Author interviewed Mary Anna Johnson Savoie after finding 2011 Herald story

A former Benician who escaped death when she was bumped from the flight that crashed and killed actress Carole Lombard has been included in a newly released book about that fatal crash.

Mary Anna Johnson Savoie, a 1936 Benicia High School graduate who died Feb. 20 in Lake Charles, La., lived long enough for author Robert Matzen to present her with a copy of “Fireball.”

The book is Matzen’s telling of the story of those who flew on Flight 3 of the Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA) DC-3 that slammed into Double Up Peak, Nev., shortly after leaving Las Vegas, killing all on board.

Among those who died were Lombard, the 33-year-old comedy actress nicknamed “The Queen of Screwball,” who was returning to California after having raised $2 million in a single evening at a war bond rally in her home state of Indiana. She was accompanied by her mother and the publicist for her husband, actor Clark Gable.

Riding with them were 15 servicemen, including four who boarded in Albuquerque, N.M., forcing other passengers to give up their seats.

Savoie was among the four chosen to leave. Another was the violinist Joseph Segetti, who also has written about his narrow escape.

In a 2011 interview with The Benicia Herald, Savoie told how disappointed she was to leave.

“I thought I was going to see Clark Gable!” she said.

Gable had married Lombard in 1939 during a break in the filming of “Gone With The Wind,” in which Gable played Rhett Butler. Savoie and the other passengers had hoped to get a glimpse of the box office idol as he waited for Lombard at the airport.

It’s a story she repeated to Matzen: She has been sitting directly behind Otto Winkler, the publicist, and two seats behind Lombard.

“All Mary could think about was, ‘When this plane lands in Burbank, Carole’s husband will be there to greet her, and I will get to see Clark Gable in the flesh,’” Matzen told The Herald by email last week.

“Then she was bumped in Albuquerque and related how terrible she felt, calling it ‘the worst day of my life’ to stand there and through the glass watch Carole Lombard board the plane.

“Then the crash happened, and as Mary told me with that vivid humor of hers, ‘Suddenly Clark Gable didn’t seem so important.’”

Matzen was well into his book when he finally encountered Savoie.

“I knew the identity of one,” he said of those who had been bumped from the flight, “but didn’t learn the names of the others until I was far along in my research — in fact, the book was two weeks from going to print.”

He handed the names to one of his researchers, who “got a hit on Mary Anna Johnson” through the July 17, 2011 Herald article.

He contacted Marie Earp, the Benicia woman who has organized Benicia High School class reunions, and who had been sent the letter Savoie wrote in 2011, congratulating any others of the Class of 1936 on their 75th anniversary of graduation.

The two women had become friends as Earp helped Savoie piece together her younger days in Benicia living near West Fourth and West I streets, in a home now owned by the Passalacqua family.

Through Earp, Matzen reached out to Savoie, hoping to hear her story about the flight.

“I got a phone number for Marie and cold-called her,” he said. “Marie listened to my crazy story of writing a book about Carole Lombard and Flight 3, and promised she would contact Mary’s son Spencer and see if it would be all right for me to talk to Mary.”

Matzen described his book to Spencer, who arranged a phone conversation with Mary.

“I had my tape recorder ready and dialed the number,” Matzen said. “She answered on the first ring.”

He had no idea what to expect from a 94-year-old woman who was in an assisted-living residence. He quickly found out.

“Mary was sharp and funny, and her story was incredible,” he said. “We bonded instantly and learned how much we have in common.”

Matzen used to work for NASA, and Savoie worked for that agency’s precursor, NACA. The two worked — 50 years apart — in the same wind tunnel at California’s Moffett Federal Airfield.

“When she described working at Moffett, I knew the campus exactly, because I had worked there, too,” he said.

That first conversation lasted 40 minutes, Matzen said, and was the first of several times they would communicate.

“Hers was the last part of the complex story to be added, and it was clearly fate that we meet,” he said. “‘Fireball’ is becoming a big success and her story is being experienced over and over, and she lived to see herself in print.”

Savoie’s story isn’t the only one told in Matzen’s book, an adventure that started because Matzen frequently flies through Las Vegas on business.

“I knew that the wreckage of Flight 3 had remained on the mountain since 1942,” he said. “It’s so remote a spot where it crashed that they couldn’t remove all the crash debris.”

He felt compelled to climb the mountain to see the wreckage for himself.

“It was hell getting up there and worse getting back down,” he said. “It’s the roughest terrain in the western United States. But being at the site made the words start to flow, and I wrote for a solid year afterwards,” he said.

Matzen called the climb the biggest event of his life, relating how his guide on the trek wore a button on his jacket that would have dispatched a rescue helicopter in an emergency.

Other research for “Fireball” was less hazardous, but no less thorough, Matzen said. He combed through 2,000 pages of federal records of the crash, some that had never been viewed by the public. “It was so detailed that I knew what all the rescuers and investigators said, thought and felt,” he said.

He believes he has learned all that can be known about the plane and its crash.

And then there were the interviews.

Besides Savoie, Matzen talked with Lombard’s nephew, Fred Peters III, who told him that his father, Fred Peters II, Lombard’s brother, lost both his mother and sister on that fatal flight.

He learned that Lombard’s brothers, Fred and Stuart, blamed Gable for their sister’s death.

“They saw Clark as a villain,” he said. “Carole was rushing home to Hollywood because Gable was having an affair with his co-star, Lana Turner, and that is monumental in the story, not only for its part in the crash, but the effect on Gable.”

Matzen also talked with Steve Hayes, a Hollywood writer in his 80s who knew both Gable and Turner, “and helped me get their characters right.”

The author listened to recorded but unpublished interviews at the Academy Library related to both Gable and Lombard. “I was able to get a fresh spin on both these characters and present them as real people,” he said.

“I now know what made Lombard tick, and what made Gable tick, and I guarantee these aren’t exactly the characters that their fans are expecting.”

He also spoke with Nazoma Ball, the 94-year-old niece of Winkler. Ball, who had married Lucille Ball’s brother, remembered her uncle and knew Gable.

Matzen also spoke with family members of the flight’s stewardesses. The family of Alice Getz, of Kewanee, Ill., had kept a scrapbook he called “a goldmine for the book,” because being a TWA stewardess gave her celebrity status in her town.

Family members of other passengers also helped him tell their stories.

“This was a plane full of young people — all but one were 40 or under, and most were in their 20s,” he said. “Every passenger on the plane was flying on government business related to the war.”

He said the plane was filled with those “leading lives of promise,” and the 15 Army Air Corps flyers on the plane were considered the “cream of the crop,” expected to shoot up through the ranks in the war. Add to that a movie star, her mother and her famous husband’s young press agent, who also was his best friend, and you have a very interesting flight.

“And TWA’s most experienced pilot, and a young co-pilot from New England money, and an air hostess with three boyfriends who was living the glamorous life,” Matzen added.

And, of course, Mary Anne Johnson Savoie, about whom he also has written columns on robertmatzen.com.

“There’s a great quote in there about how she rode the bullet train and walked the Great Wall,” he said. “It’s classic.”

When “Fireball” was published and copies arrived in December 2013, he and his wife, “another Mary,” flew to Houston, Texas, before driving to Lake Charles, La.

They arrived on a Sunday morning and presented Savoie with “the very first copy of ‘Fireball,’” he said.

“When I walked in and hugged her, she was shaking, she was so excited,” he said.

“I read all the parts of the book that were about her, and there was a party, and it was among the best times my Mary and I ever had.”

He said Savoie was “so proud to be in the book, and I was proud to include her in it.”

They remained in touch until her death.

“I’m certain that Mary Savoie lived every single moment of her life. She never just existed. My friend Mary lived.

“I loved Mary Savoie from the very first instant on the phone, and I will love her forever as an inspiration and as a warm, vital human being.”

He called writing the book “intense,” but added that “the story poured out of me. There were times I wrote a chapter a day.”

Along the way, he kept getting lucky breaks, “like finding Mary” — a sign, he said, that “This book was meant to be.”

“Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3,” by Robert Matzen, is a GoodKnight Books title, and reviews and audio samples are available at www.goodknightbooks.com/Carole-Lombard.html.

It is also being sold in hardcover, Kindle, audiobook CD and audible download at amazon.com.