The Pittsburgh Press (January 20, 1942)
I DARE SAY —
American mood
By Florence Fisher Parry
I hope that what I am about to say will not be distorted by my critics, whom I remind that I have consistently supported the movies and their people for many, many years.
I have a deep affection for them and have unfailingly defended them and have never begrudged the worship screen stars have had from their fans. It has always seemed to me that they deserve it. Their careers are tragically short, their “fame” spasmodic and uncertain; their lives of necessity, synthetic and unreal. They are raised to pinnacles and dashed into oblivion.
One of these creatures of fortune was Carole Lombard. Her death is an incomputable loss. Her beauty, her glamor, her talents; above all, her good sportsmanship, made her passing a tragic and a bitter thing; and who shall deny her death its claim to the news spotlight? To her American fans, Carole Lombard was the very epitome of their dreams, ease, wealth, fame, beauty – all hers, the Cinderella incarnate! They were too old to believe in fairies or Santa Claus. This was a kind of adult fairy story they COULD believe in thus did they manage to preserve their childishness and keep on believing the old impossible dreams!
Small wonder then that the death of this other-world creature swept the country up into a brief and childish hysteria of grief as excessive as it was unrelated to the grim reality of war.
There was something bizarre… almost frightening… in this exhibition of sensationalism. It seemed incredible that the people of this country, plunged as we are in a life-and-death struggle for survival let no man call is less, could let ourselves exhibit such disproportionate emotions!
Hysteria
WE ARE AT WAR. WE NEED EVERY TRAINED FLIER. Fifteen of these airmen, most of them officers, died in the crash that killed Carole Lombard. Look at the newspaper headlines. What about them? Our sons, lovers, husbands?
You blame the newspapers? That is as silly as it is unfair. The newspapers are purveyors to the public. It was not the newspapers, it was THE PUBLIC, that headlined and sensationalized Carole Lombard’s death, almost to the exclusion of other aspects of the tragedy.
Did you watch the reading public grab the newspapers? Did you watch the radio audiences tune in to the news broadcasts? Did you listen to the talk along the sidewalks and at the table of every home?
If ever we were handed a capsule of the American mood, THIS WAS IT. Carole Lombard, to the American rank and file, was more important than any other fact, INCLUDING the war.
We have a long way to go before we can be said to be primed for this war. We are still living in the smug, soft-padded dream of yesterday. We are still thinking of our American way of life in terms of the movies. The basic values are coated over with sugar and sensationalism.
At least to those whom this war has not touched yet.
Oh, I dare say there were plenty of people who brushed by the news of Carole Lombard’s death and searched the list of casualties for dear names on their own.
Oh, I dare say there were plenty of us who thought first, of the mangled charred bodies of 15 youths in uniform, the face of each duplicating the features of our own sons.
Oh, I dare say there was many a stern face, bent over maps and blueprints, whose minds were insensate enough to the name Carole Lombard, and who were thinking only in terms of sabotage and bitter shortages.
We needed those 15 pilots.
We needed that transport.
Oh yes, there were many who thought these thoughts, thoughts far removed from Hollywood.
But by and large, no.
Awakening
The American mood possessed the continent. A movie star, beautiful and successful, had been killed! And yet who will wonder about Singapore and Corregidor and the drowning seamen on the Atlantic waters?
Oh, what a long way we have to go before the impact of this war will jolt us from our old conditionings!
We are still in the same old delusory rut. We still think that we can have our cake, iced and with candles, and eat it too.
They are talking now in terms of an army of eight million men. Ten million men. One out of every 13 persons in the whole United States. We haven’t just a WPA project on our hands, we have a global war; already its icy hand has touched every man, woman and child in the world. Including US. Including US.
But millions of us are still playing bridge and golf and taking Red Cross and air wardening in a kind of grand-scale tea-party stride. War, it’s wonderful!
Poor we. Poor soft we.
The old, old delusory habit of thinking we can commiserate it away, this specter, this stern angel of death, with a sword in her hand, her eyes fixed upon us, upon each one of us.
Not peace but a sword.
Yes, we have had our last sensation, in the death of Carole Lombard.
Henceforth, it will be the real thing, or we perish from the earth.