions continue the flight.
The plane made one last stop, in Las Vegas, to refuel, then took off at 7:07 p.m. headed for Los Angeles. About a half hour later workers at the Blue Diamond Mine south of Las Vegas reported seeing a bright flash atop a distant mountain and then heard an explosion. It seems the pilot, who had been reprimanded several times before for disobeying flight regulations, was flying off course over the mountains to try and make up for lost time from all the previous stops. The plane grazed a rocky projection than slammed into a wall of Table Rock Mountain near its peak at 8,000 feet.
It took rescue workers, led by a local 70-year-old Indian, almost a day to climb the steep cliffs and read the crash site, surrounded by snow several feet deep. There was no snow near the destroyed plan. Many of the nineteen passengers and three crew members, including Lombard, were so badly burned, they couldn’t be identified. It was several days before all the bodies could be removed from the mountains.
Gable, who had flown to the area and paced nervously until it was clear there were no survivors, soon afterward enlisted in the Army Air Force as a 41-year-old private.
To learn more about Carole Lombard’s and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Visit www.chrisenss.com
Entertaining Women:
Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West
When movie star Carole Lombard died suddenly at the age of 33, some said it was the end of an era-not just of her hilarious brand of screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century but off-screen , too, where her raucous and profane wit made her one of the most fun people in Hollywood. She was the type of star little girls dreamed of becoming: not only was she beautiful and glamorous, she was also married to Clark Gable, creating one of the most sensational love matches in Hollywood’s golden days.
The pair were so well liked that it made perfect sense for them to be asked to headline the first war-bond drive after Pearl Harbor. The campaign would peak in Indianapolis, in Lombard’s home state, so she decided to go anyway after Gable declined and took along her mother instead. On one night, January 15, 1942, Lombard helped raised more than $2 million, four times what organizers hoped for. Afterward, Lombard was eager to get back to California, so she instructed her agent to book them on an airplane flight instead of the train. Lombard’s mother was most reluctant. She had never flown before and her numerologist had told her that January 16 was an unlucky day for flying.
Lombard flipped a coin, an after the star called tails and won, the two women and the press agent took off at 4 a.m., Friday, January 16, on a flight that included several stops and was to take seventeen hours. One stop Friday afternoon was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where several military officers wanted to board and displace civilian passengers. Four passengers got off the plane, but Lombard, pointing out that she had just raised $2 million for the war effort, convinced the pilot to add three seats and let her and her companions continue the flight.
The plane made one last stop, in Las Vegas, to refuel, then took off at 7:07 p.m. headed for Los Angeles. About a half hour later workers at the Blue Diamond Mine south of Las Vegas reported seeing a bright flash atop a distant mountain and then heard an explosion. It seems the pilot, who had been reprimanded several times before for disobeying flight regulations, was flying off course over the mountains to try and make up for lost time from all the previous stops. The plane grazed a rocky projection than slammed into a wall of Table Rock Mountain near its peak at 8,000 feet.
It took rescue workers, led by a local 70-year-old Indian, almost a day to climb the steep cliffs and read the crash site, surrounded by snow several feet deep. There was no snow near the destroyed plan. Many of the nineteen passengers and three crew members, including Lombard, were so badly burned, they couldn’t be identified. It was several days before all the bodies could be removed from the mountains.
Gable, who had flown to the area and paced nervously until it was clear there were no survivors, soon afterward enlisted in the Army Air Force as a 41-year-old private.
To learn more about Carole Lombard’s and about the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.
Visit www.chrisenss.com
